Here’s How You Want To End A Week In Nara

It was the longest day of the week. Nothing like the Eliminator Saturday but a long day nevertheless due to the circumstances of having a extremely mild week of lessons because of two visits from trainees. My week at Nara is usually fairly lax but when you remove three entire lessons it becomes a cake walk. Today was the first day that was full and though normally a breeze because of how lazy the lack of workload this week has made me the day felt longer. It has rained all week. More weather wars. The only place of all four schools I work at that I want to explore is Nara and it is just like the rain to piss all over my parade. Well, nine more months to go. It can’t rain all the time.

I fished my lessons that day, wrote out my reports, organized and cleaned the classroom and turned off the lights. Another week was over. The time is just jetting along. I have been here nearly four months now. I closed the door and walked down the steps next to the cemetery that is adjacent to my classroom, always a slightly morbid experience. The city was quiet as Nara often is in the evenings. This is a tourist town. When the sun sets and the attractions and souvenir shops close there is not much going on. The tourists have got a train back to Kyoto or have checked into a small hotel in Nara but very few walk around at night. This is one of my favorite times in Nara where I can visit all the old temples uninhibited by the crowds that can be found there in the daylight hours. That and there are less deer to maul you. That is not to say there are no deer to maul you because you can never let you guard down on a Nara deer. You open a candy bar wrapper and these things jump out of the darkness ready to attack your snack. Nara deer are not to be trifled with. I enjoy walking down the neon lit streets, glancing inside small restaurants where patrons are bent over bowls of steaming noodles. After a good rain everything just glistens. Some shops are still open and you can walk into them now with the worry of being side-checked into a shelf of plastic deer toys or hit by somebody examining a cane (suppose it could be worse…it could be a sword!).

It is a little bit strange being here with no crowds, though. The atmosphere of Nara is totally altered when you remove the vibrancy. I don’t mean to imply that this is a bad thing because strolling empty Nara is very peaceful if you stay off the main streets and especially if you walk down to places like Todaiji where you are now far form the neon and lights and can sit there on the steps of a gate hundreds of years old, just you, history and the moon. This is how I like to end my Nara weeks, with this evening walks. It allows me to think, really, and not dissimilar to when I used to walk cities like Toronto or Ottawa with the same purpose although arguably it was much harder to conjure up serious life thoughts in the clamor that was Toronto. Ottawa, particularly the Dow’s Lake area (which I find myself missing here from time to time) were perfect spots. None of them carry, of course, the scenic wonders of Nara, Japan. Although it was just as peaceful under the bows of a tree in Ottawa you really can’t compete with the temples of Nara when it comes to landscapes and images to think by. True, nothing surpasses sitting on the edge of a green cliff overlooking the Atlantic in Cape Breton but sitting on the foundation remains of what used to be a palace with an ancient temple behind you and a towering pagoda floodlight under the black sky backdrop is a close second.
This night I purchased a small take-out set lunch of rice, fish, pork and salad from a place in the arcade walk near Nara Station. The servers there were the politest I have met so far and it was as though everybody came out to great me when I was offered a seat to wait for my food. A slim girl (well, most of them are slim here, aren’t they?) came out with a large smile and a cup of hot tea for me as I waited. The hospitality in Japanese eateries really needs to be carried over into the Western world. I sat and sipped my tea and watched the chef cook up my supper. Japanese music played softly over the restaurant speakers. My food was presented to me –and yes I use the word present because that is how it is here…everything is so well packaged, sometimes overly so, and handed to you with two hands as though it were a gift—and the bag warmed my hands as I carried it into the chilly night.

The Kofukuji temple site near the pagoda was nearly empty. It looks like I was not the only one with this idea as couples sat on the remains of the palace gazing up at the few stars that choose to make an appearance this evening. I chose a spot out of the way and to myself, flipped open the plastic container that my supper was in and ate listening to the laughter of the couples and the cawing of a few crows in the trees above that didn’t want to make it a night. I was always watchful of deer. I just had images of an entire heard of them storming out of the bushes, from inside the temple, dive bombing me in parachutes. These Nara deer are a tricky species. I was left alone by both man and beast to enjoy my end of the week meal under the stars. And I thought…and thought…. I thought of what I am going to do when I get back to Canada? How will the shift back into life there be? Can I make it in film? Will I just find myself back pushing junk I don’t care about? And I thought…and thought…I thought of how lucky I am to be out here, doing this, right now…sitting under the stars and eating supper next to the glow of a structure that dates back to the 700s, traveling…and I thought…and thought…I thought: is this it? The top of the mountain? Can it get better then this? Is this a peak that cannot again be reached? And I thought…and thought…I thought, where do I go from here? Tonight the answer was an easy one. I cleaned up, zipped up my jacket and boarded a train home. In nine months, however, the answer is not quite so clear.