#and the person next to me was like a professional calligrapher that brought their own brushes

[cookinguptales]

aceaster said: is the second one fake?

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No. :’)

I was going to Kokedera (Kyoto’s famous moss temple), but you have to have a reservation to go there. The moss there is very fragile and endangered so they do a lot to reduce the number of visitors.

So I was waiting for my reservation time and spotted another temple up the road and I was like ???? Suzumushidera?? Mushi??? Why is the character for “bug” in this temple’s name?

So I climbed the hill and got there just in time for the Buddhist services to begin, and they let me sit in and listen to the (very animated) lecture. The monk spoke really quickly, so I only caught about 3/4 of it, but the part that’s pertinent here is the crickets so like. Yeah, they raise crickets there. HUNDREDS of crickets. You can hear them singing year-round, though bell crickets are usually a seasonal song in Japan.

The story goes that one of the monks that was a caretaker at the temple really, really loved crickets and associated their chirping with meditation and Buddhist values, so they started raising them in a way that they’d sing all year.

I had a lot of fun listening to the lecture and looking at all the lil crickets. And my father, bless him, was so patient with me that day. He went to Kokedera with me even though we had to copy sutras... He went to Suzumushidera with me even though the entire service was in Japanese... :’)

He liked seeing the crickets, though. lmao