Tetsugakudo Park
It's a scene from Perfect Days , I say to Luther and Jaylord, my friends for more than twenty years. They don’t understand the pop culture reference off the bat, but they listen, perceptive as ever. As we walk around Tetsugakudo Park, hiding under the shade to shield us from the summer heat, I explain: It’s a movie directed by Wim Wenders about a man who cleans toilets and lives a simple life. He reads a book at night and wakes up early in the morning. He takes a break at lunch, eats onigiri (or am I imagining that part?), and enjoys “the sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees.” The Japanese call it komorebi. The film won’t make sense anywhere else but in Japan, a country that isn’t quite like any other place I’ve been to. We briefly rest on a bench and sip iced tea we got from a vending machine. I look up and witness the gentle dancing of trees, tickled by the intermittent whispers of the summer wind. They look gr...