PENowiec&Sonya Louise Barham: Ostatnie dni w Kioto

I’ve been meaning to get up on here and get all chatty, but I’m feeling pressed for time. I actually kind of have a schedule, and it’s stressing me out a little bit. I wanted to spend a month in Japan, but since it’s about three times as expensive as my other destinations I’ve decided to spend half the time. A friend of mine, and fellow photographer, had donated a bunch of his frequent flyer miles to the trip, so he’s booked me a ticket out of Japan to Taiwan, from Tokyo on the 27th. I’ve been trying to cram as much in as I can, so I haven’t had much time to type, now I’m wasting precious typing energy on the most boring topic of not having enough time to write.

Tomorrow I’m taking a bus to Takayama and I’m going to stay in a Temple for a couple of nights. I don’t think it’s the kind of Temple stay where they have you participate in their chores and prayers, but I’d like to do that at some point. In their confirmation email they called me Sonya-san. More, please.

As a birthday present to myself I was going to do this silly thing where they do your hair and make-up and get you all gussied up as a geisha for photos. I decided I didn’t want to spend the time or the money, so I ate a lot of desserts instead. Matcha ice cream with beans and chestnuts and jelly stuff on top, cake, donuts. Yummy, and almost as beautiful as geisha. I go bonkers over the geisha every time I see them in the streets. They’re sooooo pretty! I want to be them just as badly as I wanted to be Anne of Green Gables when I was in 5th grade. I also wanted to be a Borrible on the run in London, carrying around a slingshot and flying undetected under the sharp eye of the law, so I suppose I had a lot of contradictory goals.

OK, OK, gonna go eat some non-dessert type substance. Hopefully I’ll have time for typing once I get to the Temple, unless those monks start talking my ear off about monastic life, those chatterboxes…

P.S. These are little wooden prayer tablets. Cute, huh?