What I love about Japan

I love that material things are so small in Japan…the food portions, shopping baskets, houses… Only gangsters drive in big cars….Life feels like a cut-out from a cartoon…The taxi drivers’ gloved hands stir the wheel, their hybrid cars barely make a sound…All surfaces are so clean and polished… There are no fags, no chewing gums, no rubbish flying on the streets…The only thing on the pavement are autumn leaves in the autumn or cherry blossoms in the spring…

I love the deep respect Japanese show to each other every time they bow and display mutual show of deference…I love that they have a word for a “wordless heart to heart communication”- ishin denshin…I have deep respect for their sense of giri, reciprocal responsibility.

I love the Japanese metonymic way of thinking, apparent in their landscape gardening (a bonsai stands for a tree, a rock for a mountain, moss for ocean)…And I love how their celebration of detail comes out also in art, photographs and haikus….

I love the poetry breathing from this country - the poignant stillness of temples and shrines, the lush green of the rice fields and the gentle breeze waffling through the Susuki grasses…