High End Audio in Japan, Part Six: A Photographic Conclusion

I can’t resist ending this essay with a little photo gallery of some of the breathtakingly beautiful things I saw during my stay in Japan.

The first printed above is a photo of the gate leading to the Kitain Temple in Kawagoe. The second (below) is a photo of the garden path inside the gate.

Below is a beautiful copse of trees with a red Japanese bridge in the distance.

One of my favorites, a genuine Japanese garden taken from the porch of Kawagoe Castle. Earth, air, water, and mind are herein mixed to make an idea of the world—and the world into idea.

The Gohyaku-Rakan Statues on the Kitain grounds are a genuine wonderment. Five-hundred-and-thirty-four individual statues, each unique, each representing one of the five hundred disciples of Buddha. The story goes that you’re supposed to visit this statue garden at night and touch the head of each statue with your hand. The one that feels warmest you should mark. When you return in daylight the particular statue you marked will be the one that looks most like you!

I have scores of photos—Japan is a photographer’s paradise—but I’ll end this essay with two that I think rather symbolize the Japan I saw and would love to see again: A Japanese man in stately traditional garb riding a very twentieth-century bicycle, and a statue of the Buddha in a garden.