May 10, 2026 : Riding Through My Own Memory
© 安岡喜晴 (JoyShine)
Today we biked to the Katsura Imperial Villa.
We crossed the Katsura River over the Kuze Bridge.
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The roads around here are the ones my father used to drive me along when I was a child.
It was a nostalgic road, one we took every time we went to visit my relatives.
And this scenery, too,
was the scenery I saw again and again from the car window back then.
Of course, as a child,
I had no idea what road this was.
I was just riding in my father's car,
watching the scenery go by.
So today I learned something for the first time.
This scenery, the one that had stayed in my memory all along,
was the scenery just past the Katsura Ohashi Bridge.
I had known this scenery for decades,
but it was only today that I learned the name of the place.
After that, we stopped by a Japanese sweets shop, Nakamuraken.
We ordered two mugitemochi, the sweet this shop is famous for.
The simple sweetness was just wonderful.
Then we headed to the Katsura Imperial Villa.
But at the entrance, a guard spoke to us.
He told us that you need a reservation to go inside.
I didn't know that.
So we had no choice but to turn back for today.
On the way home, we stopped at a Korean restaurant, and I ordered bibim naengmyeon.
While eating the cold, spicy noodles,
I thought back on the roads in Katsura we had ridden today.
The places I once watched from the window of my father's car as a child,
today I was riding through them on my own bike.
The scenery that has been in my memory for decades
is slowly connecting with the scenery I see now.
It was that kind of day.