Built of timber over the years from 1601 to 1626 as a residence of the Tokugawa Shoguns, the Nijo Castle in Kyoto is preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage site. I walk in the July heat toward the building’s large winged roof with my daughter Emily, one of her graduate students Laurie, and my eldest grandson Toby. Along with scores of Japanese tourists, we pay our entrance fee in 100-yen coins and cross a moat. I see a sign that says no photographing or sketching allowed. For fear of being chastised, I decide that when I write in my notebook, I will keep it partly in my pocket.

Laurie and Emily have come to Japan for a linguistics conference, and I am here as nanny to six-year-old Toby, who is about to begin his second year in a public school Japanese language immersion program. Emily, who is fluent in Japanese, has noticed that Toby is more willing to talk with her in Japanese when he is surrounded by Kanji and speech sounds he recognizes. When she is at meetings and gatherings, he and I venture into restaurants and stores, and I happily listen to him help me out by ordering his soft-serve ice cream cone, banira, vanilla. Some afternoons, we watch CNN International about sports and the preparations for the Beijing Summer Olympics because the coverage is in English; when the newscast turns to the markets, I am ready to change the channel and find cartoons, but Toby exclaims, “Grandma, don’t switch it. It’s interesting. It’s about the yen!”

He desires to know about the money he is handling each day. All day he fingers the one yen pieces we give him for his pocket; he offers to “bank” our larger yen coins “for free” in his other pocket.

So here we are, four people whose ages span five decades, united in our need to negotiate a foreign culture, united in our desire to gather impressions. It’s all like fingering unfamiliar money, I think, the different shapes and sizes of what we are taking in, the values of our impressions depending on the memories and perceptions they can purchase for our inner stores.

This fourth day of our eight-day stay, we continue toward the entrance to the castle. The Japanese visitors carry washcloths and wear towels around their necks to mop and collect the sweat from walking in the 95-degree temperature with humidity so high that moisture doesn’t evaporate from one’s skin. There are special faucets circled by troughs for rinsing the cloths and wringing them out before replacing them around the neck. Soaked, they help cool a body down.

We proceed with only hankies to mop our brows and necks, stop to take our shoes off before the entrance floor’s tatami mats, then step barefoot onto the mats to stow our shoes in cubby holes. The Hinoki Cypress floors sing when we walk along the castle hall. These are nightingale floors, we learn, or so the Japanese name, uguisu bari (bush warbler) seems to translate; the pressure of footsteps causes a delicate chirping when the slightly raised floor boards are depressed and rub nails against carefully placed clamps, making a sound meant to alert guards to castle intruders.

How delightful it is to make chirping music just by walking, for us to be creating the same sound people made so long ago, to make more music the more we walk together. I no longer feel like an intruder, a stray spark from the 21st century carried inside the castle by a whimsical air current.

Almost used to the sweat-soaked shirts that cling to our skin, we stop to view a wooden panel carved with peacocks on one side and four-legged animals on the other–an achievement that amazes because on both sides the wood is carved through to the other side, yet each side’s carvings appear to be of wildly different scenes and shapes. We cannot begin to figure out how the carvers planned the execution of this phenomenon. We leave that viewing enchanted as I am sure the carvers meant us to leave, and I am pleased I have performed the same duty as so many before me.

 Emily took this photo of a wood carved panel that is outside the building.
It is weathered, but similar to the one inside the castle.

As we walk further along, we approach the emperor’s quarters and realize the nightingale construction stops; our footsteps no longer sing. Laurie conjectures that the emperor wanted privacy concerning his stirrings, the female attendants in his quarters and his sleep.

We pass a sign telling us we will not be able to continue to view the other rooms in this part of the castle grounds because “Today is Under Construction in the Ninomaru Palace.”

Today is under construction. I like the idea of this, the way it makes me think of time as a “making.” Today is under construction. How different that feels from today is scheduled and today is busy.

Today is under construction. I write the phrase sloppily in my half-hidden notebook, but I know that I will not forget it. I repeat what I would never have come up with, and I am exhilarated as together we walk out into the Kyoto sunshine, the July heat that has grown even more intense.

We are heading to an air-conditioned shop for ice cream, matcha, green tea, flavored for the adults and banira again for Toby. Toby jingles the coins in his pocket. Emily is busy reading signs to get us to the shop. Laurie and I chat about our respective mothers’ arthritis and a special herb she found for her mother that’s been effective. And so we walk through the heat, the floorboards of our lives bending and chirping amidst the busy traffic in which no horns honk. When today is under construction, life is a gentle cacophony. We glide somehow, despite the heat.

And I make some promises to myself: If it takes getting away from what is the norm for me to view the world with a fresh lens, I will find ways to do this more often. If it takes getting away from what is the norm for me to cultivate my senses and sensibility and amend the soil where images grow, I will do this more often. If it takes getting away from what is the norm for me to allow my contemplative self to have purchase on the shape of my experience, I will do this more often. And this will frequently be at home, I resolve, without the need to invest the time and money a big trip requires (though those certainly fertilize writing). I will visit a new state park, walk in an unfamiliar neighborhood, find a way to get out on the water and look back at the land. I will read more about the history of my hometown and its environs, listen to tourists here talk about the sights and allow myself to see them anew. I will find nooks and crannies to write from, places I have not thought to sit before. And I will do this with others as well as alone since shared experience allows me to pick up more detail, focus in new ways.

What is most important is to collect and to keep impressions I am intrigued with like unfamiliar coins in my pocket, ones I can’t stop touching, until I can write from them, build them a home, their own castle in which to reside. In this way, today is always under construction.