By Eric on 2010-02-12
When I take the train ride from Tokyo to Narita, I always think these things: I’d like to live in a place like the above photo. A rural place, with rice fields, that looks hundreds of years old, not too many people around, a river, and a river bank to walk on. Ironically, there’s a dude in the photo perhaps walking his dog doing and living the exact thing I just mentioned.
I want to live in a little hamlet village adjacent to this rural place. It’s 15 houses deep. We might know each other, but that’s how it is. To survive, we have to be good and fair to each other. We might need to share things. There might be a tiny shrine in the area. A store might be sort of far away, but not too far. There are other hamlets like ours and we know them, and are courteous. Once in a while, we all hang out together, perhaps at a festival. The train that flies by, those are the people who have places to go and are super busy. We’re not like that. We have a rice field and it gets us by.
Not too far away is this temple. It’s big and sticks out among the tall trees on a hill. Everyone in the bigger town is shadowed by it. It’s as if it’s a beacon watching over everyone and keep people in check.