by letsryan: Drinking Outside Myself in Kyoto, Japan

Off a bike alley off a back alley off a side street, behind the brothels and beyond the lamps, in the wispy feathered fringe of Kyoto’s entertainment district - that’s where it is. There are no signs, no names. It looks like storage. There are no hours. When it’s open it opens no earlier than midnight, or one, or two. And only when heartsick, when wandering without aim, can I find it. Inside are no lights, only candles that cast shadows of Japan’s past martial flag on counters. The bartender, who is the owner, who is the Japanese Jean Reno pours absinthe over ice and hands me the clouding drink, his eyebrows open and expectant. I’ll go to the low tables in the corner, where I swear every utterance is haiku and people kiss for sheer joy, and we sit in mounds of pillows, leaning on concrete and rebar in the darkness. And, then, I am right again.