I am sitting on a bench, with my wife, nestled in Japan’s oldest Buddist monastery in Kyoto,. Monks are burning incense in tribute to ancestors long dead, and people passing by drop coins in a little box, the clinking of metal seems oddly out of place. Everything is foreign. The world is rushing by me, almost as quickly as my wife’s mouth moves.
My parents tell me that I would go to sleep at night dreaming of marrying a Japanese woman.
I have been the victim of fascination with the culture of this country for as long as I can remember, and now here I am, married to an elegant and beautiful Japanese woman (and in her home town) on our honeymoon. Still, one question rings through my tortured soul, “how did I get here?”.
She is talking about the new pair of gloves she bought and how they remind her of a pair her friend has. I clench my teeth, and close my eyes…
But I nod my head, I don’t think that she noticed anything I did anyway.
Finally, “Are you alright?” she asks.
“Yeah, I think all the smoke is giving me a headache.” I lied. “Just let me sit here, I need a minute.”
I give her my best grimace face. “Oh,” she said. “Let me know when I can talk again.”
She pulled out her cell phone, and activated the ‘text message’ feature.
I stretched my body over the bench, leaning my head back to look at the intricate woodwork on the ceiling above me. “Beautiful.” I whispered.
“What was that?” she asked, looking over her phone at me.
“I said you are beautiful.”
She smiled, and went back to her phone.
I made the best attempt I could to look around the temple while lying on the bench. I took great pains not to draw much attention to myself. There were great paintings on the west wall, I would have liked to get closer if I could do it without disturbing my wife.
She had lived near this temple for more than 20 years and had never come. When I asked her about it, she said she has no interest in history, “Its over, so why does it matter anyway?” was the way she put it.
She had only ever been to one museum in her whole life, she stated proudly, “and that was on a school fieldtrip, so they made me go.” she said.
I turned my head toward the shrine; the line to pray there had gotten smaller since I had first feigned my headache. My wife was actually speaking into the phone now, in Japanese, so I figured this might be a good time to slip away for a moment.
“Honey, I am going to pray at the shrine, I’ll be right back.” I said.
She nodded her head.
The tourist guide said that people who prayed at the shrine in Kyoto were blessed with good luck and inner peace for the following year. “I could use all the inner peace I can get.” I muttered to myself as I approached the shrine.
I had just kneeled down before the massive golden statue when I heard a rustle beside me. I breathed deeply in an attempt to look involved in my meditation.
“Are you almost done? My friends want us to meet them at the mall in Tokyo in an hour.”
The words “The wife.” scorched red through my mind.
“Honey, can I have three minutes please?” I said with my eyes still closed.
Silence. God blessed silence; and it almost lasted 30 seconds.
“Come on, you said that you would go shopping with me if I brought you to the temple. We had a deal.”
Nails on a chalkboard.
Didn’t she know how long I had dreamed of this moment? How many times I flipped through books about this very temple, and imagined kneeling at this exact spot?
Her face was twisted in annoyance.
“Are you mad?” she asked.
I think that is when I knew. |
