October 10, 2003
Amazing Zen!
Thank you Nanda! After a really crappy morning I followed my dear friend, Nanda's advice, and took the train out to Kamakura. Actually I went to Kiti-Kamakura which is just north of town and walked through several really lovely Zen monestaries into town. Since India I have been craving sacred places that feel sacred to me... I struck out in Thailand, Laos and China. Japan, however, came through twice in one day! I don't think I could do either place justice. Very roughly then, they were both very green "parks" with lovely temples and lots of hidden grave/shrines. The most wonderfull Buddha statue I have ever seen, the scent of burning leaves and fresh oriental lillies, lots of moss and just enough flowers to be delightfull without being gaudy (sp?). Lovely old japanese architecture, amazing inscense, bamboo in the most unlikely and lovely places, very tall old trees creaking away at eachother, dusk... Lovely!!!!
Not sure where to go from there so I'm gonna head back to yesterday. I spent the mornin back in the electronics district, got bored quickly and headed north to a lovely Japanese garden. Had lunch in a neigborhood noodle shop. Finally found the garden, had a great walk (millions of pics to post). Then headed off walking for a chinese garden, but bumped into a Tea/Cake shop and got stuck for 2 hours chatting with the proprietor... Found out that I actually really like Japanese Tea, I just had never had it prepared properly. Not a very full day,
but quite enjoyable none the less.
This morning I did my laundry and managed to wash my passport, Thaiwan visa and Thaiwan airline ticket! I'm sure I'm not the first person to do this, but I still felt like a pill. Then I went to the Sumo center to see if I could get a peek at the guys practicing, but no luck. I checked out the Edo-Tokyo museum which wasn't bad, but wasn't really good eaither.. After a slight false start I headed off for Kamakura with the results described above.
After visiting the monestaries, I walked into town. There was a very small sidewalk and quite a lot of traffic whizzing by, but I was so engrossed in all the little nooks where people plant things and put beautifull objects that I hardly noticed. One really lovely site was a staircase leading up to a house that was framed on both sides with lovely puple flowers and overhung with an apricot tree. The tree was bare except where it hung over the entry (after the fact I realized that this was almost definatley intentional, as it was very striking) there were at least 20 lovely apricots on the trea... The smell was delightfull, they view was diving ;) Another interesting vista along the road was a "tunnel" with "skylights"... Similar effect to a tree lined street where the trees create a complete canopy over the road... letting some light through... I think it was there as a security measure in case the cliff walls on either side of the road crumbled, because there was nothing on top of the tunnel... I'ｍ finding this very hard to describe so I'll stop there... I enjoyed it as a piece of architecture...
The town proper is really very nice, lots of gorgeous stores! I wanted to buy so much stuff, insense, dishes, tea pots, boxes, baskets, shoes, fans, amazing No masks, jewlery... In anycase it was delightfull looking at lots of lovely things that didn't feel at all mass produced!
Before I got to town I had seen several lovely looking restaurants, but wasn't hungry yet so I kept on. By the time I was near the trainstation to leave I was finally feeling hungry, I was delighted to find a really good and cheap Sushi restaurant (half the price of Sushi at home!)
So even though I'm gonna have to goto the airline and replace my ticket before leaving Japan and I'll probably need to get a new passport (it's still usable, just very damaged), I feel like the day was a major success!
Loads of love to you all!
Posted by binduwavell at October 10, 2003 07:06 AM