30 kinds of wonderful: 10. Spirited Away.
(Image sourced from here).
OK, so I’m doing this thing where I’m counting down to my 30th birthday with 30 kinds of wonderful. If you need to catch up, just start here.
Now let’s go!
10. Spirited Away
OK, so today I’m taking a different tack. So far most of my “wonderful” things have been, well, big. Things like overseas travels, and major creations, and suchlike.
But the truth is, small things can be wonderful too. Sometimes a song, a book or a film will move something within you, and maybe even shift the way you look at the world.
Well, for me, Spirited Away did just this.
If there’s one thing I deeply loathe, it’s listening to people describe the plot of films. It’s awful. So I’ll spare you. Just watch it instead.
(One note, however – I’m personally not a fan of the Disney dubbed version, as seen here. The subtitles sit better with me…).
Spirited Away comes back to me at odd, unexpected moments. While in Japan, whenever I’d notice a tiny shrine by the side of a road or path I’d feel a little shiver of wonder.
You can imagine my joy when we found a tiny mountain path in the hills of Kyoto, followed it for a while, and found this sign.
Magic bears and some evil snapping bird spirits? Perhaps. It turned out that the path led to a cemetery, snowed in and so very quiet.
Recently, The Atlantic published a photo essay on “China’s Abandoned Wonderland”, which instantly transported me back to the magical locations within Spirited Away. How melancholy these images are.
(Photos by Reuters/David Gray)
Ooh, I want to sit down and watch it again right now…
To be continued tomorrow…
Beautiful photographs.
[...] Magical, mystical, mountainside hot spring bath houses I mentioned this already in my Spirited Away post but here is a bit of a photographic record of what we found. Unmarked, halfway up this [...]