Les Aventures d'une Baroudeuse en carton // Tales of a Novice Adventurer.
Japanese Delights
Momijigari 紅葉狩りis the autumnal counterpart of hanami. It literally means “Autumn leaves hunting”. As a matter of fact, in Japan as in Canada, maple trees are colouring the streets with different shades of warm colours during Fall. This reddening of the leaves is called kôyô (紅葉) – as you can notice, the kanjis are the same ones found at the beginning of Momiji!
A story of çäkçäk, love at first sight in Kyoto and the God Yue Lao’s mailbox.
As this new show’s topic initiated by Emilie is a wonderful subject for wordplays (let’s talk about shamanic trance as well as trance music, transsexuality and transgression), I chose today to tell you how I didn’t take the Trans-Siberian train.
Hanami is the perfect beauty made by Mother Nature. The reminder of how ephemeral life is. That life doesn’t last. And that the beauty of it is actually its ephemeral state. We wouldn’t pay this much attention to blooming sakura if they were blooming for a long time. The fact that it’s lasting just a few days makes it even more beautiful, yet magical.
This reader’s cave of wonders is a piece of heaven, because, as it’s advertised on the Book and Bed website, any serial reader knows the feeling of telling yourself “okay, just one more chapter” before falling sound asleep, your mouth wide open and the book’s pages glues on your cheek. At Book and Bed, you can. The place is designed for reading, reading, reading, and incidentally sleeping and sipping tea or coffee by the bay window.
One day, though, I got this postcard from Japan. My very first postcard from Japan. From Noriko, a Japanese mum. It was a Nausicaa postcard (if you never watched this Studio Ghibli anime, now you know what to do tonight). It was everything we needed to start an epistolary friendship between the poor 27 years old unemployed French girl that I was and this Japanese ukulele player housewife.
I’m a bit nervous, starting to think that maybe Teiichi’s endeavour won’t be free of charge if you see what I mean. What do Japanese guys dream of? Do they dream about blondie European girls in their hentai’s fantasies? He introduces me to Hamachan, makes me put down Monster in the backroom, introduces himself a bit. He’s working in the Publishing industry. What a coincidence since I used to be a bookseller! As the Japanese tradition dictates, he gives me his business card. He’s often on the phone, seems like he’s calling people to find me a place to sleep tonight. He says I should relax, he’s going out to find me some place. What the hell is going to happen to me?
Ex-libraire, boulimique d’images et de rêveries en papier. Reconvertie en agent de voyages adepte de nouveaux horizons. Reconvertie en apprentie baroudeuse. Baroudeuse en carton depuis 2015 en Nouvelle-Zélande, au Japon, à Bali, à Singapour, à Taïwan, à Hong-Kong, en Equateur et au Mexique. J’ai chopé la bougeotte et je compte bien ne pas m’arrêter là.
A former bookseller, who couldn’t get enough of pictures and paper dreams. Retrained as a Travel Agent, who couldn’t get enough of new travel inspirations. Retrained as a novice adventurer. Novice Adventurer since 2015 in New Zealand, Japan, Bali, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong-Kong, Ecuador and Mexico. I caught the travel bug and I won’t stop anytime soon.
Let’s take a walk with me!