Tell someone you live in Kyobashi, and you’re likely to elicit the same reaction as if you’d told them you slammed a car door on your hand. Tell them you like living in Kyobashi, and they’ll treat you like some aberrant masochist who enjoys slamming the car door on his hand – repeatedly. Most people think of Kyobashi as some inchoate slum with self-abnegated aspirations of one day decaying into a full-fledged ghetto. Kyobashi has had it share of hookers, pimps, yakuza, and bottom-dwelling filth; some of it still clings to the city like the sticky humidity of summer that you just can’t wipe off. But Kyobashi is more than that, more than just a dirty neighborhood, more than just the black sheep member of the city proper. Kyobashi has character: this is where people don’t just reside -- they adapt; they survive; they live.

Pass through the shopping arcade, and your senses cloy on wafts of okonomikyaki, takoyaki, and any other type of foodstuff that someone can scrape together and eke a living by foisting off on strangers. Unfortunately, this menagerie of smells mingles with the unmistakable cloacal pungency of feces and urine mixed with vomit. Don’t look for it though. You’re better off not knowing where it’s coming from. The bravura shouts of vendors distracts the sense of smell long enough for the brain to register the din of the arcade: pachinko parlors with techno music blaring and small silver balls clacking through machines; blips, beeps, and jingling coins from the video arcade; old men chatting in intoxicated drawl, soon to be contributing to the putrid odors of the city. Like I said, don’t look for it.

An aimless meandering finds one accosted by panders trying to sell another’s body to you for companionship, talks, drinks, sex, or almost whatever you want. There are still rules in this chaotic miasma of filth, and those rules must be abided by, because punishment – not justice, for those eyes are blind when her head faces Kyobashi – is always swift and brutal. Not every over-dressed, dyed, designer suit wearing dandy is out to offer men a chance of pleasure at the parting of his wallet; some are there to lure new meat to the markets, a job more difficult than leading a herd of stubborn cattle. When the men are pandered to, the meat sells itself. It’s far harder to sell a butcher’s shop to an animal raised to avoid such places at the peril of hell itself. Some accept the offers they’ve been made (Will they become whores? Companions? Drinking partners? Who’s to say?) Others walk by stoically, a hand placed to the sides of their faces hoping to wade through the sea of sin safely without being contaminated by it so they can catch a train home, a home as far away from Kyobashi as possible.

The women traipse around the station. This farrago of painted mimes, Chinese immigrants, and ersatz Vestas watches you with intransigent eyes, hoping that your desire to drown you loneliness is strong enough to make you part with your cash. Some could be beauty queens, and others have faces that make you pity the job they do. But they chose it, didn’t they? Don’t be concerned. Another steady fixture of Kyoabashi, not only adding to the allure and the promise of reward that each night seems to hold (and rarely bestows), but also contributing to a reputation that causes the transient masses to look at their feet as the shuffle from one train to another, never once pausing to admire the glory of Kyobashi’s underbelly.

The dandies are filling the station plaza, weaving through and circulating among the disinterested travelers to the contending tunes of rival buskers hoping to get noticed in the city that people try not to notice. Next to them are local artists whoring their talent on cheap postcards, hoping beyond hope to be appreciated for the talent they labored to develop. A few high school girls, out beyond their curfew (if they even have one. Must be local.), stare at the lucubration of Kyobashi’s version of beatnik culture. Even their feigned interest feeds the artists’ egos, but it doesn’t fill their bellies. Tonight there are no fights. Even if there was one, most people would ignore it. A fight in Kyobashi usually has a reason, and the fight usually ends not when the cops come, but when the yakuza think it’s gone on long enough. You’ve made your point, now get the hell out of here. It’s bad for business.

The station fades from view as a teeming tangle of bicycles -- some abandoned and some waiting for their owners to reclaim them -- impedes every step away. The road seems quiet, like in the moment before the thunder cracks down from above, when the traffic lights turn red. Then a gang of motorcyclists comes rip-roaring down the street, pell-mell, disrupting and disgruntling the denizens of Kyobashi. Most just ignore this intrusion into their self-absorbed tranquility. After all, it is Kyobashi.

The love hotel district stands as a gaudy neon beacon to those lucky few who have found companionship for the night; it offers a haven from the city, while still being of the city. A pretty, young girl squats down and covers her face as her man tries to overcome her protestations: for some, the path to pleasure is not easy. An older man, a John in a tawdry business suit is escorted through the labyrinth by a girl more than half his age: for some, the path to pleasure is easy, if one finds it easy to part with money. Other couples of varying ages walk past. There are those who are madly in love today and want nothing more than to consummate that love before it fades. Others just want to feel the release from the pressure their libido has placed on them. A man with a toothy grin scurries past with his not-so-secret lover, the neon reflecting off his teeth and his wedding ring. The hotels do not judge them or their intents. They are monolithic cogs in the economy of love and prurience, immutable and forever. They are the gods that gave birth to Kyobashi; they are also a blight, the fingers of mugger around the throat of an already wheezing victim.

I feel the city around me and inside me: my body oozes it from my pores; my lungs inhale it. I must retire for the night, a night that too lured me out of the refuge of my home, but withheld the bauble of fulfilled promises from me yet again. As the jetsam drifts past me, a voice in the dark calls out. A girl I used to go around with. She’s not an old flame: we were never close like that despite her thoughts to the contrary.

“You.”

“Me.”

“You’re still here.” The way she says it comes out more like a question. My sudden appearance in Kyobashi, a place she only endured to be with me, throws her mind into a series of convulsions. For a second I wonder why she’s here, then I see in her eyes a flicker of some fey future imagined; a future where our relationship didn’t end in acrimony and where there was more to my half than lustful longing. The flicker passes before she even realizes it, and she manages to stammer out, “Why?”

“I live here. This is my town.” I walk away not looking back, wondering what broken promises and future adventures await in Kyobashi, the city some would scorn, but that I've come to call home.

By Kodaiji