Halloween Walkshop

A Halloween walk down Matsubara Street, from Higashiyama to THE-IF.

Kyoto is usually described as a city that keeps its past. But the opposite turns out to be just as true. Things get lost, or quietly turn into something else.

Matsubara itself has been here since the city was laid out twelve hundred years ago, and it has since passed the job of main road to the street just south of it. There are a few stops along it where you can feel what it means to leave something behind. The ground where one family held more power than anyone in the country, with almost nothing left now to show it. A place people once believed was the border between this world and the next. A shop that survived by changing what it sells.

This is a walk down Matsubara, looking at those stops and seeing what you notice. The 31st is Halloween. It began as Samhain, the Gaelic festival that marked the end of the harvest, and a night when the border between the living and the dead was said to grow thin. What were we handed? What do we want to leave? It felt like a good day for those two questions.

For people who build something, run something, care about the people around them, or think a lot about where their time goes. Sym, your host, will hand you a few hints about this neighbourhood, but with everyone else's angles mixed in, I would like each of you to take away something of your own.

🕐 15:00 Meet at Higashiyama Ward Office (東山区総合庁舎)
🚶 We walk west along Matsubara Street, with a break partway for tea or something to eat
🏁 17:00 Finish at THE-IF
☕ Coffee on the way is around ¥500, on you
🌧️ We walk in light rain. If it is really coming down I will call it off that morning and post here
👥 6 people max
🎒 Bring a layer, it gets cool once the sun goes down

Members: no seat fee. Non-members: 1,000 yen.