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I’ve decided to blow all of my vacation time at once, and I’m headed to Japan for a month from late November to late December. I’ll manage to be home for both holidays, but gone for most of the time in between. I’m pretty stoked. It looks like I’ll be able to spend quite a bit of time in Kyoto, including a few days at the Tekishinjuku international Zendo. Through a friend mine, I may also be able to visit the Shokoku-ji Zen Monastery in Kyoto. It sounds like an intense and amazing place.

I’ll also be doing a bunch of usual tourist stuff. I’m hoping to stay at some small Minshukus (which are inns, somewhat like B&Bs are here). I’d like to see something of Japan past the Anime and Hello Kitty which don’t do anything for me. As usual, I don’t really know what to expect, but that’s probably why I travel in the first place. I’ll try to put up a bunch of photos while I’m over there.

I just wanted to drop a quick note that I made it safely. The flight wasn’t as bad as I expected. The 747-400 that I was on had trouble with its Betamax player at first, but we eventually watched some movies. They apparently still make Beta tapes just for the airlines.

We flew over northern Canada and Alaska overnight, but we followed the sun so it was light out all the way to Japan. Can someone tell me if that was the Yukon River that I saw out of the starboard window soon after we crossed the Alaska/Canada border, or if it was Fairbanks that we saw out the port on UA 881 on 11/25?

Today I went to the National Museum, which is closed on Mondays, along with everything else. This is the same reason that I have almost no photos of the inside of anything in Hanoi. I met a couple of Australians, Brian and Prue, who also failed to read their guidebook carefully. We ended up spending most of the day bumming around Tokyo together. They’ve lived in Scotland for five years and are taking the long way home over a few months. More than half the tourists I’ve met have been Australians. I’ve not met any Americans. Prue was looking for gifts for Brian’s nieces, but Brian had other ideas.

We walked around the Senso-ji Shrine which had some traditional and more modern statues.

A Dutch woman, Marrigje, is traveling around the world taking pictures of the interiors of people’s houses. It’s really tough in Japan because people are often uncertain of how to act around foreigners. She wanders around with a medium format camera, a huge tripod and a letter in Japanese introducing her and what she’s trying to do. She speaks no Japanese, and only two or three people each day let her in to their homes. She showed us some scanned images of her photos my first night here. It was very interesting to see the struggle [her word] between traditional furnishings (low tables and mats on the floor) and western style furniture. The rooms are quite small, and seem even smaller when you stick a couch, table, and an entertainment center in them. They also seem to split the difference a bit, for example chairs with backs but no legs, or desks that are six inches shorter than western ones so it seems there would be no comfortable way to sit at them, with or without a chair.

It’s been very overcast and rainy so far, so I haven’t gotten much for photos. Everything has a flat gray background. My friend Luke was here during a typhoon which helped blow away the clouds. I don’t think I’ll have that kind of luck. I’m headed to Kyoto. Today I need to find a train ticket and a place to stay in Kyoto. I’ll also be headed back to the National Museum, and out to the Meiji Shrine.

The vending machines here are great. They have hot drinks as well as cold. Bottles of hot tea are 130 yen (118 yen per USD). The machines are everywhere, but nobody seems to drink anything on the street. I saw one young punk drinking tea on the subway. He must have been some kind of radical. I also saw one Japanese girl eating ice cream while walking down the sidewalk.

I have not figured out what side of the sidewalk to walk on. It’s either chaos or beyond my understanding. There’s less order than I expected. There’s also a lot more English than I expected on signs. There is no garbage anywhere, even between the tracks on the subway. This is the only major city that I’ve ever been in that doesn’t smell like garbage.

There are at least three subway and train companies in Tokyo. Not all of them go everywhere. It’s been a little tough when the station names are only in kanji (Chinese characters), and not in romanji (our Roman characters). One person told me that the Japanese think of romanji as English characters. Young Japanese people have been very helpful in pointing me in the right direction and figuring out my fare. One trick is to buy the cheapest ticket and pay the difference upon exiting.

Pocari Sweat is a good-tasting Gatorade-type of drink. It’s not as sweet as it would be in the states. I got it at the 7/11. Japan seems to do fast food better than we do. 7/11 and “am pm” both have these great rice balls, sushi rice with various flavors, like “pinkish,” “purplish,” and “white with green stringy stuff on top.” Nothing too bad so far.

