Arigato! Gozaimasu! Okini! -- Thank you very much!
description of map:
We visited the hillside of Tori gates at the crack of dawn! Here is a map of the Tori gates on the hillside outside Kyoto. We a walked up the hillside through them using several of the tracks to get to the top. How amazing that over 2,000 individuals and companies had donated them requesting prayers for their concerns! The first ones were placed there over a thousand years ago and are still being added to! Who would have thought they could seem so natural and in place amongst rocks and the trees!
As we hadn't had breakfast we stopped at one of the rest stops seeing hard boiled eggs pile up with a cloth over them and sat down and munched on them with a cup of coffee brought to us by a kind lady in this prayer stop amongst the Toris!
Later we had a delicious meal at a nearby tepanyaki restaurant, called The Teppan Tavern which Nick found for us [online] and booked us a table, only two-hundred yards from our hotel. It was next to a castle Temple in a cellar.
And we knew as soon as we walked through the door, feeling the warm gaze of the owner, who was expecting us, that it was going to be a good experience! I chose soft crabs, tempura style! They we're delicious as we're the beautiful 'oishi', goyoza-dumplings. We shared three Okonomiyaki (steamy simmering omelettes / pancakes, piled high with goodies, as in photo [can you spot his self portrait?] Hedeki describes these as 'soul food' on his menu).
While chatting Hideko gave us tributes and encouragement from the Divine (leaflets like fortune cookies). He is so gentle and smiling while cooking for us at far end of the hotplate/counter/bar where we were sitting! And his wife Nokoro smiled too as she served people at other tables away from the bar!
Arigato! Gozaimasu! Okini!
Means, Thank you very much!
We're learning -- slowly!!
The next day at sunset we walked back from Kyomazo Temple amongst the pine trees on the hills behind Gion in Kyoto, through lovely old streets with cherry blossoms overhead there were many beautiful girls walking downhill in their kimono costumes!
We found a modern tea room! We ordered green tea! It had a tiny pit, as a reading room, with slippers at the top of the three steps down with round cushions so one could read all the art and garden books.
Here's an image painted on a very large imposing canvas, called "Nothing"! It's in the background here in this Tearoom in Japan! It could fill the space but it doesn't🕺🏽It reminds me of Mrs Eddy saying "Error seems to be real but is not"
An early scientist about the time of MBE described matter as
"... a hypothetical swirl in a supposititious ether!"
Where we were sipping tea was a huge Zen painted Japanese-brush swirl in black on a white canvas! When asked about it the solicitous owner serving us, told us it depicted Takomizo's interpretation of ‘Nothing'!
After reading about the Japanese reaction to the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki it seemed incredible to call something by this name that was obviously portraying something out of hand!