March 2009
102 posts
Japan and Shopping
I had never seen anyone purchase anything from the in air catalogue before until flying to Japan. On my JAL flight, someone was making a purchase from the catalogue seemingly every half hour. Here in Japan, people swarm the miyage (souvenir) shops to bring things home to their coworkers. Almost every train and subway station doubles as a giant mall swarming with shoppers. Every other avenue is a...
Stone in the Belly of the Buddha
At the Kiyomizu-dera Temple Hofer, Benj, and I went down into the basement, which was the belly of a secret Buddha statue. It was total blackness, as if we were deep in a cave. We followed a rope on the side of a wall until we reached the stone. A single light shone through a crack above us, illuminating just the stone and the symbol on top. I’d never been so sight deprived before, and then...
