Paul Simon goes to a love hotel . . .

. . . in Shinjuku, Tokyo. He sees this sponge . . .


. . . and his head explodes.

Kiyomizu-dera Temple

Local cuisine offers sustenance for the final ascent.

Orange gateway to temple on a steep hill.

Washing hands before entering.

School kids on a field trip.

Most temples will have someone on duty to inscribe temple books with calligraphy. A visitor can buy a book at one temple and then have it filled with inscriptions from each temple he visits.

Insensitive tourist tries to pick up local girls.

Ginkakuji Temple

The next day, Paul and I hit some more temples on our own. First, we pick up supplies.


Ginkakuji was more my style again. Zen gardens and amazing landscaping.


Very Important Moss.



Your narrator.




Paul contemplates nature.



A block away, we return to "real life."

Ninnaji Temple

Five minutes down the road from the Ryoanji Temple lies the Ninnaji. Bigger, and with a generally different aesthetic. I didn't love the pagoda here, but Paul did which made me happy.

Ryoanji Temple

After three weeks of gradual disillusionment with Tokyo, I finally got myself onto the Shinkansen and visited Kyoto with my friend, Paul Weaver.

Would I find the "real" Japan in the city regarded as its spiritual home?

We were met by the delightful Michy, one of the top backgammon players in Japan. He suggested visiting the Ryoanji Temple, which was fortuitous as I had my eye on that one from the guidebooks.

We approached the temple through a breath-taking landscape.


The pond was filled with giant carp and strange lilies. At the temple we removed our shoes (of course), and entered the rock garden.

It turns out this was not just a zen rock garden, but one of the first ever zen rock gardens, highly influential to the development of the art. It's hard for me to describe how perfect it was. (Perhaps I need to describe three weeks of bustling pseudo-New York in Tokyo.) The garden hit me in precisely the way it had been designed to do, some six-hundred years ago. It was pre-conscious. I smiled and was at peace.

It reminded me of a time ten years ago, when I was wandering through the Art Institute of Chicago after gorging myself on Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. I entered a room and saw a painting of a forest with a glowing red sun . . . only the sun was in front of the trees. I was grinning like a madman before I knew what hit me, before I even truly parsed the image. I walked over and of course it was a Magritte which I had somehow never seen before.

This rock garden was my first blissful aesthetic experience in Japan. Nothing could distract me. Not the crowds, nor Paul's semi-serious joking around that he didn't "get" it.


On our way out, we passed through the calming and exotic landscape again, and while thinking about how all this would look in Winter, I saw this . . . (Be sure to click on the image -- any image, in fact -- for a larger view)


. . . and thought to myself, "Of course this is where Haiku were born."

Day Tripper

Ruko and Py take me and Sam and Paul for an outing to Odawara Castle.

Everyone's happy to get out of Tokyo.




The castle is impressive on the outside. But the inside was gutted and rebuilt in '60s-modern. Ugh.



Photo Ops at the local museum.






Sam and I contemplate the ocean.






(Thanks for the photos, Py!)

A Trip to Tokyo Tower

An illustration of the different aesthetic at work in Tokyo. They built a model Eiffel Tower . . . slightly larger than the original. Sounds nice. Who doesn't like big things?

Here's the base of the original, just to refresh your memory. (Hi Saryn!)


And here's the base of Tokyo Tower.



Why yes, that is a giant tube extending through the center, and yes indeed, that is an uneven rectangular building sitting below. That's where you find the MacDonald's. Or school kids on a field trip.




The Tokyo skyline. This extends forever in all directions.




Installing a glass bottom was pretty cool, I must admit.

