We didn't bring the guidebooks with us on the Japan world tour. They would have taken up too much room in our backpacks. Instead I carried a small plastic case full of note cards and small train maps. Each note card told me the name of a place and directions to get there from our hotel.
One of them said "Nanzen-ji" and under it the words "temple with zen garden". I knew that somewhere I had read about a Zen garden with raked gravel and carefully placed stones. Without my guidebooks, the only way of checking if this was the one was by going there and seeing for ourselves.
Nanzen turned out to be a beautiful, but otherwise unremarkable garden. It had a pond and a bridge arching over a spring and the ground was covered in moss between the foot trails. I was a little disappointed.
But just outside the garden we found something else that caught our attention: aqueducts.
From the ground we could see only a series of brick arches, stained with the passage of water and time. It reminded me of a train trestle.
But when we climbed the stone steps set into the side of the hill we found a deep trench of flowing water. A tiny wooden footbridge let us cross the aqueduct to an access path on the other side.
The path was deserted and quiet. I wanted to turn back, afraid we shouldn't be there. The drop down the side of the hill was steep, broken only by saplings and bamboo stalks. If we fell of the path it would be an unpleasant trip down. Falling the other direction, into the cold rushing water, didn't seem like a fun time either.
"They wouldn't have put a bridge there if they didn't want people up here." He was right. Besides, the path was more than wide enough for us to walk side by side without any danger of falling.
So, Grant and I walked along, accompanied by the sound of running water and our quiet conversation. At some point I looked around and realized we could be anywhere in the world. Trees, chill air, running water and a dirt path - if I stumbled upon this very scene in the woods of Maine it wouldn't have shocked me. We were half way around the world, and yet the world was exactly the same.
It was almost surprising to come out of the trees and see temples and family tombs laid out below us.
As we left the place I named Aqueduct Park, we stopped so Grant could take my picture on the steps of the huge gates to the complex of temples.
I guess it wasn't much like Maine after all.
I leave you today with a Zen proverb, "When you seek it, you cannot find it."
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