Unfinished
‘’You understand a place only when you have seen it in all seasons’’. That’s what Miku told us while teaching us how to dye with indigo in a tiny Tohoku mountain village. 
Wanting to know the 4 seasons of Minamisanriku, she quit her job in Osaka and moved to this mountain place where she can enjoy a drink at night while watching the sea and the fireflies —after managing her indigo workshop, building a bed&breakfast and looking into other ways to revive this village, heavily hit by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. 
I am abandoning Sendai and Tohoku in the middle of its season-story.
Now, in the rainy season, we have just visited the cedar forest of Haguro-san- the mountain of the present, one of the Dewa Sanzan: the three sacred mountains in the Yamagata prefecture. It was just like stepping into a Miyazaki anime. I think it would be more than natural to wait for the hot summer, which apparently is one of the conditions to enjoy the much beloved autumn. And then back to the sunny and dry winter.
But, difficult to believe, we will just leave tomorrow. The airplane will take me riding backwards on my donkey looking at Sendai.
Yudono-san is the mountain of the future. There was much water - waterfalls, small rivers- and then after being purified by the shinto master with his harai-gushi we had to wipe ourselves with paper dolls and throw them into a rivulet. We could not take any pictures. Few more steps and then there was it: the Shinto shrine. This Shinto shrine is not a building. It looked like a small volcano of red rock erupting hot water. It did look alive. Who could doubt that it was a kami? I was deeply moved and so were Jeroen and Isabella. We climbed the hot water source holding on some railings, while our feet were covered in hot water. After the short climb (20 steps?) a spot with an amazing view opened up and one could pray there, to the landscape.
A different experience from the one of seeing Fuji-san looking as blue as in some Hokusai prints. But both of them are experiences of a kind I was not familiar with. And then again I strongly react to places - sometimes with deep aversion, which makes me want to run away (this never happened to me in Japan) and sometime, with a feeling of being at home, of embeddedness. Sometimes with a feeling of peace, such as at a pottery workshop, or a a tea ceremony place.
The new reaction I am learning here is this feeling of awe and being moved by the landscape and its energy.
The new reaction I am learning here is this feeling of awe and being moved by the landscape and its energy.
Yesterday I emptied my office. Then the philosophy department at the Graduate School of Arts and Letters of of Tohoku University threw an amazing dinner party for me and my family - it was at a very special restaurant that had been the residence of the Date family —i.e. family of the famous Date Masamune who founded Sendai in 1600.
The type of cuisine was kaiseki —many small dishes— which, this time, came out of chests of drawers placed on the table! My colleagues had lovely speeches. About seeing me for the first time in Utrecht looking so young that they took me for a PhD student, about re-thinking of our lunches during which I was talking either of Dogen or of my travels around Japan; thanking me for making the students so involved and enthusiastic during the classes comparative philosophy I taught...
Among the many things I thanked them for were the amazing Dogen reading sessions, where I could really see the words made of kanji and hiragana that Dogen used to communicate his thought and discuss every line making innumerable connections; I thanked them for the openness, courage and care they put in organizing the international Dogen workshop. In fact, on June 22 Dogen's thought was the theme of the annual Husserl Abend, which —for the first time in 51 years— had been devoted to a Medieval Japanese thinker. The workshop was a great success, with many people in the audience, all asking excellent questions even one hour after the scheduled time for the meeting was over.
Among the many things I thanked them for were the amazing Dogen reading sessions, where I could really see the words made of kanji and hiragana that Dogen used to communicate his thought and discuss every line making innumerable connections; I thanked them for the openness, courage and care they put in organizing the international Dogen workshop. In fact, on June 22 Dogen's thought was the theme of the annual Husserl Abend, which —for the first time in 51 years— had been devoted to a Medieval Japanese thinker. The workshop was a great success, with many people in the audience, all asking excellent questions even one hour after the scheduled time for the meeting was over.
Do we really leave the season story unfinished? I suspect that it does not make sense to think so. There would never be a perfect moment to leave; never a moment when all things are finished. If there was, it would be a pretty scary moment. Even what conventionally seems to finish always inaugurates something new. If I were wise I might experience sequences of little rebirths, every day.
"Beingtime necessarily has flowers and fruits" says Dogen. At any moment, anything that happens or we do is the fruit of previous flowers and the flower of future fruits.
Who knows what new flowers and new fruits will come.
I guess it does not make much sense to wonder too much about the fruits when the flowers are in bloom.
Nor it makes sense to cry about the end of flowers when the fruits are ripening.
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