I spent today with another Australian, Naomi. She just finished Uni, studying GIS, and she’s spending five weeks in Japan and then going to Europe for two months. She’s been studying Japanese on and off since Grade 7, which made today easy. We went to Akihabara, which the tech-gadget capital of Tokyo, and maybe the world.

Interestingly, in the US there is a radio company called Yaesu (Japanese name, must be good) which produced the VX-7R, the best radio ever. In Japan the company is called Standard (English name, must be good). Here it’s the VX-7. In addition to high-tech gadget stores, Akihabara has it’s share of the just plain weird.

Later in the day, we walked down through the Ginza business district and over to the Emperial Palace, which we could only see from the outside. Here’s part of the wall. There are more famous views online.

I got to Kyoto yesterday. I’ll write more tomorrow. It’s been tough to find Internet access. I had a good day walking the Philosopher’s walk, but I’m totally beat. I’ve uploaded some photos, I’ll link to them tomorrow.

Today I hopped on the Nozomi Shinkansen, affectionately called a “bullet train,” and headed to Kyoto. Traveling by train beats the heck out of flying, especially with lots of leg-room, no body-cavity searches at the airport, and really smooth welded rail. It does make me a bit nostalgic for the old days—the clickety clack of the rails, NOT the security check-points. I have not seen a lot of young children in Japan. When I have, they’ve always been with their mothers. This little guy was adorable.

In Kyoto Station I found there’s a great tourist information office. Actually there are a few. The one for foreigners is handily inside a department store on the ninth floor. It took me a while to find it, bt once I did they were great. They were able to find me a room in a Ryokan, which is a “Japanese-style inn.” It was a relief to have a place to stay. I had called three places this morning from Tokyo, and all were full. I ran out of time, and had to catch the train, so I wasn’t sure where I would be sleeping. The hotel that I was originally planning to stay at is booked-up on many days for months in advance.

Upon leaving the airport, I immediately headed south instead of north, and walked for quite a while without recognizing any street names; most are not in romanji. I have a small key-chain compass with me, which is great for self-orientation upon walking out of subway or train stations, but I didn’t check it. I guess I should have. Is it too late to blame this sort of thing on jet-lag? I’m still waking up at five. If I really needed an excuse, I’d blame it on the fact that maps in Japan do not always have north pointing up. North can be anywhere. One perk is that I got a couple of photos of a building under construction. It’s very precise mill-work with great joinery.

I think I’m allergic to Japan. I’ve been getting worse since I got here. This morning I went to a pharmacy and between charades and a phrasebook was able to convey my symptoms. The pharmacist (well, at least he looked like a pharmacist) pulled six different medicines off the shelf and showed them all to me. All of them had five or six active ingredients which seemed a bit much, especially as I have no idea what those ingredients could have been—60mg this, 5mg of that. Who knows?

He recommended something he called “Chinese Medicine.” There was 1075mg of the first active ingredient, and four other active ingredients. I figured that if you need 1075mg of something it can’t kill you. He did a lot of talking in Japanese, and he asked one of the young women to translate into English. She said, “Chinese Medicine.” They looked at each other and then at me. They got a book, and looked it up. The book said—no lie—”Chinese Medicine.”

The medicine was actually an envelope full of beige granules that you take with water. He got me a paper cup of water, and I opened the envelope. Just to make sure I had it right, I motioned like I was going to pour the granules into the water. Nope, the trick is to pour the granules into the mouth, then the water is for “after.” I also bought a few travel packs of “tissues.”

After the pharmacy, I walked over to the “Cafe du Monde” and got a coffee and a muffin. The coffee made me feel better, so I washed it down with a “Mister Donut.” This particular Mister(y) Donut was your basic chocolate specimen with the whole in the middle, except it had more of these beige granules all of it. I thought maybe they’d be peanuts, but they were sugary. They tasted better than the medicine.

