#kailer’s grandpa had a meticulous garden and i just think that’s neat
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56 and any Yamo pairing! 🫶
i just wheezed so hard when i saw what the song was i almost snorted coffee out of my nose i am so sorry for this one
#56 - kyoto phoebe bridgers + yamo
the story of how this song ended up on my wrapped is too long so it’s going in the tags but. let me set the scene for you.
2026 NHL GLOBAL SERIES™️ JAPAN - Presented by YPPI
November 13 & 14, 2026: Dallas Stars, Montreal Canadiens, Seattle Kraken, Vancouver Canucks
Saitama Super Arena, Saitama, Japan
It’s a pitiful excuse of a consolation prize for not being able to go to the Olympics, but Kailer’s not going to look a vacation horse in the mouth. The arena’s cool. It’s huge. The people are cool. There’s so many more of them than he thought there’d be with jerseys that have his name on the back, and a lot more that have the familiar orange and blue. He takes a picture of the fifth Oilers Yamamoto jersey he signs—this one’s the good Reverse Retro—and texts it to Connor, says,
no one here has even heard of mcjesus
and gets a moon face emoji in response. Leon’s influence. Kailer’s still never really deciphered what that one means, and he doesn’t think Connor knows either.
They don’t have a lot of time off between games, but Kailer’s trying to be a good tourist. His dad had been so happy when Kailer had told him about the series that Kailer’d had to stop him from trying to book a flight a year in advance, and his mom’s been just as bad, sending him every article she sees about Best New Spot in Tokyo! Cool Restaurant! Have You Seen This Japanese Cat Café? that she scrolls across on Facebook since June. Suzy’s in the same boat, so they’ve been crossing off their compiled travel-guide list together, looping in as many guys as they can. Everyone’s been pretty game. All the teams are crammed into close quarters at the same hotel, which means everyone wants to spend as much time as possible outside of it, and it helps that Kailer’s gotten pretty close with all the other guys that the NHL picked up as Global Series figureheads. Robo’s memes? Absolutely fire. The groupchat loves them.
For every item he crosses off the list, Kailer takes a picture and keeps it tucked in his phone notes. It’s like speed-running a scavenger hunt—they’re only here for four days—but he’s doing a pretty good job. His favorite so far has been all the gardens. They’re stunning, trees shining bright red and yellow, and every vendor has been selling maple candies, maple cakes, and even fried maple, though the official maple festival doesn’t start until next week. The second garden he visits, he does it on his own after practice, buying two cakes from a cart near the gate and walking until he loses the bustle outside. It’s easy to get lost in the winding pathways, heading deeper into the quiet, and there’s dozens of benches underneath the burnished leaves where young couples are tucked away on dates, or old friends are laughing and catching up. In some of the little clearings, there’s small shrines where people leave offerings, a prayer for good luck or good fortune.
Kailer stops at one without any people and sets the second maple cake on top of it, then sits and scrolls through all the texts that he’s missed. His mom gets replied to with a picture of him outside the garden gate, grinning and surrounded by other travelers. He sends his brother a picture of a trashy graphic I Love Japan t-shirt with the threat that he’ll buy one for him, and Kailer’s dad gets a picture of the meticulously arranged and cut bonsai that are across from the bench where he’s sitting. The Seattle groupchat gets a recycled meme from Robo, and he gets two thumbs up and an “LMAO” before he can even exit the thread. Finally, Kailer takes a picture of the half-eaten maple cake in his hand, holding it next to a fallen maple leaf on the bench, and gets halfway through typing another message before he thinks better of it.
(On the plane over, Drieds was reading them a story about how when they first introduced the high-speed railway, people were afraid to use it because they thought it would be too fast for their souls to keep up.
“Bro, if that were true, you just left your soul in the middle of the Pacific,” Ebs had laughed. “Planes are faster than trains.”
“Are they?” Matty asked. “Isn’t the train in Japan the fastest in the world?”
Drieds couldn’t make it through the rest of the story over the sound of everyone ripping Matty to shreds, so Kailer didn’t get to ask whether or not they found out anything about planes. Kailer’s not worried about his soul, but the logic makes a strange kind of sense; after all, he traveled 429 miles in five and a half hours once, and that was a little too fast for his heart to keep up.)
Fuck it. Kailer’s been trying to write a response for the past ten days, and he’s sick of swiping in and out of the message, staring at the keyboard so long he starts to see swirls in his vision.
Kailer drafts the text again and sends it, no context, no caption. A text travels faster than a high-speed train or a jet. Maybe it’ll pick his heart back up on the way.
#I don’t know how this song ended up on my Spotify wrapped because phoebe bridgers is too emotionally damaging for me to listen to like.#at all unless i am In It HOWEVER. there is this one silly video that brings me so much joy and made me feel semi-reasonable about listening#to kyoto & it’s the one video of the two painter guys painting the room & the lil guy is being a menace & the other guy just looks at him s#fondly & so lovingly & is that not the thesis of kailer yamamoto. be small be a menace be beloved by everyone. ANYWAY#liv in the replies#look this was going to be such a different thing and then. my brain went HEY BUDDY GUESS THE FUCK WHAT kyoto is a city in Japan.#day off in kyoto. guess who’s Japanese. guess what the nhl loves to do as HIFE publicity. also growing the AAPI audience is HUGE and i thin#they should. like originally i had NO idea what this was going to be (i’m so lying. the line ‘i’m gonna kill you’ but incredibly fond a la#the two painters video kept replaying in my head and i was like l m a o. klimmer & kailer. no plot all vibes it’s klimmer & Kailer that’s i#there is no real plot there is no actual idea the amount of googling that i did to write just this is UNREASONABLE i would love to be norma#about anything ever but i ALSO invented so much backstory to this that has no way of appearing in the actual fic and also jokes for ME#for instance. YPPI is the american manufacturer for yamaha motorcycles and. suzuki. yamamoto. (it’s not my brainworms it’s due to a fancam)#respectfully also i cannot write this fic. i have never been to japan and i think it would take me eight years to google enough#to be relatively comfortable like y’all have never seen the extensive research i put in to fucking phiLLY and a whole other COUNTRY???#where the premise of the fic is learning how to be a tourist in your life and sometimes you have to grow out of things?#yeah i AM going to make something with the idea of Momijigari and life is ephemeral. is that a plot? no it’s vibes.#kailer goes to japan in the fall and realizes he’s a liar. who lies. (he misses [redacted]) (the redacted is because i haven’t decided)#also also. the garden reference is because a) i spent WAY TOO MUCH TIME ON GOOGLE and found out things to do in saitama and also that#kailer’s grandpa had a meticulous garden and i just think that’s neat#hiding-from-reality-56#random ficlet is unbeta’d un-anything’d i don’t know WHERE this came from or the real plot of it at all. ok thanks byeeeee
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