Asakusa with Mochy and Yuriko

We met at noon outside the famous Almond Cafe in Roppongi. They took me to a noodle bar for lunch (where they explained that it is not considered impolite to slurp when eating noodles). We talked a little about cultural differences (they had both been to Las Vegas and Monte Carlo for backgammon). What did they find most surprising about the US? No hesitation -- that people are so fat. I laughed and agreed, but did suggest that Vegas might not be fully representative. It is, after all, a playground for people with no self-control. This made them laugh. I asked if they ever thought about weight or diet or exercise for themselves and they looked confused and said no (both are abnormally, alarmingly thin). They just stay thin. Mochy described going to a MacDonald's in Vegas, and thinking he had received the wrong order because there was so much food on his plate. Apparently the McPortions in Tokyo are about 1/3 of those in the states.

Then we took the subway to a park. At the subway exit was an indoor rock-formation sculpture that erupts with steaming water every hour.

I explained that just a few weeks ago I had taken photos of Geysir in Iceland.

We went to a park which was "very traditional and old Japanese", but was not so impressive to my untrained eyes. In the middle, however, was a "very traditional and old Japanese tea-house" where we took off our shoes and sat uncomfortably on tatami mats and drank green tea. It was fun and interesting. (And uncomfortable.) Mochy noticed an older woman who was sitting perfectly and who turned her tea-bowl around three times in her hands before drinking. He said she had perfect form and must have been taught by her mother or grandmother.

Then we took a water-taxi, which is always nice, to go see Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa. I asked several times if this was a working temple which people actually attend, or more of a tourist attraction. A working temple, they said, but seemed confused and I wasn't sure we understood each other.

The temple had a long marketplace in front, very reminiscent of the place in Krakow, Poland where we bought sweaters and rugs.

Then we got to the temple and it was big and interesting. One large building and several small ones around a city block or so. Looking very much like what you'd expect from a martial-arts movie. First, there was the famous giant paper lantern.

Big cauldrons of incense outside the buildings. People would come up and wave the smoke in their faces. What was that about, I asked? Healing forces. You wave the smoke onto the body part that needs help. If nothing is particularly broken, you wave it onto your head. Many people were doing this.

So I asked if either of them were particularly religious or had any mystical beliefs. They laughed. Yuriko said no, she had no religion, then laughed more and looked embarrassed. I asked why, and she said that must sound strange to me, because everyone in the US is so religious. Sigh. So we talked about that.

Then we went into the main temple and encountered what I would call a giant wishing well. People would throw change into the water and then pray. So imagine my surprise considering our very last conversation when Mochy and Yuriko both threw change into the water and bowed heads and prayed in silence for nearly a minute. Ok, this is interesting, I thought. So a few minutes later I asked. Well, they said, yes it might seem odd. Mochy said he does not pray to "God". Bu his grandfather died recently and he likes to pray for his well-being. He knows he is dead and gone, but he likes to pray for him. I nodded. I should explore this further at some point.

Then we came to a big table with many boxes, like an old fashioned card catalogue in a library, and with wood spools resting on the table. First I had to pay 100 yen (a little less than a dollar.) I was instructed to pick up a spool and shake it, then turn it upside down and let a stick fall out of a small hole. I thought I could keep the stick but no, they just read the number off the sick and returned it to the spool. Then they found the box with the number from the stick. We opened the box and pulled out a piece of paper with much text on it (an English translation on the back). Aha -- it was a horoscope. Or, more accurately, a pay-per-read I Ching. It turns out the fortune I picked was a very, very, good one, and I should be happy and save it. Ok. Then they did the same, but theirs were not as good. Later we came to a stand with wires stretched across it, and many small papers tied to the wired. Mochy and Yuriko took their fortunes and rolled them up and tied them to a wire. I was doing the same when they started laughing and told me no, mine was a good fortune so I should keep it.

A very fun trip, and nice to see something different from the bustle of modern Tokyo.

Tokyo Backgammon

Cafe Michelangelo, Daikanyama.



Sake and sashimi after play. Notice the monster on Sam's head.

Settling in

The view from my apartment in Roppongi Hills.



In case of emergency:


I saw a spider in my courtyard.



Shopping for circuits in Akihabara.




French maids hand out flyers. Is this a great town or what?