traditions and typhoons



I’m of the tradition-making mind. I eat at the same Nara restaurant every year (as often as humanly possible in fact) and stay at the same inn. Oh, and I tend to be in Japan during September, reputed as typhoon season.The chef and innkeeper have become like family, and that warmhearted feeling is gold. Another golden day, finished with a feast of epic proportions at dear old Kinasa. Taishô seems to grow younger, his smile wider, every year we meet. I promised to come every week to see him. A belly-full evening stroll through winding alleys, minds meandering to the 700s when these very steps we trod were the power center of a newly born nation. 


Traditions continued as we arrived at Manyôsô, another yearly treat…this old-fashioned Japanese inn where tatami, yukata, tea, bath, breakfast, and the big hearted and thick accented Saitô-san awaited. Sleep.

Rain lullabies, softened to a stop by breakfast time.

Morning
Sweets shop
Figs
Coffee
Old books
strolling the Naramachi arcade

Train riding in Japan. Endless suburbs, veiled ladies on bikes, farmers in rice fields, misty mountains, neon green everything (sometimes even the train seats).  Skies evermore gray, word of an encroaching typhoon named Man’yi.

Afternoon
Comme des garcons
Denim 
Fish, pickles, footsteps
…crowded chaos of Nishiki market, a thousand years deep.

Unapologetic RAIN…

A distant streetlight ushering sheets of water down. Air hanging hot and heavy, a late summer’s blanket.  The sweetness of a momentary breeze. Sky is really saying something to rain so much. An extended discourse that, personal and honest. What is today’s oracle? Thunder crackles back, a friendly thunder that dances about as if pounding mochi.  

The night waged on, the sky raged. Wind and rain drove in armies ever northward. They ripped through my windows, flew through my dreams. Awoken twice to citywide warning texts to stay inside and take higher ground. Never in my life have I felt such a powerful sky. My eyes were ripped from sleep to watch in slow motion as the covering over an adjacent old house was ripped up into the air, a blue tarp sailing in the fierce wind.


 As I look out now to a calm scene, somehow my heart feels purified and at peace. September is for lovers, and typhoons.





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