Riding With the One that I love

I've learned to look for the places of beauty in each building.  It's often a nitcho with a fresh flower arrangement or a terrarium open to the sky.  When I enter a room, I've taken to inhaling through my nose to capture the delicate scent that pervades and defines a place.  I'm creating a practice of deliberately noticing delightful things previously unnoticed. Many streets are lined with flowers.  Delightful scents fill the streets -- even different streets have a different dominant smell. Trees in yards are often trimmed to perfection. Not only the Bonzai trees are trimmed; often all trees have leaf and limbs adjusted to be aesthetically pleasing. It was on the fifth day (at least) of walking through neighborhoods that I saw how deliberately each tree and bush was trimmed. I had to ask myself, "Would a tree (or bush) naturally grow like that? "  The answer was often a simple no. Many h...

Just as the Japanese people want to be polite to their neighbors and keep their homes beautiful, they have a consciousness about sounds in public. My first walk in Tokyo, I noticed how quiet it was -- no rumble of cars (they were electric or hybrid), no music blaring from windows of shops, and no public cell phone use.   It's rude to talk in front of others.  Teens played games on their phones (lots of baseball), but there was no talking on the phone. But Superman would find places to change in Japan; phone booths were frequently spaced: Then if Superman needed extra space to change, he could use the handicap phone booth: 

Takaaki told us that space was at a premium.  That was obvious -- streets were narrow, living quarters small. Some places to park cars had a circular revolving disc on which you would drive the car. The disc would rotate the car either 90 degrees, 180 degrees, or 270 degrees, then drive into an elevator. Another kind of public parking was a rotating conveyor belt.  You'd pay, the belt would move so that you could drive in an open space, then all cars would rotate..... This was akin to a 2-dimensional rubric cube or a toy from my childhood:  We saw cars parked creatively and tightly in front of houses.  He told us that prior to purchasing a car, the prospective owner would need to demonstrate that s/he had a place to park the car.

As we walked or rode bikes around town, we saw many, many temples and shrines of all sizes.  Some were the size of a library box here in the US, others were large beautiful buildings on acres of land with a water source, gardens, elegant buildings, and multiple gift shops. Each temple we saw had something unique or interesting -- a view of the mountains that the temple capitalized on; a set of unique trees; a sand garden exquisitely maintained to show rows of sand raked into elegant patterns.  Each offered solace, quiet, and space in a densely populated society.  Each was accessible to everyone. The frequency of the temples allowed people the ability to pray, make offerings, and easily seek peace without traveling far.  The diversity of size from library-box size to many acres of gardens allowed there to be something for everyone at any place.  This is the first temple I recognized as a temple. It's at the base of the Tokyo Tower, seen in background....

My first Japanese experience was when the bags arriving on the turnstile at Tokyo airport were arranged wheels up and 18 inches apart: Instead of willy-nilly at LAX: Organization pervaded their lives.  It seems to be yet another quality that helps with sanity in a densely populated region.   This kind of organization appeared in how children took field trips.  Notice the hats: different colors for different classes.  Notice the black and white uniforms. Notice the pied-piper teacher carrying a sign, Notice the identical bags (orange for the younger children.) This picture is from the base of Tokyo Tower: And this from the gardens at the base of the Tokyo Tower where the hats can be seen as particularly useful. And this picture is of older children sitting and waiting for their train very much out of the way of everyone else in the Kyoto train terminal. We saw hundreds of school children in uniforms on field trips.  Apparently, June is...