Today was like the icing on top of a cake. After a wonderful week in Kyoto, I had an amazing last day in one of the prettiest places on earth. I woke up this morning to meet the EP from Kenya, who was leading a small team meeting on development and foreign aid. He was everything I expected and more, and it was very interesting to hear about development from both a Kenyan and a Japanese perspective. It’s the kind of experience you could never have simply by studying a textbook…sort of a mesh between cultures and opinions and curiousities all swirling together above a tatami floor. It opened my eyes to some new ideas, which is always important when you are facing a problem with no clear solution.
Arashiyama
After about two hours, we left the trainee house and took a train to Arashiyama to meet some more AIESECers. We ate Japanese noodles and ice cream (with four different flavors) and wandered through the bamboo forests. It was so peaceful. The AIESECers really became more confident speaking English with me too, so it was a lot easier to converse than it was for the rest of the week. It was helpful to see Japan with some locals too, because even though I’d been touring temple after temple all week, it’s impossible to get a feel for the way they are actually meant to be experienced by their own worshippers. One of the most striking examples of this was a poem that was typed up on paper near the end of our temple visit. It was one of the few things that didn’t have any kind of Latin translation, and it was a poem that compared tofu to religion. Tofu can appeal to people of all social classes and it is always necessary in Japan, like religion. Had I read this poem on an English sign, I doubt I would have gotten the meaning because it sounds a bit silly. But having a Japanese person read the poem to me the way it was supposed to be read…well, it made all the difference.
The temple was much more somber than the others I had visited this week. There was a graveyard of ashes at the top of the stairs, and a shrine for stillborns at the bottom. Although it was somber, its placement right in the mountains almost made up for it and instead of sadness there was just the feeling of eternal peacefulness.
At the end of the night, I ate a final goodbye dinner with Toshi and Jiro and it was probably the most delicious food I have ever eaten. I’m definitely going to miss Kyoto and all the people I met here; they’re possibly the most hospitable people in the world. But come tomorrow I’ll be off on my next adventure, and I suspect it will be just as good as this one.
