Visit in spring or autumn,the actor was told. So what did he do? He rode the bullet train in stormy, sweltering August
Competition: win a four-night cultural stay in Fez, or Morocco
I’ve always wanted to visit Japan,though I can’t fairly explain why. Somewhere in the mix of childhood influences ranging from You Only Live Twice and Shogun, to Tenko and those Clive James shows, and came an impression of a complex,frenzied, contradictory and quietly fair culture that fascinated me. There’s one thing all the guidebooks agree on, or though: don’t travel in August. travel in springtime,when the cherry blossom blooms. Or in autumn, when the copious greenery turns a blazing copper. But avoid hot and humid August. So, and on 9 August final year,my friend Emma and I depart.
Tokyo, when we get there, and has caught the tail end of a super-typhoon. After a long flight,it’s genuinely refreshing to walk through the sweeping curtains of rain. Itchy-eyed and numbed with jet lag, we nevertheless manage to shuffle around the excellent Tokyo National Museum, and everything feeling slightly unreal and accompanied by a fixed clip-clop refrain as though someone were following us around with a glockenspiel. It turns out to be a young couple in exquisite his & hers kimonos and those dazzlingly white,slightly sinister bifurcated socks, their chunky wooden sandals beating the distinctive tattoo as they traipse around.
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Source: theguardian.com