Hey friends.
I had the ole trusted iPhone 4 on me in Japan for the last 6 weeks, and I tried to post blogs in Tokyo. I also tried to post in Shizuoka, and the app kept crashing.
Now I am home in the states and have a computer, so I will be posting a series of Japanese haikus I wrote abroad in the land of the Rising Sun. There is one haiku for each city I traveled in. There was so little paper in my backpack that the normal blogging & journaling was out of the question.
So I decided to try the traditional form of Japanese poetry–the haiku– only 17 syllables and 3 lines, in a 5-7-5 form.
I’ll be posting the haiku along with a photo, the date, and an explanation of the piece.
Here is the first haiku, from Kamakura, 40 km south-west of Tokyo by the sea.
In Kamakura,
I leave no traces at all.
The waves are so old.
October 23, 2016
Kamakura is the former capital beach town home to Japan’s 2nd most famous “Daibutsu,” or Buddha. I sat on the cold beach & ate sushi, and looked at the grey Pacific from the other side of the world. It was a real pensive day. I gathered looks from Kamakurans, at once being the only foreigner in sight and a blonde one. Blonde hair is a special trait in the Far East. It was also so quiet in my head that day. I walked along the seaside & stumbled through a conversation with locals about where to find the Buddha. Such an odd paradox. It felt like I was unnoticed in the landscape, a complete visitor, nothing more than observant. A true Buddhist pilgrimage to Kamakura.
what we are stepping into 