Japan Travel Notes — Learning to Be with Time Through Wood, Fire, and Gaps

July 2025, Hakone · Mount Fuji · Tokyo, 10 days November–December 2025, Kansai autumn — Wakayama · Kumano · Nara · Kyoto, 15 days It’s March 2026. I’m sitting in a café in Siem Reap writing this. Two kilometers outside the window is Angkor Wat — those sandstone corridors, each stone hundreds of years old, the whole complex like it’s wrestling with time through volume, through weight, through stone that will never rot. ...

December 15, 2025 · 14 min · 2875 words · Xinwei Xiong