Okusawa is a town near us that I discovered in January while touring the area. It’s pretty small but there is a great feel about the place and it’s full of “old stuff” like old shops and restaurants; there is also a gorgeous wooden temple with a peaceful garden…
Other photos on Flickr.
Monthly Archive for February, 2013
We went to a very interesting ceremony at our local temple, last weekend… A ritual of purification by water! Those dudes walked out of the temple towards a trough filled with water; they took off their bathrobe and crouched down, started to chant while scooping water out of the trough and splashed the water over their body. After repeating that ritual a few times, they were given a bathrobe and went back to the temple to get changed. We were then ushered into the temple to attend the rest of the ceremony. We weren’t sure if we’d go in, knowing we wouldn’t understand much but that nice monk invited us in and gave us a seat and then … for over an hour we were listening to those same dudes chanting in Japanese (?) It was … an interesting experience…
I discovered the following thing about blogs: It’s hard to keep up with the hard work of posting things on a regular basis… you need to find something interesting to talk about and to find time to create the artwork for the post (in my case)! So I thought that to keep it interesting, I would challenge myself with a new theme, “Photo of the week”. So, this new theme does exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a selected photo per week! However, the photo does not have to be taken that week though, but it can.
And I will start with the following photo. It was taken late October when I was finishing my intensive Japanese study at the Meguro Language Centre in Tokyo. The sunset light that day was amazing … so bright and orange. I took the photo thinking it would never show well the feel of that moment, but it did! Since that day, there have been many days with such light… we’ve been extremely lucky with a really sunny and dry winter. Thank you very much, Japan!
Over the past four months that we’ve been living in Toritsudaigaku (Meguro), we’ve explored the area quite a bit. There are loads of nice walks to do around here… I am always surprised that, even though we live 12 minutes by train from Shibuya (one of the most busy and noisy place in Tokyo), our area can be so quiet… The other weekend, I sat on a bench, in the sun, and I had that weird feeling that there was something wrong… then, I realised that, in this area, “no one dared disturb the sound of silence”…
Photos on Flickr