For the rest of the day I was still sneezy and runny so I went to the English-speaking tourist info office in the ninth floor of that department store in the train station. These are wonderful people. With some work they managed to translate “antihistamine” and “decongestant,” at least i think so. They wrote me a note, which I brought to a “Drug Store.” The young woman behind counter, who didn’t look at all like a pharmacist, gave me a box with a picture of a red, drippy nose. It had some active ingredients that didn’t require 1075 mg to be effective. She said something about “two capsules… morning and…” “Evening?” “Hi.” So is it two in the morning and two in the evening, or one each? Who cares. I’m going to take them until I feel better. There’s only 60 mg of whatever it is in each “capsule.” I figure that whatever it is, 120 mg can’t kill me.

Two hours after taking one capsule, I’m feeling a lot better. Forget the old pharmacist-looking guy with his “Chinese Medicine,” I’m taking the young Japanese woman… the drugs. I’m taking the drugs, with the picture of the runny nose on the box.

Tomorrow I’m headed out to Himeji castle and then to Hiroshima. Thanks to those great people at itcj.co.jp, I’ve even got rooms booked ahead for the next three nights. I took a couple hundred photos yesterday at some of the temples in Kyoto. The leaves are changing and this is a beautiful place. I’ll put some pics together over the next couple of days and post them.

Earlier today a monk came to the guest house and chanted for an hour or so in a back room. At some point there was the sound of someone strangling a monkey, not that I know what that sounds like—I’m speculating. And, I’m hoping it was just a coincidence. Just in case, I’m eating at the Yoshinoya tonight. I think maybe they have a parrot or something, a parrot with a sordid past.

I’ve made it to the city of Matsuyama on the northwest coast of Shikoku Island. I have a few photos ready to go up, but have a lousy Internet connection. Half the city is probably using it. I spent the last couple of days in and around Hiroshima. I’ll be on Shikoku for the next three days before returning to Kyoto on the 7th.

November 30th was my first full day in Kyoto. I went to three temples on what is called the Philospher’s Walk, after Nishida Kitaro of Kyoto University who used to walk this route regularly. Luckily for me, it was a perfect time of year to be in Kyoto for the changing leaves. Like the cherry blossoms in the spring, getting out to see the fall colors is hugely popluar with Japanese people. There were thousands of tourists and more than 19 out of every 20 were Japanese. The gardens at Nanzen-ji temple were terriffic. The Japanese Maple Trees were in full color.

Eikan-do Temple is especially popular for it’s landscape gardens this time of year. At the end of the walk is the Ginkaku-ji temple which may have been my favorite. Many people were taking close-up shots of the leaves, but I thought the view from the hill-side was great as well. Here was a little ravine where the leaves were falling with the breeze. I had a lot of trouble making these photos look real without unnaturally subduing the colors. They still need some work.

On December 2nd, after a couple of days in Kyoto, I headed out on a train to Himeiji Castle on the way to Hiroshima. I only had two hours at Himeiji, but I was able to walk through the castle and had enough time to get my fill. The interior of the tower was genereally quite dark, but the third floor pictured here was more open and well lit. Some of the staircases were very steep, and a bit slick for my socks. Visitors need to talk off their shoes before going inside. They offer plasitc shopping bags to carry them through the castle, and slippers to wear while inside. Generally speaking, these slippers aren’t big enough for western male feel, and on these staircases, I think would have died trying to wear them.

Later that day, I arrived in Hiroshima and while wandering around looking for food stumbled upon some rather interesting light sculptures. There were quite a few people out with their kids. It’s always fun to try to take pictures at night. Here’s a castle, a tree, a bear, and some unrecognized critter.

As I got off the train the day before in Hiroshima and headed towards the “You Are Here.” map on a wall in the station, I met Ceci from San Francisco. We caught up yesterday after some considerable confusion with the tram and train systems, and with the port of departure for the ferry. We headed out to Miyajima island to see the famous torii gate that occupies a small bay there. Of course, it’s best if you’re there when the tide is in, but we didn’t make it, so here’s a not-so-picture-postcard photo of the O-Torii. Miyajima also has a five-story pagoda and a shrine that sits on pillars in the water.

