Christmas in Kyoto, Japan
Reflections on Christmas Around the World
As December is a time of reflection for many, this holiday season I am reflecting from a mountaintop in Costa Rica. There will be no holiday bustle this year, no time with family or loved ones; just a quiet window of time to pause and embrace the warm breezes of summer in Costa Rica, the sounds of nature and a broader perspective to reflect on another year of this journey of life and the great mystery of it all. I hope each week you will enjoy a post on Christmas’s spent in other countries through the lens of different cultures.
Kyoto, Japan 2019
Today was Christmas Day in Japan. Otherwise know as Wednesday. I woke up this morning to 39 degrees.....Christmas morning in Kyoto...one day ahead of Christmas at home. Surreal. As always it was very quiet here. Knowing the sun was due to shine today, I decided to finally make my way to Kinkakuji, “The Golden Pavilion”. It has been on my list and after 6 months in Kyoto I have not made my way to this famous temple, just a few short miles from my house.
Another unusual tradition in Japan is that everyone makes their visit to Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas. Although I found this to be another strange and humorous custom, I felt compelled to participate as there was a KFC just across the street from the ancient Buddhist Temple of the Golden Pavillion.
Being Christmas morning, I decided I would do something special and paid a visit to my favorite coffee shop, Corazon. I have discovered that coffee is nothing short of a higher art form in Japan and practiced with diligence and dedication, as with so many things in Japan. Having now sampled their freshly roasted and ground Indonesian, Costa Rican, and Corazon blends, today I opted for Kenyan for Christmas, upon the recommendation of my newly discovered "coffee teacher."
Watching the process was again another lesson in the art of Japanese attention to detail and excellence.
Today may have been just another Wednesday in Kyoto, but my thoughts and heart were with loved ones celebrating Christmas Eve back at home. My internal time clock seems to always remain in sync with Austin, so I walk through my days here as if they were nights and often I am wide awake in the middle of the night, still after half a year.
Today I listened to a Zen teacher in America as I walked the temple garden and then the streets on this beautiful sunny day in Kyoto.
Enjoy the full article on The Mindful Art of Japanese Coffee.
View from the Road
“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
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Zen and Ink Journals represents hundreds of hours of writing over the past decade, sometimes from a train in remote China or a coffee shop in Kyoto, a hammock in Costa Rica or a simple cabin on a mountaintop in Boquete, Panama.
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