Back on Shikoku, during the two-hour express train ride to Iya Gorge, a Japanese man complimented me on "the very nice Japanese way you use chopsticks." I was absurdly pleased.
Yeah, that only gets old after the 1,000th time you've heard it.Hmmmm... I guess you could consider 2,000 years as "thousands".Hagi is a medieval town famous for its potters and its 17th-century samurai houses. On the train as we approached, Steve's electronic whisper spoke to us of thousands of years of Japan's lust for pots, of step kilns and crackle glaze, of generations of potters. Through fields of cosmos we walked from potter to potter. We stroked their glazes, choked over their prices, lost our heads and proffered credit cards.
That's probably the best explanation I've heard of wabi-sabi.My favorite was the work of Hamanaka Gesson, displayed in his absolutely perfect traditional house. We were served green tea in bowls that looked very like first-grade efforts. That effect is called wabi-sabi, a cherished achievement in the spontaneous and lighthearted.