The photo below is from a sign on the trail up Mt. Misen on Miyajima. I used my sinus infection as an excuse not to take the four-hour hike up to the top and back. Ceci didn’t complain. Neither of us could figure out exactly what the sign meant. Big words are generally easier to translate than small words like “by,” “at,” and “for,” and Japanese doesn’t have any equivalent for many of our small words, like the definite and indefinite articles “the,” and “a.” This type of thing exists everywhere in Japan. Very often it is meant for Japanese audiences, but it makes for interesting reading for us as well.

After getting back to Hiroshima, we went to a building that houses twenty or thirty very small restaurants, almost like booths at a flea-market. All of which specialize in one thing: okonomiyaki, Hiroshima-style. Sometimes thought of as a type of cabbage pancake, at least in Hiroshima they’re a thin but normal pancake with heaps of stuff on top. I think mine had cabbage, sprouts, bacon, shrimp, squid, fried noodles, an egg, some oyster sauce and green onions, plus probably some other things I missed as the chef was constructing it in front of us. I think of it as the Japanese version of a Nick Tahou’s Garbage Plate, and think it would be a big hit with the 2 AM crowd in America. I almost ordered a second one, but I didn’t know if I could finish it. Once again a situation where solo travelers have friends for one day at a time, I had fun with Ceci and I hope she has a great trip.

This morning I packed up and went to the Hiroshima Peace Park on the way to the ferry terminal. It’s a strange thing to be in a city that, to Americans at least, is completely identified with its former destruction by the first the atomic bomb. In contrast with that image, this is a large, modern, thriving city. If not for the ruins of one remaining building, some memorials, some foreign tourists, and classes of Japanese schoolchildren on field trips, there would be no sign that anything so significant had ever happened here. This is the first place I’ve been where the foreign tourists outnumbered the Japanese tourists. Everywhere else we we’ve been outnumbered by no less than ten to one. In Japan, the crane symbolizes long life.

I just wanted to put up a quick note that I’ve made it back to Kyoto. I’ve got some more photos to put up soon.

The ferry ride to Shikoku Island from Hiroshima was uneventful. There was almost nobody else on the ferry. I arrived in the late afternoon and got a couple photos as the sun was getting lower in the sky. It gets dark here very early, a little after 5pm.

I arrived in Matsuyama port with no map, no place to stay, practically no information, and no idea where the ferry port was in relation to anything else. A woman at the information booth was very helpful, though she spoke no English. She asked around, but nobody else spoke English either. The good news was that she had some tourist information maps in English. The bad news was that they were actually in German. I showed her the umlaut, and told her with the help of the phrasebook that that was Doitsu (German). She seemed pretty surprised, but glad to be able to tell the difference, and then she found an English map. She pointed me in the direction of the bus destined for the main train station where someone might speak Enlgish and help me find a place to stay.

It worked out fine, and the next day I found a great hostel. It was great just to sit and relax. They served dinner and breakfast, which has been about the only time in Japan that I haven’t been at least a little hungry.

On my second day in Matsuyama I took a train down the west coast of Shikoku to Uwajima, which has a very interesting Shinto fertility shrine and an associated museum. Along the way, I shot some photos of the countryside. The population density here is still very high, and every piece of flat land is in use. People here don’t have lawns, they have vegetable gardens, or grow rice. There are also a lot of greenhouses. I’d guess that they grow vegetables in them, but I don’t know. This region also of Japan has a lot of small orange trees, which grow very small oranges. They are the only things that I’ve seen growing on the sides of the mountains, which are normally just left as woods.

The people here have been amazingly helpful. Last night a few of us went to a restaurant and asked if it was the one we were looking for. It wasn’t, but the woman walked us down the street and around the corner and pointed it out to us. This kind of thing happens often. At the same time, it is very difficult to get around when you can’t even read the names of places on many of the maps.

I’ve been in Kyoto for a couple of days again. I feel like this is a great place to be. Part of it is that I’ve been staying at a good place. I haven’t been a very good tourist over the past few days. Saturday afternoon I met with Steffen from Germany who is studying at Kyoto University and at the Shokoku-ji Zen Monastery. He showed me around a bit and we went out for dinner with some of his friends. He’s lived here for quite a while, so he knew of a great little restaurant, and we all ate like we were going to the electric chair.

