Memories of the Old Days

I was coasting along through the sunny countryside of Asuka when the wind blew my hat from my head. I instinctively reached up to grab it with my left hand while braking with my right. The brake stuck, and while the front wheel clung to the asphalt, I flew over the handlebars and landed splat in the middle of the warm road. I think I may have learned something about taking headfirst dives in frisbee, though, because I came down with my head away from the ground and my knees and hands only slightly skinned. The hole in my sleeve and the skid marks down the front of my shirt look just like I'd been playing ultimate. I think I fared pretty well for the first time falling off of a bike since I was in grade school.

So yesterday I went down to Asuka, the area of the first official capitals in Japan. My friend and I saw old burial tombs, some made out big rocks. One was called Ishibutai, the Stone Stage, because it was made with large slabs of rocks. We toured the rolling countryside on our rent-a-bikes, pausing at the mysterious carved stones scattered throughout the plain- monkeys, turtles, the orgres toilet, and two-faced stones that no one knows the origins of. We ate the sweetest strawberries I have ever eaten, freshly picked from the greenhouse. Stopping in at a few temples, we admired the sites of the first Buddhist temple built in Japan, and the birthplace of Shotoku Taishi, early Japan's greatest encourager of Buddhism. Sadly, we were two or three days early for the cherry blossoms (my friend is an ecologist, he can tell these things), but the landscape was dotted with yellow, pink, and white flowers of all varieties. It was a lovely, leisurely day in old Yamato.