Weed Scene | About the application for Kyoto Stay

A small interim summary and reflection based on my application for a short stay in front of Shizinoji Temple in Kyoto.

Hello, Mengfan Liaotaro!

Most of the time, I live in Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan.

Last spring, I went to northern Japan and loved it. I was pleasantly surprised to see your article inviting me to stay here on WeChat. This is exactly the ideal place to stay and the ideal way to wander around that I want to experience. I am very happy that you can do this, pure and natural, and it even makes me want to share my home in the future.

After receiving your email, I thought about it for a long time, but I didn't know how to reply. Maybe it's easier to summarize other people's lives. But it's not easy for me to summarize my own life. I even asked my friend how to describe my current life more accurately? He said: "I am outside of real life, neither here nor there." Yes, my current life is probably what he described.

I did write some diary entries, but they are too long to be posted here, so I put them at the end if you want to read them.

In the past six years, I have lived and worked in Dali, Yunnan. Because I like mountains, wild vegetables and mushrooms, I was lucky enough to have a job related to mushrooms and wild vegetables. Therefore, most of the days are spent in the mountains.

My daily work is to take the participants to the mountains to collect mushrooms and introduce them to the toxicity and characteristics of mushrooms. Then we classify the mushrooms together, have a picnic on the spot, and taste the edible mushrooms we have collected.

Mushrooms only grow in the summer, so outside of the summer, I have a lot of free time.

Half a month ago, I drove a van and came to Yangshuo, Guilin with my dog. We rented a small room here and planned to stay for a month.

Yangshuo has the same rich nature as Dali. Currently, my daily life is to study English in my room in the morning and at noon. In the afternoon, I will drive to a nearby village to find a place to cook a picnic. I explore Yangshuo by finding different picnic "kitchens". Currently, I have six "kitchens" located in different villages.

In theory, this kind of life can also be carried out in Dali. But for me, it is necessary to live here. I need this kind of air that can only be found in an unfamiliar environment. Here, I don’t have any social interaction, and I only focus on the small things happening around me every day. This is also part of the reason why I want to apply for a short-term stay.

The Ogawa Tofu Shop you mentioned in your WeChat article reminded me of the scenes in the Japanese drama "A Little Home in Kyoto" that I watched before. At that time, I only watched a few episodes, thinking that I couldn't watch too much. If I watched too much, I was afraid that there would be too many stereotyped scenes in my mind, so I thought it might be better to leave it to myself to explore.

“We often sigh that grandparents are turning what they love into art. When the whole world is losing its perception of beauty, these places still retain a delicate awareness and a demand for texture; it is not deliberate at all, it just exists. Kyoto’s antiquity and slowness support these existences, and these hidden corners also balance the tilt and uneasiness of the larger world.”

I really like what you wrote, and it is also the part I would mainly like to explore if I have the opportunity to visit the site.

Regarding the question of "I seem to be looking for something" and "I know the direction I want to explore", I think this way: Maybe I will live in "searching" and "exploring" all my life. Because I am sure that I will not need to achieve any worldly success in my life.

If possible, I don't want to set any specific limits for my life. Today, if I think this is fun, I will try it. Tomorrow, if I like something else, I can still learn something else from scratch. As long as I feel good about doing something, I will explore it.

Recently, I am learning English so that I can better study and explore other things in the future. However, no matter what I learn in the future, it will probably only be different in the form of expression.