The next morning I met Steffen at Shokoku-ji, and was able to practice zazen in the main hall for an hour and a half, then attended a talk with the Roshi. Fortunately for me, he talked about posture and stretches and breathing, so I was able to follow along a bit even though I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I have no idea how old he is, but he’s not a young man and he did a stretch that none of us could believe. It was a friendlier environment than I expected, but at the same time clearly a very serious place.

Other than that, I’ve been a bit of a slacker the last couple of days. Somebody found a great restaurant/bar that we’ve spent a couple of evenings at. Fortunately for me, I was out with Steffen and his friends the night things got a little out of control at the other place. If I thought that Shokoku-ji was going to be a serious place, I never would have guessed how serious they are about the Kyoto subway.

Over the last few days, I’ve been staying at a hostel in Kyoto called K’s House. It might be the best one that I’ve ever stayed at. It’s nearly brand new, has clean, comfortable rooms, great facilities, a good kitchen, and really terrific common areas. It’s big enough that there are always people to hang around with, but it never felt crowded. It’s as if somebody built it on purpose. I’ve also heard great things about another hostel in Kyoto called J-hoppers. Looking back on the trips that I’ve taken, nothing has affected how good a time I’ve had nearly as much as finding the right place to stay. I’ll be back there this weekend.

In terms of touring the sights, I haven’t been exactly an over-achiever. This is a big city and it takes a while to get around. A combination of the short winter days, some of which have been rainy, not exactly getting up at the crack of dawn, and some mid-trip laziness have contributed to not getting very far through my checklist of sites. At the same time, I’ve met some great people over the past few days and have been having fun.

A few days ago I went down to the Fushimi Shinto shrine. It’s known for have hundreds of Torii gates lined up over top of a foot path up and down the mountain. It’s a pretty incredible place. The gates are each donated by companies and wealthy people. Over time they rot away if not kept up by, I’m assuming, further donations.

Here’s a photo of a tree at the Toji shrine. It’s interesting how they prune these trees to have long, sweeping branches, which can’t support their own weight. They support them with poles. On the surface it would seem to defeat the effect, but it lends it’s own effect.

Steffen and Bret, please correct me if I’ve misunderstood this, but from talking with Steffen, there is no word in Japanese for “nature,” at least not as we use it in the West. There’s no word for “nature” that is the opposite of “culture” or “man-made.” I also have some photos of the gardens at Shokoku-ji. Here’s one of a stone Torii gate. One of the peculiar things ar Japan in general, and Kyoto especially is the combination and adaptation of influences from multiple sources. Shokoku-ji is a Zen Buddhist Monastery, and Torii gates are from the Shinto tradition. It’s not unusual to find Torii gates marking the entrance to a Buddhist location. I’ve read that prior to the introduction of Buddhism to Japan, there was no word for Shinto. It just was.

On my last full day in Kyoto (so far), I headed out to the Arashiyama area of western Kyoto with a German friend named Moritz. We discovered Soba noodles, which are like spaghetti made from buckwheat. They’re terrific and plentiful, served in a broth with mushrooms and green onions. Along with don-buri (rice with a raw egg), they’re becoming my staple here. On the ceiling of the teaching hall at Tenryu-ju temple, there’s huge painting of a dragon which really seems to be looking straight at you regardless of where you stand. I was not allowed to take a photo of it, but here’s a photo of the flyer.

After it got dark out, we walked through a nearby section of bamboo forest that they’ve illuminated with spotlights, the effect was interesting, though not as amazing as the billboards would have you believe. I took a few dozen shots with a digital SLR camera and an image stabilizing lens. This one is as close as I got to a good shot. More interesting was the river of Japanese tourists flowing up and down the narrow streets, snapping photos with their cell phones. So far, I think that Arashiyama is my favorite area of Kyoto; there’s a little more elbow room and great food.

In addition to being a reasonably upstanding tourist, I have been known to fall in with a crowd of international misfits and ne’er-do-wells usually referred by their vulgar name, “backpackers.” While sometimes thought of as an Australian phenomenon, they do in fact originate from points around the globe, including the US of A. In fact, I’ve met two other Americans in less than three weeks here in Japan. When trying to locate some backpackers, note that they tend to congregate in major cities where there is beer. The “A Bar” in Kyoto is a classic ex-pat sort of bar/restaurant, with a warm, friendly, laid-back atmosphere, Guinness, sake, and good, inexpensive food. If it had Beer Lao, I expect that some among us might never go home. They must have contacted the Lonely Planet to announce their existence, because they’re tucked away at the end of a long hallway on the second floor of a building on a very narrow side-street in Gion, and there’s no sign. Fortunately for us, the Irish among us sniffed them out.

