I venture out with guidance. Notes and maps 
and Lonely Planet. On my own, I'm lost 
within three blocks (that look alike, and also different, 
their quaint neat knowable dimensions  
mocking my Lost Boy moue). 
Like a would-be swimmer at summer’s brink, 
I plink my toe beyond the threshold. 
Pittypat down the sparkling street. 

Turn right, left, hold my breath 
                                                        the earth 
might just evaporate beneath me. 

To return to quarters, I turn south 
(where’s that sun?) and walk commandingly 
to the corner where the cherry tree 
has flung its tattered paper on the pavement,
jewel-tinged. Yesterday's blue noon showers 
swept the blossoms down, a grace of season’s painting. 

Office-bound, the early bicyclists churn by, 
eying me in my foreigner's gear, my foreigner's walk. 
Cars and lorries crowd the narrow lanes 
and pause like neat-eyed buffalo at intersections 
where I peer this way and that, 
the not-so-great white hunter, 
unsure of every other step, 
out to get some breakfast pastries. 

Turn left at the boutique Buddhist temple
with its bright new wood and crisp prayer flags. 
Its reassuring plaque in lucid English 
stating that the temple went up on this site 
in the 10th Century. Recently rebuilt 
after burning down. Again. Rendered 
to cinders and refashioned over and over, 
centuries along. 

The history of Japan, a Phoenix culture 
whose flowers bloom through ashes of the past. 
Because desire and respect 
and spiritual hunger
will not give way 
to mere flames.

Halfway down the block, on the left, 
I turn into the narrow alley by the hair salon 
called Singe. Which I can't help but read 
as the French word for monkey.
It winks at me as I step along, my courage rising 
(fingertips outstretched can almost touch both walls), 
to our lodging’s Hallelujah Stoop. 

Back to the home tree. 
Who's the monkey here? 
The sign might giggle with me, 
if it could.