"Kyoto, you see, the whole town is like one giant university."

These were words I overheard while drinking beer at Chikyuya, an izakaya in Shijo Kawaramachi. Even though it had just drifted over from the next table, it made a strange amount of sense to me, and even now, I still look back on it and agree. It is often said that Kyoto is a student town, but when you actually live here, it genuinely feels as if the city itself is a single university.

For instance, when students from different music clubs are talking, the conversation naturally flows into something like, "Oh, so if you’re in that university's music club, then you must know senior so-and-so..." The networks of friends and acquaintances are understood in units of school years or clubs, and that map expands with the mental imagery of a "Doshisha Faculty" or a "Ritsumeikan Faculty." When talking about older seniors who graduated long ago, convenient fictional school years like "a 10th-year student" are used.

Even after graduation, you encounter the kind of meetings that feel just like making friends with students from other universities. At the company where I got a job, my own department included a classmate of an acquaintance, as well as a friend's partner. Since both of them knew I was playing in a band, they would flexibly adjust things so I could take days off. Even though I was a corporate employee, I felt like a student asking classmates to answer a roll call for me.

Chikyuya, the izakaya where I overheard that theory about Kyoto being a giant university, is a place where I often go drinking with those very friends. Plastered on the walls with thumbtacks are flyers for theater troupes and bands, alongside someone's expired student commuter pass. A few flyers from my own band still remain there. Even now, when I go to Chikyuya with friends, we drink large bottles of Yebisu while looking back nostalgically at our band's name on those flyers. Naturally, at the next table, current or former students are still rambling and complaining over their drinks. It is a shop that functions like the clubroom of the city of Kyoto.