Even though there’s hardly room to park, I expect that many Japanese people are no different from any other gear-heads in their love for the automobile. Here are a couple of home-grown, but clearly respectable examples. I don’t believe this should be referred to as simply a motorcycle. And this, even though it appears to have been manufactured by Mitsubishi, and has some very unorthodox, and not quite flat, “flat-fenders,” appears to be a post-war, occupation-era, Japanese CJ-3A Jeep, not that I would have thought such a thing existed.

Regardless of the ex-pat bars, the choppers, or the Mitsubishi flat-fender, I must constantly remind myself that I’m a guest in a foreign country. Even though people here are incredibly kind and helpful, not only when one hypothetically leaves his large backpack full of clothing and such on a train bound for some distant destination [the small one with the important stuff being of course glued to him], but also in normal every-day circumstances and confusion, it pays to be on the lookout and follow local protocols wherever possible. Because, as this sign so clearly states, if you run in the subway, they cut of your arms.

Today I took the train from Kyoto (the capital for a thousand years up until about 1868), to Nara, which was the capital for a while before that. I’ll be checking out some very old temples here tomorrow and then heading to Koyasan the next morning to stay at Shingon Buddhist temples there for two nights. It sounds like they have very traditional lodgings and food, and it’s a beautiful place to wander around. I’ll be returning to Kyoto this weekend before finally going to the Tekishinjuku International Zendo for four days next week. After that I’ll have one day in Tokyo before flying home for Christmas. I’ve heard from a few of you, and I hope everyone is doing well.

Over the past few days I’ve been to Nara and Koyasan and back to Kyoto. I’m leaving Kyoto today to go to the Zendo that I’ve mentioned before. There have been a couple of delays in getting there, but I’m looking forward to it. It looks like somebody is going to owe me ten bucks.

Nara was the capital of Japan before Kyoto, about 1200 years ago. It’s still surprising that when I head out to a smaller city in Japan, it’s still pretty big, and there’s not much level open space between one city and the next. The Daibutsu is the largest Bronze Buddha in the world. It is housed in what is reported to be the largest wooden building in the world. The original one which burnt down hundreds of years ago was fifty percent larger. To give an idea of how big that statue is, this guy was only a small fraction of the size. Nearby is Nigatsu-do, which has a great view, that is when the weather is clear. I didn’t know this earlier in the trip, but in many shrines and temples there are calligraphers that will write the name of the temple in a nice notebook for visitors to take home. I asked him to write the lyrics to Free Bird, but he didn’t seem to understand.

The next day I headed up via train, funicular, and bus to Koyasan (Mt. Koya). It’s a sacred place, and has a huge cemetery with over 200,000 markers, going back over a thousand years. The train ride there headed up the mountain, and I finally saw what I could consider small towns. I stayed over night in a Shingon Buddhist temple. There are about 120 temples in Koyasan, and half of them provide lodging and meals. It was high class, and a nice time. I spent the next day walking around with a couple from Oregon. The biggest draw in Koyasan is the cemetery and the temple it houses. Some of the statues in the cemetery were really interesting, especially as they were being slowly reclaimed by the mountain. At the original entrance to the area is a huge wooden gate, with two big scary dudes standing guard. The light was horrible for this one, but he’s pretty amazing. The museum in Koyasan was great as well, but I couldn’t take photos.

I’ve been bumming around in Kyoto for the past couple of days, and I’m leaving for the Zendo as soon as I finish writing this. I have a fair amount of trepidation about the next few days, but it kind of goes away when I realize that I’ve decided to do this regardless. It’s been a little tougher to be excited about it, because my feet and legs have been sore since I arrived in Japan. I think I might have strained something in my right foot. Each step I’ve taken in this country has been an opportunity for personal growth and renewed commitment. Seiza is torture. Where’s the UN when you need them?

