Have you ever opened a book and felt a sudden sense of memories from the past surfacing?

Not necessarily grand or dramatic events, but rather the myriad of things experienced in daily life. The scenery once seen, the scents that lingered there, the murmuring sounds of the surroundings, familiar laughter, the softness of new buds touched by hand, the refreshing taste that fills the mouth, and so on.

Fragments of memory, normally unnoticed in everyday life, flutter down from the air as if summoned by the act of opening a book, or well up from the depths of the pages like a perennial spring. One reason I open a book during a brief moment of free time or a leisurely holiday is to surrender myself to this nostalgic yet poignant sensation. To place myself "in" a space or sensation from another time, not my current life. That momentary pleasure. And if that involves the townscapes, scenery, dialects, or culture I've encountered in the past, my joy is all the greater. For me, at least.

Yet, when I open a book about Kyoto again, I sometimes feel a sense of familiarity with its unique atmosphere, so different from my hometown, and at other times I observe it from a distance. I naturally recall things like cycling in the sweltering heat to buy minazuki, something novel to me as someone from the Kanto region, or walking alone in front of the Imperial Palace in the biting winter cold with my fingertips numb with chill. That feeling, strangely, feels quite good.

Immersed in a spectrum of emotions, both sweet and bittersweet, I once again traverse the streets of Kyoto through the pages of a book today.