space for plants 2 – another country
those three weeks travelling about in my second home recently, got me noticing things i’d already known but hadn’t seen as a thread before that.
people often asked me how it felt to be back in japan after a ten-year gap, and it was hard to explain. it was not like what i was told was the rip van winkle experience of suddenly waking up in the same place and not remembering the time having passed… i was aware that many of my memories of place had been erased – and mainly because when i saw them again i remembered them anew… thus the time having passed was highlighted for me. but at the same time, i felt at home – at ease, not worried – i knew how to get about, how to get things done, everything seemed second nature to me. although i had often felt that i had forgotten how to speak japanese, as soon as i got out of the plane, japanese came out of my mouth unbidden. for me, amusing and very useful.
One thing that i began to notice differently was the presence of plantlife. the attitude or orientation towards plants is not the same as in the west. i do not know how to describe ‘from the inside’ what i feel is this peculiarly japanese orientation, but i did start to observe elements of the urban streetscape in japan, notice relative differences, and then started trying to account for them in my own mind – as maybe related to constraints on space in japan – or at least urban constraints of various kinds.
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