At mid morning we're riding another bullet train for Kyoto. Halfway through the trip a pretty girl enters the train and sits next to me. We spend the next hour of the trip into Kyoto talking about things in the best English that she can manage. She has a terribly infectious smile and air about her. This passes the last hour of the trip instead of reading about chromosomes and genetics and tumor growth initiation (via the latest Scientific American).
After visiting Kikumi's grandmother's burial site and performing a little ceremony we head over to the Gion Festival n Kyoto. They expect 1.5 million people for the two day festival. The streets are absolutely packed. And I go wildly out of control.
On every corner there are advertisers passing out Japanese fans with their logos on them. After a block or so of walking I have more fans than I can possibly use. So I turn the tables. I start loudly saying, "98.4, FM, Kyoto Radio" to people as I hand out the radio advertising fans. A few people reject the freebies that I am giving out, but most people take them from the silly foreigner with the huge smile. And they smile back. Shortly I have gotten rid of all of the fans.
And now the fun begins!
I start picking people out of the crowd who are having fun and start taking pictures. Most of the people who see me lining up the shots smile and wait. I shoot the pictures and show them the result as they smile, giggle, or laugh. But they always thank me and I thank them (with a huge smile).
After I take the picture of one couple and wander around for 15 minutes and mingle with 10,000 people, I run into the couple again and they want me to take two pictures of them near a shrine with their camera. After I do it I tell them, "Come with me". And they follow for a while as I learn that they are both students at Kyoto university - one in Japanese history and one in law. As I'm about to tell them, "Come with me and experience the heights of human ecstacy" they decide that they have to leave and they both give me the biggest smiles that one can imagine.