Ruminations upon Sunday May 4, 2025 until Monday May 5, 2025 in Osaka, Japan
Ever since arriving in Japan, I had been waking up somewhere between 4-5AM. The streets were quiet and the beds very comfortable, but every morning sunlight blasted through the windows like a literal beam straight to the face. After nine consecutive days of late nights, long days, and unplanned early mornings, I was exhausted.
Thankfully, it was Sunday and Chaim was able to take the boys for the day. As promised, he took them back to Nara Park to feed the deer. The boys were excited to return and give him their personal tour of the grounds. Afterwards, they went shoe shopping because everyone desperately needed new shoes. Meanwhile, I spent a glorious day at a coffee shop catching up on journaling and enjoying some much-needed alone time.
The next day, Chaim went back to work and the boys and I spent the day in Kyoto visiting Nijo Castle. Built in 1603 by Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan’s first shogun of the Edo Period, Nijo Castle’s painted walls and sliding doors alone are worth seeing. Somehow they managed to feel simultaneously bold and delicate, grand yet restrained. Among the many interesting things we learned was that depictions of tigers were often used to convey power and prestige. At the time, however, many people believed leopards were female tigers, which is why so many paintings include both animals side by side. The tigers themselves looked somewhat strange because artists had never actually seen one. Their understanding came entirely from imported goods and secondhand descriptions, forcing them to make educated guesses.
I had hoped to arrive in time for a guided tour, but true to form, we missed it by five minutes after accidentally boarding a local train instead of an express train and then struggling to find the correct bus stop for the castle. The whole thing was a bit nuts and I probably could have handled it better. Oh well. Time management has never been my forte. Navigating that with four boys who struggle with it even more than I do is already challenging enough. Add in a foreign transportation system operating in a language we could not begin to decipher, and I probably should have offered all of us a little more grace. Looking back, getting everyone there in one piece was always more important than making the tour on time.
All in all, we spent two hours traveling to the castle, two hours exploring it, and two hours getting home. Still, I was glad the boys had the chance to see how different Japan’s castles are from those in places like Europe and India. We talked about Japan’s minimalist aesthetic and cultural emphasis on flowing with nature. The boys noticed how everything in Japan seemed intentionally placed. We did not get too deep into what it means to live with that kind of intentionality, though the idea has quietly lingered in the back of my mind ever since, especially when I look around my own house. Books, shoes, clothes, and toys strewn about. Placeless.
Nijo Castle’s gardens are stunning and exude Zen design. I could have stayed there for days soaking in the calm they created. For a brief moment, I even imagined redesigning our yard at home so I could experience that kind of peace anytime I wanted. Then reality kicked in. It is hard to imagine transforming an untamed forest into a Zen garden, and if I am being honest with myself, I would never maintain it anyway.
After so much walking over the weekend and then switching to brand-new shoes, the boys’ feet were beginning to hurt. Not exactly ideal timing considering we had two days at Universal Studios Osaka starting the next morning. Throughout much of the outing, the boys kvetched endlessly and struggled to control their bodies, making it hard to believe they were learning or appreciating anything from the experience. In fact, each of them did a marvelous job conveying the impression that they could not possibly care less about what they were seeing. And yet, they stopped to read nearly every sign, taking turns serving as the public reader for our little group and getting annoyed whenever we moved on too quickly. That night, they even told Chaim that Nijo Castle was “cool.”
As grateful as I was that the excursion had not been for naught, by the end of the day I was completely spent from carrying everyone else’s frustration while trying to contain my own.
