The existence, the physical universe is basically playful.
存在、この世界は playful だ。
There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn’t going anywhere.
世界に”必要なこと”なんてなにもない。どこにも向かわない。
That is to say, it doesn’t have some destination that it ought to arrive at.
つまり、たどりつかなくてはならない目的地などない。
It is best understood by analogy with music. Because music, as an art form is essentially playful. We say you play the piano. You don’t work the piano.
音楽にたとえると分かる。音楽、芸術としての音楽は本質的に playful だ。”play the piano”とは言うが、”work the piano”とは言わない。
Why? Music differs from, say, travel. When you travel, you’re trying to get somewhere.
なぜか。音楽は travel (移動)とは違う。travel する時、人はどこかを目指している。
And of course we, because being compulsive and purposive culture, are busy getting everywhere faster, faster, and faster, till we eliminate the distance between places.
In music, though, one doesn’t make the end of a composition. If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest. And there would be composers who wrote only finales. They would go to a concert just to hear one crashing chord. Because that’s the end!
ひるがえって音楽ではどうか。人は曲の終わりに向かっているわけではない。もしそうであったなら、速く演奏するのがもっとも素晴らしい指揮者ということになるし、作曲家はフィナーレしかかかない。聴衆は、ひとつの和音を聞くだけのためにコンサートに行く。なぜならそれが end (終わり/目的)だから。
Say when dancing. You don’t aim at a particular spot in the room that’s where you should arrive. The whole point of dancing is to dance.
Now, but we don’t see that as something brought by our education into our everyday conduct.
ところが、教育が私たちの日々の営みにもたらしているものは、このように捉えることができない。
We’ve got a system of schooling which gives a completely different impression. It’s all graded and what we do is, we put the child into the corridor. With a kind of, “Come on, kiddy, kiddy, kiddy” and they all go to kindergarten, and that’s a great thing because when you finish that you get to the first grade.
And then come on first grade leads to second grade and so on and then you get out of grade school you got high school, and it’s revving up, the thing is coming, then you’re going to go to college. And then graduate school, and when you’re through with graduate school, you go out to join the world.
Then you get into some racket where you’re selling insurance. And they’ve got that quota to make, and you’re gonna make that. And all the time that “thing” is coming. It’s coming, it’s coming. That great “thing.” The success you are working for.
Then you wake up one day about 40 years old. You say “My God, I’ve arrived.” And you don’t feel very different from what you’ve always felt. And there’s a slight letdown because you feel there’s a hoax. And there was a hoax! A dreadful hoax.
Look at the people who live to retire. They put those savings away. And then when they’re 65 they don’t have any energy left. They are more or less impotent. And they go rotten in old people, senior citizen’s community.
Because we simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line.
人生の途上、自分たちをずっと騙してきたから。
We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after your death.
Coming to Ogijima Island, in both cases, you come by trains and planes, the last transportation you take is the ferry from Takamatsu port to Ogi port. Here, you can see how to get to the Takamatsu port from Takamatsu JR train station, and from Takamatsu airport, which is also called Takamatsu Sunport.
tl;dr? Here’s the map pointing at the ticket vendor store of the ferry.
From Takamatsu Airport to Takamatsu JR train station
Getting from Takamatsu Airport to Takamatsu JR train station is simple. There’re buses which wait for the airplane passengers of every flight. The timetable of the buses from the airport to JR station is based on the arrival times of the flights, which means you don’t need to wait for a bus and you don’t have much time to stay at the airport (there’s not much to do on that small airport ;)).
Once you get off the plane, it’s one way from the place to baggage claim, and to the ticket vending machine of the bus to the Takamatsu JR station.
A less than ten minutes walk from Takamatsu JR station to Takamatsu port
Once you get to the Takamatsu JR station, you walk to the Takamatsu port which will take you five to ten minutes. It’s a simple way so you don’t miss it but one thing you need to be careful is the timetable of the ferry.
Ferry Meon timetable
From Takamatsu to Ogi port, you take the ferry Meon or Meon 2. Meons are going back and forth between Takamatsu and Ogi. There is another island called Megi Island, or Megijima in Japanese. It’s a 40 minutes journey with a beautiful view of Setouchi inland sea.
The departure times are,
8:00
10:00
12:00
14:00
16:00
18:10
And that’s all.
So, let’s have a look at the way you walk from Takamatsu JR station to Takamatsu port.
Inside Takamatsu JR Train Station. This is the ticket vending machine to buy Train tickets when you go back from Takamatsu.A view from inside the Takamatsu JR Station. It’s basically going straight until you see the port.You go out from the station, and you’ll see this path. There’s a hotel called Hotel Clement, which is the most expensive hotel in the area.This is the vendor that sells the ferry ticket. You’d need to wait for them to open when the Meons just have left. The company behind the Meon and Meon 2 is Shiyuhjima Kaiun.