aware...the aesthetic
moshi moshi! welcome to japan, city of polite, english speaking people who don't shove and jostle their way onto buses and into lines.
so i didn't sleep last night because my plane left at 7:30 am, so i elected instead to watch the royal tanenbaums (did i spell that right?) with rach, sam,and adrien and then surprisingly found my way down to the bus station to get a bus to the airport. on the flight, i met this indian guy (i was flying india air) who lives in osaka, and we got to be pretty good friends. due to the dense cloud cover over osaka today, we encountered quite a bit of turbulence, causing me to believe that we might crash at any minute, to which he kept calmly reassuring me that everything would be okay. thank goodness for him, otherwise I would have probably completely flipped out and gotten sick. he also helped me with customs, and getting a bus to itami airport. people are so great.
japan is gorgeous. on the bus ride from kansai international airport to itami (osaka) airport,we crossed a long highway bordered by the pacific on either side. i felt like i was crossing the sunshine skyway once again, and it almost felt like summer(it was hot on the bus, alright?:)). the best thing is...as i was staring at the sea, it began to snow light, dense flakes that began to coat the ground with white. beautiful and sacred somehow...
sakiko is so beautiful! she looks older to me somehow and really strong on her home turf. her mom is quite cute as well, and they're both just really put together well, if that makes sense. they're well organized, polite, cultured, funny...as we drove in their toyota corolla to their home on the outskirts of osaka, we passed by typical japanese architecture in rice paddies and trucks on diets (everything is smaller here...even the trucks, bathrooms, and roads...) haha.
their house is a melting pot of panamanian, american, and japanese cultures all mixed together. her mom has created a japanese garden in the front of their house and an american style patio in the back; the wall hangings are mainly framed pictures of south american art, and let me just say, the internet connection is something that Yale would envy. hellz, i envy it already and i'm sitting here using it! if only zsu had a connection like this...
anyway, they live in a 2 story house that i feel could be located somewhere in the valley. it's a very white building with wooden furniture/doors/frames that impresses on you that sensation of being in a beach house with white lace curtains lazily blowing in the breeze. there's a completely japanese tea=house type room with the heating table that i want to sleep under tonight (but dear sakiko knew me better than that--she put me in the study! with books!:) hahaha...repeat at perry's, anyone?), but the room itself is so sparsely beautiful that i want to dig out all of my books on the tea ceremony and kneel down to read them. i can't stop touching the pottery here and the aesthetics pierce my vision in a way that only extremely beautiful things have the power to do. aware--the moon is more beautiful if it cannot be seen completely by the eye.
we went into this store that's basically the equivalent of a dollar store, except with much better quality stuff, and i went nuts. really. now, after shopping, not sleeping, and the excitement of just being in japan, i think i'm gonna go vegetate in front of the big flat screen tv downstairs...and maybe sit in the massage-y chair...:)
so i didn't sleep last night because my plane left at 7:30 am, so i elected instead to watch the royal tanenbaums (did i spell that right?) with rach, sam,and adrien and then surprisingly found my way down to the bus station to get a bus to the airport. on the flight, i met this indian guy (i was flying india air) who lives in osaka, and we got to be pretty good friends. due to the dense cloud cover over osaka today, we encountered quite a bit of turbulence, causing me to believe that we might crash at any minute, to which he kept calmly reassuring me that everything would be okay. thank goodness for him, otherwise I would have probably completely flipped out and gotten sick. he also helped me with customs, and getting a bus to itami airport. people are so great.
japan is gorgeous. on the bus ride from kansai international airport to itami (osaka) airport,we crossed a long highway bordered by the pacific on either side. i felt like i was crossing the sunshine skyway once again, and it almost felt like summer(it was hot on the bus, alright?:)). the best thing is...as i was staring at the sea, it began to snow light, dense flakes that began to coat the ground with white. beautiful and sacred somehow...
sakiko is so beautiful! she looks older to me somehow and really strong on her home turf. her mom is quite cute as well, and they're both just really put together well, if that makes sense. they're well organized, polite, cultured, funny...as we drove in their toyota corolla to their home on the outskirts of osaka, we passed by typical japanese architecture in rice paddies and trucks on diets (everything is smaller here...even the trucks, bathrooms, and roads...) haha.
their house is a melting pot of panamanian, american, and japanese cultures all mixed together. her mom has created a japanese garden in the front of their house and an american style patio in the back; the wall hangings are mainly framed pictures of south american art, and let me just say, the internet connection is something that Yale would envy. hellz, i envy it already and i'm sitting here using it! if only zsu had a connection like this...
anyway, they live in a 2 story house that i feel could be located somewhere in the valley. it's a very white building with wooden furniture/doors/frames that impresses on you that sensation of being in a beach house with white lace curtains lazily blowing in the breeze. there's a completely japanese tea=house type room with the heating table that i want to sleep under tonight (but dear sakiko knew me better than that--she put me in the study! with books!:) hahaha...repeat at perry's, anyone?), but the room itself is so sparsely beautiful that i want to dig out all of my books on the tea ceremony and kneel down to read them. i can't stop touching the pottery here and the aesthetics pierce my vision in a way that only extremely beautiful things have the power to do. aware--the moon is more beautiful if it cannot be seen completely by the eye.
we went into this store that's basically the equivalent of a dollar store, except with much better quality stuff, and i went nuts. really. now, after shopping, not sleeping, and the excitement of just being in japan, i think i'm gonna go vegetate in front of the big flat screen tv downstairs...and maybe sit in the massage-y chair...:)