Glastonbury Half Full

Last Thursday I took Ayako back to Glastonbury, mostly to meet up with Eriko Kawanishi, my anthropologist friend, who has been studying the religious practices of Glastonburians for many years now. I feel a bit jealous of her, because she was able to leave her Osaka university to come here for a few weeks (albeit some quarantine was necessary), whereas I've had to cancel (for the third time) my flight to Japan, where I was due to spend 6 weeks this autumn to research my new book. If only I'd been an Olympic-level athlete they might have let me in, but I left it a bit late to train up, and so must do the best I can without access to a Japanese library.

Anyway, while in Glastonbury I bought a postcard book that I'd noticed last time I was there, called Crap Views of Glastonbury Tor, and we spent a happy morning recreating the various views therein. You can see a few at of the cards at the book's website. Their irreverence is amusing of course, but I couldn't help be reminded - perhaps because I was with two Japanese friends - of the "Views of Mount Fuji" sequences of Hokusai and Hiroshige, in which Fuji-san is often discreetly nestled, Where's Wally style, in the background of a mundane scene. And so here with Glastonbury Tor, Somerset's Fuji, hiding behind a recycling plant or the local KFC.

Magic is where you can find it.