We’re on another burritt train. Looks like this one, pic of which I took this morning, but ours is going the other way. Just sayin’. And they’re fast. Though don’t really feel it. Not like you’re thrown back in your seat with your face pulled back with g-force. No. Feels nice. Smooth. Comfortable (not a word for Japanese people). They call these trains Shankansen. Which means ‘fast as fuck’. I think.

This time we’re going to Okayama, but only to change trains onto a local one to go over the bridge onto another island to a place called Takamatsu. From there, tomorrow, we’re going on a boat to a really little island called Naoshima. Which is famous for art. Not that ancient-Eastern art bollocks, but proper, modern, contemporary art for a- nofficiado like wot I am.

Japan is made from about 7000 islands of various sizes. Seven of my favourite ever salad dressings, even though I’m not allowed to have it any more because if you ask for it in restaurants people look at you with pity. And we’d have it in the fridge at home in the same likelihood as having nuclear waste in the larder.

Sadly we left our little house in Geisha-town which was just fab. I judge any accommodation by how many horizontal surfaces I can put my things on. I don’t do ‘shelves’ and I’m not a ‘hanging’ kind of a guy. I like laying everything out so I can see it. Thus our house was just brilliant. And it was gorgeous.

Yesterday we went to a place called Nara, an hour from Kyoto. Because there, in 800ad, some Emperor, possibly a Shogun, maybe a warlord, Samurai or possibly a start-up entrepreneur, built a few temples. And shrines. Pagodas. All spread out in a lovely park. It is truly wonderful. Yeah, buildings amazing, the biggest Bhudda in Japan (15 metres high, but can it ever be truly ‘big enough’??), fantastic gates and shit. But every single building, shrine, memorial, statue, relic or whatever comes with a caveat here. In the land of wooden buildings, absolutely fucking everything dates from eight hundred and… but burnt down 5 times, last renovated in 1957/1974/2003. Everything. Even big Bhudda who melted (I kid you not, bronze melts too, ya know) in 12-something, lost an arm in 14-something else, and was reconstructed numerous times along the way. It almost makes you scream: WOODEN BUILDINGS ARE WONDERFUL AND BEAUTIFUL BUT BRICKS DON’T BURN!!!!!! But it would fall on deaf ears. Or ears that don’t understand abuse in English.

They’ll never have religious wars here. They’re all Shinto AND Buddhist, and our lovely guide yesterday was a Christian as well. No-one is ‘observant’ in the way of ‘church every Sunday’. They’re more ‘high days and holy days’ types. Yet they all stop and bow at shrines (though they bow at us all the fucking time too and I look nothing like Bhudda, I hope) and say a quick prayer. Though its often for personal benefit, it should be noted. For an exam, a business meeting, family illness. And Shinto and Buddhism are more lifestyle philosophies than ‘proper’ religions, which creates the wonderful feeling of respect and decency and humanity without any of the holier-than-thou garbage attached to the ‘big 3’.

I might move here. Even without the football.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx