Japan: June 10-19, 2018. Flowers.

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 homes had food gardens as well as gardens for aesthetics.  Many homes (all?) had porches or outside patio areas where clothes hung to dry or where the futon was laid out for airing (and banging with a stick).  
Our guide identified the owners of these houses as being wealthy by saying they were "fortune-ate"















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