Pop Culture Petri Dish

Wednesday, November 1, Japan time. We rise early to another mild morning. The pavement outside is slick with overnight showers, but for the duration of the day a cloudless sky smiles down on us. We make a brief hike to the lobby of one of the more toney local hotels to meet up with our tour group. Today, we enjoy just being two other gaijin on various whirlwind tours of the local temples and shrines. The buildings we see reveal a scenic and magical window into ancient Japan, and serve as a direct link between the land's past and present. Our first stop, Nijo Castle , served as sanctuary and political fulcrum for the Edo-era Shogunate. The main focus of our visit, Ninomaru Palace, is built from Hinoki Cypress, and its interiors sport elaborate, gorgeously rendered representations of nature. Beneath the tasteful beauty of the building, however, dwell functions and touches that betray the power and treachery that surrounded this Palace in its halcyon days: Entrances to bodyguards'...

This morning is Halloween, October 31, Japan time. Crisp mountain air and hazy skies greet us as we arise. Buddhist mass begins bright and early at Shojoshin-in, and we attend the ceremony along with a small group of fellow gaijin. The chapel/worship room (formal terminology escapes me) contrasts sharply with traditional Western worship halls: The compact space includes ceilings no higher than those in your average room in a typical private home. A single shade of deep flaming red lines the walls, and golden statues--Buddhist iconography, dragons, and other ornate statuary--occupy nearly every foot of floor space. The size and the striking two-toned hue of the room and its contents lend a surreal air to the space as the monks enter. The two youngest of the monks sit opposite one another, chanting in a low, two-layered hum. The third, older but similarly shorn of hair and robed, sits further to the left and adds another layer to the lulling thrum of the prayers being chanted. Then an ol...

October 30, 2008: To Koyasan. In the morning, we're escorted to the proper ticket purchase point in Osaka Station by not one but two helpful Swissotel staff members. After picking up our admissions we head over to the terminal for our train to Koyasan. The Station holds a similar feel to London Station, with its open spaces and daylight filtering in over the metal framework that spider-webs the train gates. A lone, dilapidated pigeon lopes near us. One corner of his beak looks crusted with calcification, and in place of his right foot is an equally-calcified stub. He's charming as hell in his scruffy way, and soon he's lured several scraps of pastry from Rita and I. The train arrives, and we're off to Koyasan. The journey offers the same humble-but-palpable pleasures as the Tokyo-to-Kyoto ride: More birds'-eye views of some of Japan's non-touristy quadrants flit by, but this time the sardine-packed suburbs gradually give way to much more rural and placid areas...

October 29, 2008 : Morning in Tokyo is lovely and clement (probably mid-sixties), but there's little time to enjoy it. Today's trajectory will take us via Japan Rail to Kyoto. Then later tonight we journey to Osaka to stay the night. The following morning, we travel from Osaka to Koya, and to the remote hamlet of Koyasan: The latter will be (we hope) one of the trip's highlights. The train trip from Tokyo to Kyoto takes about two hours. It encapsulates one of the things I love most about traveling--namely, getting a glimpse (however fleeting) of the routine daily life in a foreign country. Beyond the cosmopolitan shimmer of Tokyo, Japanese suburbs zip by. Tight clusters of apartments and factories break up patches of lush green trees and rice paddies: Surprisingly, in such a densely-populated land there are still some wide-open spaces. Our first big salvo of sensory overload hits us not in Tokyo but in Kyoto. Kyoto Station is a massive modern bivouac, honeycombed with multi...

A patch of blue makes a cameo against the horizon, tucked precariously between puffed plumes of gray/white clouds and indigo sky. The ensemble reflects placidly upon Lake Washington's surface, and a crisp autumn wind stirs yellow and orange leaves around the pavement outside the house. It's a textbook-beautiful fall afternoon in Seattle. But I miss Japan. My US store-bought green tea tastes wanly fruity and insubstantial compared to the bitter and earthy Japanese green tea I repeatedly drank during the preceding week-and-a-half. The cold and moist air of the Northwest (literally) pales against the 70-degree cloudless warmth of the Kyoto skyline. And the sleepy suburban neighborhood surroundng me feels positively stale alongside my mind's-eye view of the eerily-tranquil Koyasan graveyards. Any good vacation leaves you feeling good and enriched on some level, but our trek to Japan seeped into me like no other port of call ever has. I could natter away endlessly about the uniq...