Read: The Lady and The Monk

Yep, another book by Pico Iyer. Once you land on an author it’s easy to just keep going. I landed on Iyer years ago, but needed to revisit his catalog. Lucky for me, he had something about Kyoto, a city I will visit in the coming weeks. “The Lady And The Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto,” is a beautiful book about love, relationships, language difficulties, lost translations, seasonal change and the elusiveness of Zen. It’s packed with new friends, old friends and the subtleness of Japan’s people and traditions. Iyer goes to Kyoto to live in a monastery and learn about Zen. The same reason a lot of foreigners go to Japan. His experiences transcend the expectations of modern Japan instead focusing on things like silence and the Japan of the literary world. Get it, read it.