Edibles

Today my diet included ice cream flavoured like toasted brown rice, and a Kit Kat the flavour of ginger ale. They were both very tasty.

Beautiful gravel

My first day in Kyoto has given me the pleasure of seeing two of my now-favourite gardens in Japan: Kinkokujin (the Silver Palace, which is not silver), a former medieval villa-turned-temple, and the 13th-century Nanzen-ji, a temple complex the enormous gate of which is a jaw-dropper in itself (and for a mere 500 yen I was allowed to take my shoes off, carry them in the plastic bag provided, climb up to the viewing deck inside and goggle at the sweeping views of the surrounding mountain, forest and the city beyond).

You know, I never really got beyond an intellectual appreciation of those raked gravel zen gardens, until today. I'm not sure if it's just the high　quality of these gardens, or having been primed for them by being in Japan a couple of weeks now, but I hadn't realized that raked gravel could be so, well, organic.

Anyway, both of these gardens are amazing in that everything is thought out in every possible way. Just look at any random branch, shrub, root, rock, chunk of moss, whatever, and you'll soon realize, oh, it has been selected to simultaneously match and contrast with this or that, and positioned to harmonize with everything else on a micro and macro scale, and every near and distant view is considered. And then you realize that in another season, the effect would be totally different but also just as harmonious. And then you take two steps and look at something else, and have the same experience, but then look back at the first thing from the new angle and realize it was thought about from that angle too. And then two more steps... and two more...

It takes me a long time to get through these gardens. But who's in a rush?

Happy birthday, Nara! (bring fire extinguisher)

Too many candles on this cake I'm afraid, as the city of Nara is about to celebrate its 1300th anniversary of being declared the first capital of a united Japan. Apparently it didn't work out, but nonetheless it's been well preserved and features narrow streets and jumbled olde-worlde-looking houses like a tourist brochure.


And tourists there are, by the tens of thousands, but thanks to jet lag I managed to get up and out very early and saw the famous 15 metre tall 8th century buddha, housed in the largest wooden building in the world, with only two other visitors in the whole place. It was pretty impressive, I have to say. (I passed by later and couldn't begin to count the number of people in the hordes waiting outside, and felt smug).

Tip: If you ever visit Nara, and I highly recommend you do, watch out for the sacred deer roaming the temple complex, they'll chase after you and eat any food you happen to have left somewhere careless, like in your hand.

A shortish hike through the grandly named Kasuga-yama Primeval Forest to the stunning mountaintop view (complete with vending machines), then back down and poking through random shrines and five-storey pagodas before negotiating the labyrinth back to my lovely, medieval-looking inn where I will now open the sliding door to my tiny medieval balcony and rest my tired, tired feet.

Country roads

Well, I wanted to see more of rural Japan so I headed to the bicyle rental shop outside the station at tiny Bizen-Ichinomiya, and headed out on the 15 kilometre Kibi Plain Bicycle Route. It was worth every rotation of the pedals on my undersized, one-speed bike, and went something like this: Quaint road, shrine, canal, rice fields, rice fields, rice fields with a white crane, getting lost, getting redirected by and then having a photo op with a farming couple bundling rice stalks by hand and hanging them to dry, cemetery, temple, rice fields, rice fields, temple complex, rice fields, freeway underpass, getting lost, backtracking, rice fields, quaint hamlet, rice fields, rice fields, horseback riding corral, canal, rice fields with red-headed heron, rice fields with no herons, patch of violets, rice fields, peach orchard, convent with five-storey pagoda, rice fields, town, getting lost, finding the station anyway, then returning my bicycle at a rental shop at Souja train station where they apparently have a reciprocal arrangement with the first cycle shop.

Idyllic bucolicity and pastoralness; a day well spent.

Delightful things

Castles with moon-viewing turrets. Drifting off to sleep on a firm futon to the dry-grass smell of tatami mats. Customer service that borders on codependency. Melon-flavoured candy. Bicycles parked without having been locked up, and with previous shopping left trustingly in the handlebar basket. Overconceptualized gardens. Bowing and smiling. Persimmons.

Welcome to Kurashiki (closed Mondays)

Postponed my plan for a bike ride in the countryside today as they were calling for rain. The weather was clear in the end, but it gave me the chance to see Kurashiki, which is possibly the most photogenic locale I've been to in Japan yet. Strangely, though, almost everything is closed on Mondays -- not just museums, but shops, restaurants, everything. Which turned out to be great, because it was almost deserted and the historic area is so ultra-quaint that I'm sure on a regular day it is chockers with tourists.

Went to a yakitori place for dinner and had one of those comic movie-type incidents where it was hit home for me how limited my Japanese really is, and I had only a vague idea what I was ordering and ended up basically getting a few exquisitely presented canapes for 25 bucks. Still, it was an interesting experience, and yet another place where I was glad to have brought slip-on shoes and lots of new socks (read: without holes in the toes). Man, it seems like a person can't keep their shoes on for five minutes in this country, and don't get me started about all the different slippers to navigate (invariably five sizes smaller than my feet). Anyway, I headed off to 7-Eleven afterwards to pick up a tuna-mayo onigiri for another course.

That was zen, this is now

Well, I've just returned to the "mainland" from a couple of days on Shiraishi-jima, a tiny little farming and fishing island of 800 people, where I and a very pleasant world-touring German couple appeared to be the only non-residents. Our Japanese-style villa was perched on a ridge overlooking a deserted beach littered with cuttlefish bones and urchin shells. On the terraced hillside in between, old ladies in drab-coloured flower-print polyester slacks tended yam fields, and orchards of persimmons, quinces and clementines. The narrowest little paths you've ever seen cut through the plots and function as roads (hard to get a moped down them, forget a car).

The residents are apparently all on the same schedule, as evidenced by pole-mounted loudspeakers distributed throughout the island, which blast a charmless synthesizer version of Big Ben at 6 am, noon, 5 pm and 9 pm. Great weather, fabulous hiking through bamboo forests and camellia thickets up to spectacular rocky outcrops. Overall, a totally bucolic atmosphere that couldn't contrast more with what I had seen thus far in Japan. A much needed and much appreciated rest.

Arrived today in the rain in Okayama, the main city of this rural area, and back to hypercrowded ramen-and-pachinko normalcy.

By the way, Japan, what's up with putting up Christmas displays in the third week of October?