Late night musings from a temple town

It's just past midnight here in Nara, and I'm sitting by the window of my small hotel room, watching the empty street below. The temperature has dropped to a comfortable 21°C, and there's something peaceful about this hour – the town completely still, just the occasional distant sound of a train.

I should be sleeping. Tomorrow's forecast shows it climbing to 31°C by afternoon, which means I'll want to be out early again. But my mind is restless in a different way than usual – not the "I need to leave" restlessness, but the kind that comes from processing too much beauty in too short a time.

This morning – or rather, yesterday morning now – I watched the sun rise over Kasuga Taisha. Then I stumbled into that cat art festival in Naramachi. Two completely different experiences, separated by just a few hours. The sacred and the whimsical. The ancient and the contemporary. Both so purely Japanese in their own ways.

I keep thinking about that elderly woman at the gallery, how she carefully wrapped my prints in tissue paper, then in brown paper, then tied it all with string. The precision of it. The care. It probably took her five minutes to wrap two small prints, but she never rushed. Just like the shrine priest this morning, going through his preparations with that same unhurried attention.

There's a lesson in that, I think. Though I'm not sure I'm ready to learn it yet.

The quiet hours

I've been in Nara for four days now, and I'm starting to understand why people say it has a different energy than Kyoto. It's not just that it's smaller – though at 350,000 people compared to Kyoto's 1.5 million, it definitely is. It's something about the pace. Even the deer seem less frantic here than the crowds photographing them.

This evening, after the rain cleared, I walked back through the park around 20:00. Most tourists had left. The deer were settling down for the night, some already lying in those perfect sphinx-like poses they do. A few stragglers were still hoping for crackers, but without the daytime urgency.

I found myself just sitting on a bench near Kofuku-ji's five-story pagoda, watching the light fade. The pagoda was lit up, reflected in a puddle from the earlier rain. A photographer had set up a tripod to capture it, but otherwise, I was alone.

Well, not entirely alone. A deer wandered over and settled down about three meters away, close enough that I could hear it breathing. We sat there together for maybe twenty minutes, neither of us doing anything in particular. Just existing in the same space.

It reminded me of something my mother said before I left on this trip. She asked what I was hoping to find, and I gave her some vague answer about self-discovery and changing the world. She just looked at me with that expression she has – the one that says she knows I'm overthinking things – and said, "Maybe you just need to learn how to sit still."

I'm 277 days into this journey, and I'm still not very good at sitting still.

What I'm learning (maybe)

The prints I bought at the festival are leaning against the wall of my room now. One shows a cat sleeping in a doorway of a traditional machiya house. The other is a cat sitting beneath cherry blossoms. Simple images, but there's something about them that captures this feeling I've been trying to name.

Contentment, maybe? Or acceptance?

I came to Japan looking for something – I'm still not entirely sure what. Temples? Trees? Some kind of spiritual awakening? But what I'm finding are these small, quiet moments that don't feel particularly profound when they're happening. It's only later, at midnight, unable to sleep, that I realize they meant something.

Like this morning at the shrine. I was so focused on photographing the lanterns, the architecture, the trees, that I almost missed the real moment – that elderly couple doing their prayers, the complete unselfconsciousness of their devotion. They weren't performing for anyone. They were just... there. Present. Still.

Or the school children I passed on the way back, laughing and teasing each other about which deer had been boldest. Their joy was so immediate, so uncomplicated.

When did I lose that? Or did I ever have it?

Tomorrow's plan (or lack thereof)

I still haven't made it to Isuien Garden. It's been on my list since I arrived, but something keeps pulling me in other directions. The cat festival yesterday. The early morning shrine visit today. Even just sitting with that deer this evening.

Maybe tomorrow. The weather's supposed to be mostly cloudy in the morning before the heat builds, which would be perfect for the garden. Or maybe I'll find myself wandering down another unexpected street, discovering another festival I didn't know existed.

I have 223 days left on this journey. That's still more than half a year. Plenty of time to see gardens. Plenty of time to figure out what I'm doing.

Or maybe – and this is the thought keeping me awake – maybe I don't need to figure it out. Maybe the point is just to keep moving, keep experiencing, keep sitting on benches next to deer in the evening light.

My mother would probably say I'm still overthinking it.

The midnight view

From my window, I can see a vending machine glowing on the corner. It's one of those things that would seem strange anywhere else – a machine selling hot and cold drinks on every block, lit up like a beacon 24 hours a day. But here it just feels right. Practical. Thoughtful, even.

Someone designed that machine to be there at midnight for people like me who can't sleep. Someone stocks it every day. Someone maintains it. It's such a small thing, but it's part of this larger system of care that I keep noticing in Japan.

The wrapped prints. The bowing deer. The shrine priest's methodical preparations. The vending machine at midnight.

All these small acts of attention, adding up to something bigger.

I think I'm going to stay in Nara a bit longer than I planned. Not because I haven't seen everything on my list – though I haven't. But because I'm not quite ready to leave yet. There's something here I'm still learning, even if I can't quite name it.

Plus, I really do want to see those trees at Isuien Garden.

The forecast says it'll be dry tomorrow – well, today now – though warm. Maybe I'll finally make it there. Or maybe I'll find another cat festival. At this point, I'm learning to expect the unexpected.

For now, though, I should probably try to sleep. The early morning light at the shrine was worth waking up for, but my body is definitely feeling all this walking. My phone says I've averaged over 20,000 steps a day since arriving in Nara.

Not bad for someone who spent most of his adult life sitting at a hospital IT desk.

Goodnight from Nara. Or good morning, depending on how you measure these things.