Happy Thanksgiving.

True to the American tradition of holiday overlap, Christmas in Japan has hit with unbridled force once again, and I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it. Happy? Heart-warmed? Nausea-ridden? Confused? Perhaps a combination of two or three of these things? For me it's really difficult to find beauty in department stores' gaudification and misinterpretation of all things relating to this season. It's probably the same commercialized way in the U.S. and I've simply forgotten, or maybe I'm sick of seeing the Asian version of western things (not necessarly always bad, but for me, now, bad) . . . or maybe I'm just anxious to hop on the plane home. Hm.

Naturally, though, others are not as icy-hearted as I, and they seem to enjoy these displays. For example in Kyoto's mammoth train station there is a huge illuminated Christmas tree, blaring Mariah Carey and Wham and being shrunken and two-dimentionalized and pixelated by the score, mostly onto the cell phone screens of Japanese lasses as the rode either up or down the eskareta right past it. Sigh.

Michelle and I were in Kyoto for a few reasons: 1) Replace the trip I was unable to take with my parents 2) Get her and I both out of Tokyo 3) See the fall foliage, 4) Travel somewhere not bathed in sweltering humidity and sweat. It was a great trip, marred by nearly nothing. The weather was beautiful, the green tea ice cream was being sold by the loaded coneful, the fall foliage was stunning, the deer in Nara were frisky and flea-ridden and the air was a melange of mountainy freshness and must and antiquity and incense.

All in all, 'twas a recipe for success augmented, I think, by the fact that I was forced (by the pages of my boring novel) to do some heavy Kyoto guide and map reading, thereby adding depth to my travels in a properly enlightened fashion. Enlightenment was also found, partially, during a stroll along The Path to Philosophy, where we looked at lots of shops and took lots of fall photos and generally felt nothing like Japanese literati. And maybe that's ok. I hear that when englightenment hits, you don't even know it. Bam! Like lightning.

[EDIT] I got tired of all those pictures. One is ok.