Nara

Rising at 7:44 for an 8:16 alarm is just my style. I give my dreams the pleasure of a few more continued moments, though we are both know it to be adieu for now. The water needs boiled, eyes opened, body stretched. ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’ my Zojurushi teapot sings to me when it’s ready. These treasured morning moments always zip by, and today was no exception. At 8:28 I rushed out the door into an unexpected heat of early August likings, adventure bound.

Living in Japan and not simply visiting has been a surprisingly smooth transition, by all accounts. After purging all of my belongings in a firestorm of get-rid-of-ness, I left LA proud of the fact that I only had two bags of belongings in tow. A one way ticket across the Pacific and one month later, I write now with a happy heart from what I can only describe as a slice of my personal heaven – a renovated machiya (google it) with twenty-foot ceilings, wood everything, modern/traditional love affair par excellence. The first few weeks in Japan seem now like a beautiful blur, thanks so much to my dear friend Noriko. Friendship, sweet friendship, has taken on a new dimension since arriving here – two bags and a freckle-faced girl looking for a new home. Details could go on forever, but the point here is that I came a transient lover of a land I wanted but to know better, and now I write feeling settled and calm in a home. My home.

Arriving at Kyoto station, what I once thought was decently composed (me) was now a mess of sweat and frantic fanning. Scan for friends, find friends, find train to Nara + French bakery (yes, anyone accustomed to Japan will know that French-style bakeries are abundant and fucking delicious).

Nara is famous for many reasons, one of which is its wandering deer. No matter how many times I visit, I always find them charming - some simply because they are adorable, others for their clever, hunger-driven intelligence. Plus, it’s amusing to watch foreigners go to the hassle of buying ‘deer cookies’ and yet seem shocked when they have a group of hungry creatures surrounding them (I was nipped once on the tush over an ice cream cone, it is true).

I have come to settle a nice day-trip walking tour of Nara. There are so many incredible sights in the area it would take one years to digest them all, but this ‘all-star’ route works great and is just about as far as one person can comfortably enjoy walking in one day. Kôfukuji is first, Buddhist stronghold of the Fujiwara family and center of Hossô Buddhism. An air of power indeed still exudes from the temple complex, which is undergoing massive reconstruction to bring back to life the central golden hall. It will take many years to complete, but the sounds of building coming from the veiled area transports my mind to centuries past when temple construction would have been a common site.

After cooling off in the Treasure Hall, we continued through the forest on a stone lantern lined path toward Kasuga Shrine, one of Japan’s most important religious sites. We spent an interlude at the Manyô botanical gardens, where hundreds of plants twist and wind in such a magical dance it was easy to lose sight of the path, literally and symbolically. Kasuga is where the gods congregate, and they even have their own houses. God party! Vermilion buildings rising up in a primeval forest is a site to behold.

The grandeur of the Great Eastern Temple (Tôdaiji) rounded the afternoon out. Tôdaiji’s Great Buddha, hall, and gate are of such vast a scale that they were among the largest wooden and bronze structures in the world until relatively recently…and they used to be bigger. Humbled in the presence of concentrated intention and energy…no other words befit the place.

Grilled saba sushi, chû hai, and many smiles and laughs capped off a great train ride home. Goodbye was bittersweet. Alas, they were headed to a huge music festival up north. And I had a few hours of calm before my next dear visitors arrived. We would go to Nara again in the morning. I never said I was sane.