Day in the Life of an Idiot

 
Image: A torii gate surrounded by cherry blossoms (near the Ayato-kunaka-jinja Shrine, Minami Ward, Kyoto.)

I will probably tire of these some day, but, right now, I'm still finding a lot to enjoy. 

First up this week, the demon tour guide, Makoon, took us to a World Heritage site, Tenryū Shiseizen-ji  at sunrise. This was a very special tour, because the monks at the temple allowed Makoon in hours before the gates officially opened, so it was just us (really just Makoon and his livestreaming gear.) 

I've talked about this guide before, because he has distractingly long fingernails. In an anime, this would totally be a clue to the big reveal that he is secretly a demon or part-demon (or a demon working a part time job!!)  I spent a weird amount of the time trying to get a good shot of this man's amazingly demonic fingernails and I do think I managed to get a decent one.


Image: Not the best, but you can see a bit of the sharpness on the nails on the bottom left hand side.

His hands are lovely? He's a great guide? It's just that the fic writer in me really would love a universe where, you know, this nice young man is living an alternate life as a demon. Is that too much to ask?? I mean, it does add a certain something to the tour to imagine that at any minute a Hell Gate could open and Makoon would be forced to transform into his True Self in order to protect the universe from the denizens of hell, aka his colleagues. Meanwhile, he's just living his best life pretending to be human. 

I would read the f*ck out of this manga, honestly.

Anyway, back to what REALLY happened on the tour, which was that we walked around a very serene garden of the temple, which is located in Susukinobaba-chō, Ukyō Ward, Kyoto, Japan. 


Image: a classic scene of a stone lantern perched on a moss hill, framed in light pink cherry blossoms.



Image: The tahou-den constructed in 1934 (though built in the Kamakura Period style.)

The thing that was funniest to me was the amount of time that Makoon explaining to us the purpose of meditating and then sitting in front of a crystal clear lake encouraging us to do the same. I mean, I was eating dinner? 


Image: The Sōgen Pond with a reflection of the mountains on the still waters.

The next HeyGo tour I went on last week was to Hiroshima with a new guide: JJ (Joy) Walsh. Joy is an interesting tour guide. She is another expat, who is apparently (if I understood correctly) originally from Hawaii. English is her first language, but she speaks at least some Japanese. She also has a YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/JJWalshInboundAmbassador/videos in which she focuses on sustainability issues in Japan. As part of this she interviews a lot of people (in English, though in at least one video she also hired/has on a translator.) I have to respect this a lot.

She lives in Hiroshima with her family and she took us for a lovely riverside walk among the cherry blossoms.


Image: a lovely path among the cherry blossoms in Hiroshima.

I took a TON of postcard pictures of this walk, but it seems silly to try to share them all here, since they are variations on what you see above. 

Joy also took us over the Miyajima Island, also known as Itsukushima. You have probably seen pictures of this particular temple complex, because of the famous red, "floating" torii gate in the sea. Unfortunately, the gate itself is under construction, but we did wander around the rest of the floating temple. Because so many of the tours have to be in the early morning in order to catch North American and European viewers, the tide had no entirely come up yet, which was kind of fascinating in its own right. You never think of the fact that you could walk up to that Tori gate when the tide was out.

At any rate, her is a picture of the Five Story Pagoda which is also on the island.


Image: Miyajima Island's Goju-no-to (Five story) Pagoda through the cherry blossoms

Here is a shot of the floating shrine at low tide:


Image: Floating shrine at Miyajima Island

The island apparently has a lot of lovely hiking trails, as well. Joy recommended that if we ever decided that we wanted to see this place that we should actually find a hotel on the island somewhere. Even just walking up to the pagoda, Joy ran into one of the locals.


Miyajima Island deer.

Apparently, they used to sell crackers you could feed the deer at the train station and so visitors used be mobbed by the hopeful deer. A few still come looking for handouts, even though they stopped selling the crackers some time ago.

Then, I went on another cherry viewing walk, near the Lake Biwa canals of The Philosopher's Walk, Tetsugaku-no-michi.  

Image: the cherry blossoms in Kyoto

This is a tourist destination. It's called The Philosopher's Walk because two 20th century university professors, Nishida Kitaro and Hajime Tanabe, apparently took this path as part of their daily exercise. But, it just a lovely path that walks along the canal and past a number of shrines. This was another walk where I took a ton of postcards, but they really basically all look exactly like this. I mean, we did see a couple of ducks swimming in the canal, but, you know, I will not bore you with that.

I suspect this is already a LOT, as the kids used to say.

Fortunately, we have reached the end of last week's various tours. I have a lot of other stuff I want to tell you all about that happened over the weekend, not the least of which is that I got my hearing tested. I passed with the caveat of "for someone my age," which means I have lost a bit of the upper register, which was pretty much as expected. I went in because I am turning 55, and because there is a lot of "did you hear me?" at this point in out lives in this house of aging women. But, that's not what I wanted to tell you. The whole test was so weird. I mean there were beeps and such, like I remembered, but then there were bits that had me half expecting to have my inner Winter Soldier awaken, since, as part of it, they have you repeat these very unrelated words. Longing, rusted, seventeen, daybreak... I mean, obviously not those exact words, but it was totally like this!  Then there was a section where I had to repeat a very odd phrase that was long and complex, as best as I could, but with louder and louder "cafe babble" happening in the other ear. That one was straight out of Blade Runner, because the phrases were like, "In a dry, lonely desert, the man came across a turtle on his back." I was tempted to start shouting, "My mother? I'll tell you about my mother!!" *table flip*  But, the audiologist said I did better than a lot of people, and I think that was entirely due to the fact that I found the phrases like weird little story prompts and so they stuck in my head.

The other thing I want to share is that I was able to attend a livestream of a theater play in Portland, that stars my god(dess) daughter, Naomi. So much fun! But, I want to give that one a bit more context so I will save it for tomorrow.

See you all then!