Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a long dark wooden hall, standing in front of an army of more than 1000 many-armed kannon statues.
They are about the same height as you and are staring directly at you.
They stand proud, several rows deep.
How do you feel?
Do you ever go into a particular cafe and feel all the tension leaving your shoulders as you give a sigh of happy comfort? That is how I feel when I go into Sagano-yu cafe in Arashiyama, a beautifully restored old Japanese bath house which is now a cafe and shop.
It has been amazing. There are so many people and places to thank for making it such a special experience. Here are just a few of them.
Any bold move, big change or great adventure requires a sacrifice of some kind. This is true in business, life and travel. It’s simple economics – every choice you make has an opportunity cost. Every dollar you spend on a plane ticket is a dollar you can’t spend somewhere else. And the bigger the challenge, the greater the risk… but of course the bigger the reward can be.
Today I found myself sat pondering what we have missed by taking a leap, packing up and moving to Japan for six months.
Six months.
180 days.
Half a year.
It seemed like such a long time back then.
Now it is hard to believe our Japan adventure is nearly over.
As we pack up our things, empty our flat, fold up our memories and tuck away our plans, we head out, hand in hand, for a new adventure.
It’s hard to imagine I’ll be touching down in London a week today. While I run around soaking up the last days in Kyoto, I can’t helping thinking of some of the things I am looking forward to when I get back (in no particular order):
When you think about a shop selling cosmetics and toiletries what comes to mind? Something clean and white? Or perhaps slick and black? Or the bright busy interior of a drugstore? Well this is what my kind of beauty shop looks like…
Just a few minutes’ spin of the bicycle wheel from our little place here in Kyoto stands a World Heritage Site, “a place of exceptional and universal value; a cultural heritage site worthy of preservation for the benefit of mankind”.
This astonishing city actually has 17 sites deemed this magnificent. Today I wanted to share Nijo Castle with you.
