For much of the year, the travel writer is on the road, circling the globe to various hot spots; it’s a job that keeps Iyer’s feet and mind squarely grounded in the “real” world. He also spends time with his elderly mother, who lives alone in the California hills, and makes annual visits to a Northern California monastery, “but I try each year to be back in Japan for the season of fire and farewells,” he says. “Cherry blossoms, pretty and frothy as schoolgirls’ giggles, are the face the country likes to present to the world, all pink and white eroticism; but it’s the reddening of the maple leaves under a blaze of ceramic-blue skies that is the place’s secret heart.”

Source: Los Angeles Times April 16, 2019 22:18 UTC