I’m back in Tokyo after three days at the Tekishinjuku International Zendo. I stayed in their guesthouse a little way down the road, and lived a short three-day stint as a monk would. I had a little bit of trouble finding my way back to the guesthouse from the temple in pitch blackness the first night. I wasn’t sure I was in the right place, and as I was stumbling around in the dark looking for the door, I kept expecting some old Japanese man to come out and ask me what I was doing trying to break into his house. I had no plan for that situation except to say “Kon-ee-chee-wa, Ari-ga-to, Sa-yo-na-ra.” and run off into the darkness. Here’s what the garden look like during the day.

I didn’t realize before I arrived that this week was Sesshin, which is one of the periods of more intense training each year. It ended up being around six or seven hours per day in either half-lotus or seiza. My legs were already pretty sore from walking and sitting on floors so much over the previous three weeks and I got very close to throwing in the towel during the second afternoon. I’ll never know exactly how close, but I wouldn’t have thought that it possible to get that close to quitting something for that long without actually quitting.

The zendo is associated with another nearby temple, and both are directed by Hozumi Gensho Roshi, the 83rd Patriarch of the Myoshinji lineage of Rinzai Zen. He entered Tokoji temple in Kyoto when he was eight.

There were only two others there when I arrived. Bjorn is from Germany and has been at the zendo for two years. Gema is from Siberia and has been there for nearly ten years. There were a number of other long term practitioners who left this past summer, but most people go only for a few days. The sesshin ended while I was there, so the third day was quite a bit easier. Things got even better when the bakery van arrived.

It was especially cold in the mornings. Gema joked that since it was only one degree Celsius in the kitchen, we should put our hands in the refrigerator to warm them up. The good news was that it was no colder outside. Because of the Sesshin, there was no heat except for a space heater in one room for an hour in the evenings. That was a luxury from Roshi because he thought I must be freezing. I told the guys it was okay if they didn’t want the heat, but if they wanted it they could blame it on me. They blamed it on me.

At least I had some idea of what I was getting into. The monks said that people often show up having some real misconceptions about Zen practice. My first “What the hell am I doing?” moments were during the first dinner. It seems that there’s a correct way to everything, and one needs to do it quickly and silently. Of course, this being Japan, they give little instruction ahead of time. One is supposed to look around and figure out what one is supposed to do; if not, one is corrected. I was corrected dozens of times during my first dinner. Gema said that a number of people have actually stood up, said they “can’t do this,” and left during their first meal. More run away during the meditation. The leg pain was pretty tough that second afternoon.

Each afternoon I had some time to wander around and take photos. There were a lot of persimmons still on the trees even in December. I thought they were much more interesting rotten than intact.

Gema and Bjorn were really terrific. It’s kind of like knowing that your drill instructor is one of the most compassionate people that you’ll ever meet, but that the training program, though entirely self-inflicted and always optional, sometimes borders on brutal. I’m very glad that I went, but I’d be lying if I denied that part of me is glad to be sitting in a warm room, digesting some Tokyo-style okonomiyaki, and dealing with only minor leg pain.

I’ve made it home. Things were a bit confusing in Dulles. A number of people got bumped off my flight to Buffalo. There was too much luggage, so the plane was going to be over-weight. The policy is that they’ll take the luggage, and leave the people stranded in the airport. I almost volunteered to stay back, but it didn’t look like there was much of a chance that I’d get to Buffalo before Christmas, as all the other flights were over-booked as well.

This trip was a good one; Japan is an intriguing and beautiful place. Over thousands of years they’ve developed a way of life that allows millions of people to live in close quarters without much strife. The Japanese people I interacted with were very kind and extremely helpful. They all seemed excited that I was American, which is a bit unusual in my experience. Many people seemed very interested to talk to me, and asked me a lot of questions. It’s amazing how people there truly do their best to help, and hold themselves to such high standards of civility. After four weeks in Japan, I don’t know the word for “no.”

I leave there feeling grateful to the people at home who helped make this trip possible, and the people in Japan who helped me and shared a part of their lives with me along the way. It is a rude awakening to travel around for a month in a place where you can’t read most street signs. Without the kindness of strangers I would have been lost.