Looking at the world through a different lense

One of the fascinating things we appreciate about travel is the opportunity to see the world through different lenses...

Over the last few weekends in Tokyo we have enjoyed pushing this boundary of "different lenses".

Our first visit was suggested to me by my sister who lives in Vermont. Click here to see the link she sent me.

On a beautiful sunny Saturday, we dove into into the bowels of one of the huge tall buildings to find this exhibit. As I wandered from photo to photo I laughed and thought about my own retirement coming up on March 31. Welcome to the wonderful world of Kimiko Nishimoto!

As I look ahead to being retired, I want to stay active!

I want to be light on my feet and flit about like a humming bird!

I want to believe that, with age, comes a certain spiritual and wisdom "gravitas"!

I look forward to being relaxed and centered as the world rushes around me. 

And I look forward to maintain a healthy diet. 

That periodically might include some celebrations with friends!

 My hope is that I will continue to be able to contribute constructively to the world around me and NOT be sent out to pasture... or whatever.

My hope is that I will not have to be hit on the head to be open to new ideas, possibility and  perspectives. I look forward to be a creative element in the world around me.

I am peaking through the Shoji screen of life at this point, looking forward to a whole new world!

 Discovering a new hobby at 89 years old! Wow!

This weekend we visited the Mori Museum of Art on the 52nd floor of the Mori building and we also enjoyed an hour spent on the outside deck at the top of the building. 

Once again the exhibit challenged our perceptions to think beyond what we see and take for granted. Click here for a look a the exhibit. In an old abandoned classroom (representing Japan's aging population)... is this a ghost? 

Looking more closely, Shelley and I are part of the class... as ghosts!

Shelley, tumbling off the second floor of a Parisian apartment; where is the ambulance???

And she is not alone... they all seem to be falling and hanging onto the building for dear life; what a catastrophe...

Until you look more closely to see that this is a reflection of a horizontal apartment front reflected in mirrors. 

This artist, Leandro Erlich, has played with people's sense of reality all around the world. Here is a special display of his in the central square in Nice, France. 

Once again thank you to Tokyo for pushing our horizons, for challenging our perceptions and providing new vistas as we learn on a daily basis. 

We are both looking ahead to new horizons and new vistas as I retire in March. Mt. Fuji sets the back-ground for this.

Life in "rural" Japan

We were thrilled this last weekend to explore a corner of Nagano prefecture that, much to our relief, is quite rural. We found there some of the texture, people and conversations that helped us understand a whole part of Japan we have not really been able to access before.

Our weekend started with a stay at a wonderful Airbnb owned by an American and his Japanese wife. They are both artisans who bought an old traditional house as well as an abandoned silk production warehouse and turned them into a very tasteful guesthouse and craft exhibit space. We were struck by the beauty of blending the simple lines of Japanese construction and taste with artist's taste for simple craft hangings on the wall.

We were visiting Tei, one of our friends who is of Japanese, American roots who chose to come back to Japan and make a life for herself in this little hamlet tucked high in the hills. (Here she is with one of her neighbors who runs a Tibetan health clinic after spending ten years learning Tibetan and training in Tibetan traditional medicine). 

After living fifteen years renting an old, ramshackle, fascinating farm house she was able to buy the house and land. She currently travels twice a week to teach classes at two of the universities here. 

Like in Europe the houses are often tucked closely together with the fields spread around the hills above. Her neighbour's house is also a beautiful old farmhouse... abandoned and slowly being taken over by vines. Behind her is "God mountain", in front "Goddess mountain".

As a break from Tokyo we totally enjoyed exploring her valley in the peace of a late fall weekend. The local temple was quite magical with its' simple illuminations at night:

And in the daytime...

We are always fascinated by the Japanese form of graffiti; hundreds of peoples' name on paper strips glued to the temple entrance. 

In the morning we went to pay our respects to the local water god and fill up two containers of the purest water in the valley. 

Looking back through the Tori gate you get a sense of the serenity of this little nook... with the endless urban sprawl in the valley bottom. 

Tei took us to her favorite temple where the priest is one of her good friends. 

We had an afternoon walk through the forest and the fall leaves, totally enjoying the variety of mini-shrines and statuettes tucked in the forest. Some of them were actually burial stones for horses of a hundred or so years ago while others were for the hearing god where you should rub a stone on the ears. 

During our walk in the woods we stopped at another friend's house to learn more about the valley. This gentleman had worked as an engineer with Harley Davidson in the Mid-West USA and has now bought this house in her valley. He is carefully restoring this old farm house with traditional building techniques. 

Some of the fascinating traditional techniques include using twine instead of nails to fix the rafters to permit mobility during earthquakes without the roof collapsing. 

Check out the "Wabi-sabi" beam here:

We also continued to glory in the many expressions of Buddhist and Shinto faith all around this valley.

The small shrine, probably to children, laden with toy offerings:

The ancient many level tower that withstood hundreds of years of earthquakes:

And the unique and vibrant details to be found at every site:

With a bit of regret we descended down to the valley of Ueda with the usual intense intertwining of power lines, railroads, tunnels, freeways, roads, malls and housing to catch the train home. We had the opportunity for a quick visit to Ueda castle, one of the great samurai castles of Japanese history. People still visit this site to honour the wisdom of the Sanada samurai clan. See here for more details. 

With the sunset arriving and the train station beckoning (among the many floors of neon lights, the crowds, the buses and cars and the dozens of restaurants) we returned to Tokyo with a bit more of a personal sense of rural, back to the land life in Japan.