Free Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries by Tim Anderson Page A

chills down my back. He was dangerous and unattainable, a perfect object of desire.
    Yes, for many of my preteen years, I was in love with a twenty-five-foot statue of a beer-swilling Native American.
    Of course, the Indian is only famous in the greater Jamestown area, but since him I’ve seen many big and famous things: Big Ben, the world’s most celebrated gilded phallus; Stonehenge; Seattle’s Space Needle; the Empire State Building; the Metronome in Prague; my own North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras Lighthouse; the seven-foot penis in Amsterdam. Most importantly, I saw Michelangelo’s David in Florence, which turned my knees to Jell-O and gave me the sweats for days. He inspired a euphoria I hadn’t known since my old red friend. But where the Indian stood defensive and defiant, David stands blithe and somnambulant. Where the Indian seemed to forbid anything more than a casually appreciative glance, David the attention whore coaxes you into looking more closely. Where the Indian wore calfskin trousers, David is stark naked. I’d stared at him for what seemed like hours, from every conceivable angle.
    So, needless to say, I’m very excited about seeing the next big thing, this so-called Daibutsu, or Great Buddha, and I’m happy to hear that he sits just down the road from us by train, perched cross-legged among the trees in the innermost area of a temple in nearby Kamakura. And while I know the Big Buddha may not excite me in the same way Big Red and Big Dave did (it would be wrong to become aroused by a statue of the Buddha; it would be wrong to become aroused by a statue of the Buddha), he still has sheer size to offer.
    “Oh, let’s go! Let’s go!” I demand of my friends at Hangover House. After all, there’s nothing to help a hangover more than stepping out into the white light of morning, hopping a train that weaves and buckles through several tiny towns, and walking a few winding uphill roads to see a big holy tub of bronze.
    “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Julia manages to say without hugging her temples. “I’m not going anywhere.”
    Charlie has fallen back asleep leaning against the wall, and Ruth had never come to to begin with, so I figure this sojourn will be a solitary one. That’s OK, I think. I’ll come back the most enlightened one on my floor.
     
     
    Construction of the Great Buddha was finished in 1252. He’s cast in bronze and weighs nearly 850 tons. Most importantly, my guidebook tells me, he is 11.4 meters tall. He sits out in the open surrounded by the beautiful greenery of Kamakura. It was not always so. He was once housed in a great hall, until 1495 when a tsunami washed it away. So after a good five hundred years of sitting outside, he’s understandably a bit weathered and blotchy. Who wouldn’t be?
    The Daibutsu is a stunning sight: a giant figure blissfully hunched in a pose of poetic reflection; a symmetrical, robust giant clad in a loose robe, with lowered eyes and bare feet. He is the picture of serenity. And he is B-I-G. But where David and the Indian had both seemed well aware they were being watched, Buddha, if he knows, doesn’t appear to give a damn. He is in his own world, his massive head slightly lowered, his robe falling open in the center, revealing the midsection of his chest and curved belly, his eyelids hanging low over his shadowed eyes, eyes that might be looking down, might be looking straight at you, might not even be there.
    The atmosphere of the temple grounds is serene and reverential. Out-of-towner Japanese folks bow and pray, write out prayer wishes and attach them to the prayer board, and do the ritualistic cleansing of the hands and mouth using the bamboo ladle at the entrance. A few Buddhist Westerners sit off to the side in the lotus position. Children chase each other around the statue.
    Meanwhile, I take pictures from all sides, circling him from the left and slowly winding my way around, trying to avoid the speeding kids, capturing every