Dear friends and family,
It`s beautiful.
I asked student last night what she thought about Japan. That was her reply.
It`s beautiful. She is right. The landscape is lovely; we`ve seen quite a bit
of it during our train rides from Tokyo to Hiorshima to Koyasan
to Kyoto. Gleaming green rice fields and occasional lotus beds gucked into every
level space between towns and roads and steep hillsides. Bamboo arching alongside
roads and paths just as it does in so many Japanese paintings.
Higher up in the mountains around Koyasan the ancient Japanese cedars are
simultaneously comforting and majestic.
If technology is more your interest than nature, you would find the train system
beautiful. Fast, smooth, on time, comfortable.
The food? Beautiful in both taste and presentation. At a Buddhist monastery in
Koyasan we were served as elegant a meal as one could imagine, and it was done
without tables, chairs or silverware. We sat on small buckwheat
cushion on a tatami floor with three small lacquer ware trays in front of us: two
were footed trays elevating them a few inches, the third was flat and held one
simple bowl of fabulous soup. About 7 or 8 other small bowls were
perfectly place on the other two trays.
This meal took place in a room where the line between art and craft totally
disappears. The room itself was a poem, and each board, each joint, each corner
a well chosen word.
This room was in an old temple monastery designed with that noble looking curve
to the roof line; entrace portals that honor both the person entering and the
building being entered; and crafted of materials meant to endure.
Just outside, a garden invited the same contemplation one experiences in an art
gallery. Each stone, each tree, each path, like brush strokes on a canvass, place
to create a whole out of many parts.
Hiroshim, with the shadow memory of a mushroom cloud still clinging to it, is
maybe not so beautiful -- unless and until one looks at the determination with
which the current residents and officials make it their mission to
prevent a nuclear weapon from being used against people ever again. That is
beautiful.
Is there deeper beauty elsewhere One can never say for sure, but if the Tokyo
couple who opened their home and lives to us for most of a day are any indication,
the Yes, there is a beauty in Japan that has nothing to do with landscape
and architecture. Hospitality and kindness prevail. Is that why the
streets, even the streets of busy Tokyo, have no honking horns and no
pedestrians having to dodge cars and trucks? Traffic is heavy, but not as noisy,
fast, or threatening as traffic in America`s large cities. There are lots of
bicycles, lots of hybrid cars, lots of great public transportation. A bus picked
us up at the airport when we arrived in Tokyo and took us to our youth hostel
and nearby hotel. Since then we have traveled only by public transportation or
on foot. And today several students rented bikes for part of the day.
I know not all is beautiful in Japan. The Japanese are human like the rest of us.
But whatever stress and sorrow might be exacted by work schedules, demands, and
cultural expectations we can:t see in just one week.
As you probably know, Christian presence in Japan is minimal. I have seen just two
church building during the week we have bee here, and most students probably have
seen none since they were mostly reading or napping while I was looking out the
train window. The art and ceremonies of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines are
certainly not familiar to most of us in the group, but Shinto gtradition gives thanks
for food at meal time and that, at least, rings bells of recognition.
In two days we move on to China where we settle into a place for more than just 3 or
4 days. I think we are all ready for that.
Love from Japan,
Bruce and Carol
