Japan

While watching the news about the horrors in Japan and researching books, I came across a beautiful little gem. It is a book published in 1908 written as the diary of an American woman working as a kindergarten teacher in Hiroshima. Here is a quote "Fairy-land, real true fairy-land that we used to talk about up in the old cherry tree at grandmother's! It's all so, Mate, only more bewitching than we ever dreamed. I have been in little villages that dropped right out of a picture book. The streets are full of queer small people who run about smiling, and bowing and saying pretty things to each other. It is a land where everybody seems to be happy, and where politeness is the first commandment. . . In the afternoon, we wandered over the island, visiting the old, old temples, listening to the mysterious wailing of the wind bells, feeding the deer and crane, and drinking in the beauty of it all. I felt like a disembodied spirit, traveling back, back over the centuries, into dim forgotten ages. The dead seemed close about me, yet they brought no gloom, for I too was dead. All afternoon I had the impression of trying to keep my consciousness from drifting into oblivion through the gat of this magical dream!
How would you enjoy it all, and read its deeper meaning, which is hidden from me. But even if I can’t philosophize like a certain blessed old Mate of mine, I can feel until every nerve is a tingle with the thrill.
It is so surreal that I had to pause - so much loss. There are almost no words that seem adequate.