Great Books, part 1

What I'm Reading Lately...

Coule la Seine, Fred Vargas. France's greatest living crime writer. See what The Guardian has to say about her: "The fact that a French psychiatrist has taken to advising his clients that they would do better reading the books of Fred Vargas than taking Prozac goes some way to explaining their idiosyncratic appeal." Fred is an archeologist and (surprise) a woman: it's short for Frederique. You can get this book for about five bucks (!) on French Amazon. Also check out Pars vite et reviens tard. Heck, check out anything by her. Some translations available on American Amazon, more on the British site.

Sakura Mochi

Snippets of Kyoto to remember:

• Sakura-mochi. We ate one every morning. Freshly made, wrapped in a real cherry leaf, served by a cheerful, plump, middle-aged lady who ran a tiny shop next to the Shirokawa.
• The Shirokawa river. Fifteen or twenty feet wide, and so shallow we saw a pigeon standing in it. Two white ducks lived in tufts of grass at the side of the river. We named them Tetsuya and Miko. We wondered why they had no ducklings, it being early summer, but then we saw a crow grab an egg from an unseen bird's nest and fly away with the egg in its beak. Why can't I find any photos of the river itself on the web? Why didn't we think to take any?
• Shinto shrines. Everywhere. Every neighborhood seems to have one. People leave little porcelain cups of tea as offerings.
  
• Starbucks: they have everything the American Starbucks have, but it's all smaller. The oatmeal-raisin cookies are three inches across instead of six. The frappucinos come in cups four inches tall... and they come in green tea flavor. This is what they serve me when I ask for green tea. I meant actual tea. Oh well. This tells me my Japanese language skills need some work. A beautiful older woman in an exquisite, mulberry and lilac-colored kimono is sitting at a table with her tiny coffee cup.
• Bunny bowls, and the rabbit theme in general: pottery, clothing, pastries, what have you. On Pontocho-dori, a beautiful pedestrian shopping street in Kyoto, we found a tiny shop (they are all tiny; this one was perhaps 10 feet wide) entirely devoted to the bunny theme. Lovely hand-thrown pottery bowls painted with bunnies; lacquered chopsticks with bunnies; bunny-adorned silk or paper fans; and so on. The owner, an artisan aged maybe 60, smiled as we admired (and bought) his handiwork. Is there anything sold in Japan that doesn't come in a rabbit version?