Entrance in a traditional café in Kyoto in a winter day.

This image features a traditional cafe in Kyoto. Naturally, it would seem that this is the main subject of the picture….and yet, when I took this photo I was aiming for something else entirely:  the snow!

This cafe is located at the top of a tourist beaten path, climbing from Maruyama Park to the alley in front of the famous Kyomizudera Temple, one of the main Kyoto tourist beating hearts. I have passed by it countless times and I have always been attracted by its entrance and the paper umbrellas above the door.

Almost every time it had a crowd of customers waiting in line to enter to the magic realm.. This is customary in Japan: people queuing outside the entry door of traditional restaurants. Generally, inside were 1-2 rooms with very few seats and the waiting service was following the typical Japanese style that took some time to unfold and reveal. I mean, it was a truly inedit experience to have a meal in one of these places. You would be, of course, sitting directly on the floor, enjoying the tea whose taste made your mouth like a deflating balloon….a sensation of extreme taste, which over time enters your senses and is one of those unforgettable details that over years completes my Japan’s memory jigsaw puzzle.

Since I am not a big fan of queues of any kind, I didn’t go in and I took only a few photos because I wanted to catch it without people around and I couldn’t find the right moment.

But in a morning with bad winter weather, quite a rarity in Kyoto, when I arrived at its doorsteps, a short blast of snow with huge flakes dancing between rain drops started. Back in the day, my camera was “a box of matches”, far inferior to the most common phone today. And yet, I was witnessing a unique event that had to be immortalised as it was. The photographic technique to be employed simply did not matter. The elements of composition were there in front of me, ready to merge into the metaphor. That brown-tinted wooden entrance contrasted perfectly with the white of the snow, and thus provided a valuable “helping hand” to my modest camera aimed to capture the snow flakes befriending rain drops.. With a few common sense settings, I managed to capture a rather rare moment in Kyoto. At the same time, exploring a coincidence, I managed to “stamp” this natural phenomenon with a Japanese tradition token. Japanese paper umbrellas may be the best contributor to this. These apparently extremely fragile, still face real weather, perhaps suggesting that their strength comes from the depth of the sometimes tough traditions and philosophies defining the unique spirit of Japan.

Finally, this image reminds me of the winters in Kyoto, whose main feature was the rain and wind creating a humid cold weather that people face with patience, riding bicycles. The white was sparse and rarely created a ephemeral magic.