Matt, Here!

Matt arrived and it was a new beginning.

We went to tea at Yabe Sensei's. A kind of fantastic experience for the first night I think. The wagashi- Yomogi blossoms half open with yellow strands inside. Like kiiro no hana by the river (mustard fields) where I eat a different kind of anpan (bread with sweet bean inside) each morning or so. Big sweet beans insde. Matt was struck by the tea, made me real happy.
Matt (my brother)'s coming was exactly what I needed. It is easy to get wrapped up in your own head here. With social rules and distances, real family is a like a kick in the pants, which is exactly what I needed.

Fushimi Inari once again, what is space? What can money buy? what is time? Thousand of gates, they make a tunnel, like walking through the frames of experience that come together to make animation- the gates animate the world, as you enter sacred space and leave sacred space.
Dappled evening light, orange gates, stone steps. A bright white cat gazes out on kyoto right there before us. Its like the fox. You have to be kind continuously to a cat, and a fox even more, they are elusive beings. Like shinto. Like business. Gotta keep feeding it and loving it, or it might as well just wander off down the street. O kamisama.

Sumiya, the best preserved Edo period pleasure house. Warm sunlight, tea cottages. Miniature landscapes. I suppose that the journey from the group room to the tea house, futari de, (in a couple) would take just as long as a journey from the city to the mountains, hence the miniature garden takes on real space proportions. Click click of something blown against the shoji.

A screen of sakura ki (cherry trees) with just a few blossoms, or maybe the last, now perhaps, then.

The first sakura blossoms
a few flakes of snow
arashiyama

Kiyomizu dera at night, me and Matt follow paths and crowds through the old streets of gion lit by lanterns. Then up to the temple all lit up in anticipation of the blossoms to come.

Katsukura is prolly my favorite restaurant. Me and matt ate a lot of cabbage and rice and miso there, oh it was nice.

The kinkakuji (golden temple) is a vision of paradise. But to me it was simply a redereing of an alpine environment. But maybe the Wallowas in Oregon or the Sierras in California are actually a kind of paradise on earth.

Off to Matsumoto in Nagano once again. Glimpes of Nagoya, missing the bullet train. The trains on the way- through mountains, craggy pines, peaks, forests waiting to saku (bloom). Emerald rivers slip between giant white boulders. The kindness of Taka's family once again is wonderful. Wasabi fields, the castle, and lots of talking with the family. I already want to go back.
To Takayama through the Japan Alps. Pines with clumps of snow, translucent swaths of maple, white mountains, elegant and majestic. We stay at the youth hostel in a monastery.
Bought a demon mask, luckily it is a kind demon so I dont die of the stomach virus that I contract eating raw egg the next morning.
We go off to Nagoya and my fever goes up, but I dont worry about it.
Meet Yosef. This was a fantastic experience. I am looking forward to meeting him again, as soon as possible. I learned more about shape changing and a lot more about what it is like to a morman missionary in this country. Although I imagine it is different for everyone. We talked in Toyota city where there is a clown, a lone singer practicing his karaoke, and a man with angel wings trying to explain a phrase as a ticket to heaven. What a place.
Meanwhile I was quite sick, and matt was pretty culture shocked and sick too.
We travel back to Osaka to meet Nick, we wander about the station in Nagoya, Matt in a rather amuzing culture shocked state at this point. Me, just darn stomach virused.

Meet Nick and we all take in the homestay. The next day we get a nice tour of the healthcare system as I try to negotiate my insurance, thanks to the nice nurse I do get some medicine. Then off to Kobe to meet Chika, Greg, and Risa. Kobe and then Karaoke. I am quite feeble at this point the medicine kicks in and we all have a lot of fun.
The next day Electric Town and Namba in Osaka then we all ate at the homestay family and everyone loved the adorable kids.
The next day we all went to Mizuki (homestay sister)'s preschool graduation. Which was a very moving experience. With a backdrop of the cherry blossoms, the children are not so much finishing preschool as they are beginning their school experience.

Matt leaves, and my perspective could not be more different. I feel a foot taller actually, surrounded by a beautiful world, I stop a bakery in the train station and sketch for at least an hour the people. Its fantastic.

One songbird fills
this little corner
of Nagaomura (the village by the homestay) with
its music.

nagaomura
semaimichini
itorinokoe
utaukoto
ipai

chyotto e o kaita
e no yo o omota
ii o tenki ya na-
kimochi ga ii na-