Wanderland Writers in Japan!

Wandering in Japan: The Spirit of Tokyo, Kyoto and Beyond by Wanderland Writers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Editors (and writers) Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Laurie McAndish King have really hit their stride in their Wandering in Japan: The Spirit of Tokyo, Kyoto and Beyond. 

A nice big volume of travel essays, stories and poems with super photos, prints and painting reproductions, elegant bullet points, helpful glossary and writer biographies.

They “threw out the rules” and included several of their own best pieces among those sometimes covering the exact same locations through the eyes of different writers like veteran travel writers Joanna Biggar, Anne Sigmon and Tania Romanov as well as “visitors” Rob “Tor” Torkildson, Lowry McFerrin and others, with a foreword by Don George.

The variety of tones and viewpoints, often deeply introspective as well as sense-descriptive and detailed, is well-modulated to give a broad view of a culture so unlike America the respect it deserves. We are more influenced by Japan and Asia, especially on the West Coast, than we think.

Highly recommended to both armchair and actual travelers; and an open door to inner and outer evolutions and cultural changes, too.

(Published as “Six Creative! Human! Dynamic! Solutions!” in Knox Book Beat, The Berkeley Times, 21 September, 2023.)
 

It has been an immense comfort and pleasure to read six books filled with original, inspiring, clever and profound observations, images and ruminations on creativity, the arts, humans, world cultures and travel. 

Mary Mackey, Phyllis Grilikhes, Archana Horsting, Elizabeth C. Herron, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Laurie McAndish King, Alan Bern, Joanna Biggar, Anne Sigmon, Tania Romanov Rob “Tor” Torkildson, Lowry McFerrin and Don George. 

#bookpassage #anthropology #arts #art #dance #rhythm #movement #poetry #writers #creativity #social #humanrelations #peace #travel #japan #kyoto #tokyo

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