An Affable traveller's wanderings.

Somewhere along my meanderings, still heady from the thick pork broth settling in my stomach, I had taken a wrong turn. I’d swapped my lefts for my rights and stumbled into a cool niche tucked behind the stone path I had aimlessly wandered off. Leaves tethered to slender branches arched into a canopy above me allowing the sweat to cool on my neck. Thick moss hugged low brick walls that snaked through the alcove. Housed by these walls, peeking through a rug of shrubbery, stood a cluster of cement slabs carved into with Kanji. Some were tall and smooth, others stout and crooked. Set against the sea of green, they were all quite beautiful.

For some strange reason, that terrifying realisation that one is standing in a graveyard on all by her lonesome didn’t quite sink in. I think it was because, for the first moment in weeks, there was no clutter in sight.

No ‘SUMIMASEN’s!’ yelled across smoky Izakaya dens piercing the silence. No patrons shoulder to shoulder, nibbling at folded ribbons of chicken skin skewered through the middle.

Not that I didn’t love that side of the city. Take away the shop assistants squealing sales through megaphones in their seven tiered departments stores and I might as well have stayed at home browsing online catalogues. The beauty of the city is in her lust for more. More colours and obscure figurines lining the shelves of Akihabara. More plum wine and lime bitters filling the bellies of nomihodai dwellers across the city. Even the temples are packed to the brim. Tourists, families and school groups edge their way towards racks of wooden blocks imprinted with visitors’ prayers. They scrawl down their wishes and squeeze them between strangers’ hopes.

But this was worlds away from the halogen glow of the metropolis and the bustle of Kamakura’s shrines. It seemed like I’d stumbled into the country’s last empty pocket where there was nothing but green and silence.