I miss Japan!

I don't think I've recovered from the Japan trip yet. Half of me still thinks that the trip has not yet happened. I still expect to go on the trip when its already over! Sort of an anti-climactic feel actually. Weirdly I am also experiencing Japan withdrawal symptoms. I still surf wistfully to Japan Guide. Two nights ago I watched Japan Hour and sighed. I still check the weather forecast for Tokyo. I walk along Riang and see fallen leaves and I am back in the lanes of Kyoto, wondering if more of the leaves have turned or if more have fallen. I now push my water heater to its hottest and still feel dissatisfied - ah, the rotemburo has spoilt me. In a crowded MRT train with Owain the other day, we both reminisce about what it was like on the train in Tokyo. And he still asks me from time to time: Mum, how many more days before we go to Japan? I laugh and sigh. I've just got that restless, dissatisfied feeling of yearning. I yearn to go back. I have not seen enough, absorbed enough of Japan.

I guess it will take a while before I get out of it. After all, I have been planning for this for almost a year and to have it just fly by in 9 days is really heart-jolting.

I do want to go back. I say that I want to go back by myself. Or maybe with a good girl friend. Or with mum. But I also know that I will miss Kyoto as it was with the children. The place will now echo with memories of this trip. It will hold images of Gillian, Isaac, Caitlin, Owain and baby Trinity as they were. Would that add to a place? Or detract from a new perspective? I said before that I sensed that Japan can be a 'lonely' place, where one finds solitude even in a crowd. Having been there, I still think so. I wonder if I ever go again, with these old echoes and ghosts of this trip, maybe I will feel even lonelier than before. I was right though - there is something about that place that speaks to me. I'm trying to pin it down. Its not like how I also love Venice or Rome - different. I love those places, but Japan is special. It speaks to me in a way, in a place within that those other places don't, much though I love them.

One place that my mind keeps straying to is Rakushisha (the Hut of Fallen Persimmons) in Arashiyama, Kyoto. Just a hut with one or two rooms, screens that open the room entirely to the view outside. A tiny earthen floor kitchen. Outside, a small garden. Persimmons hanging from bare branches. The place was filled with tourists when I went, but yet there was something about its compactness and solitude that I really liked. The fact that it was inhabited by a poet, a place where the great Japanese poet Basho stayed for certain periods, its atmosphere of loneliness (there's that word again!) - just appealed to me.

Can you tell? I really enjoyed myself this trip. I wish I could do it all over again. Just press a rewind button somewhere. Okay, this time without dad's bypass. And this time without losing the 38,000yen Burberry bag!!

But obviously I can't ever go back. There is no rewind button. The Big On Trips blog helps - I always say getting it out of the system via writing or talking or doing something always helps one recover after emotional tsunamis like birth, death, loss etc. For me, this trip was like an emotional tsunami. So the blog helps. Writing this here also helps but I think half of you already think I'm nuts to go on like this about a family holiday!

Well, hopefully this coming Malaysia trip will distract me from mooning on about Japan.

We're heading north again - to our favourite haunts in Ipoh, then up to Frasers Hill for the first time, then to KL, Malacca (this time to Pulau Besar). We leave tomorrow and will be back next week.