The trip back on the shinkansen was offering us the same views we had going east, which was nice, since there were some snow-covered hills and Mt. Fuji to see again.

This neighborhood we're in for the last leg of the trip, Shinjuku, is something of a shocking break from Kyoto.  We're back to the gritty, shiny, sparkling, smelly, populated urban world again.  Asakusa was a sleepy little burb compared to Shinjuku. 

We went to a Shabu Shabu place for dinner called AEN:  basically a hot pot where you boil stuff and then dip the stuff in ponzu, which I love.  Aaron is forbidden from commenting on my dietary choices:  he got the blueberry and vanilla ice cream pizza. Now, mind you, he had the shabu-shabu, but he wanted to try this as well.  He loved it, and I'm sure it's . . . good, but . . . just no.

Well, this was our last full day in Kyoto today.  I can easily see returning here for a) a new experience in a different season b) taking advantage of crafts classes (I've decided I want to learn Ikebana now), and c) visit all the other things I missed! Kyoto is a wonderful city, truly world-class, and I'm so happy to have spent time here.

Today, we successfully went to Nijo-jo, the palatial grounds where the shogun worked and kept an eye on the emperor.  As Aaron pointed out, while Europe went toward the opulet and ornate, Japan went for lush but simple.  The mansion are those wood-and-paper constructions, with paper screens covered in gold leaf and, most shockingly to my western eyes, painted over by an artist.  Yeah, painting on gold, which . . . covers over the gold, which no European aristo, even in the height of decadence, would do.  Gold leaf, yes, gold thread, sure, but painting over gold? Louis XIV would swoon.

However, like their French contemporaries, the manion/palace was structred in such a way as to have several heirarchical chambers.  You didn't get past a certain point, penetrating further into the palace, unless you had leave or status.

Of course, when the West finally got around to noticing the art of the East, and Art Nouveau took off, it took off using Japanese art as a touchstone.  The geometric squares in cloud like atmosphere, the fine feathers of depicted birds, and the sparse backgrounds with very articulated, sharp-lined foregrounds were all features that caught on in imitative trends in the west.

Alas, Nijo-jo does not permit interior photography.  Which, yeah, okay, flash=bad, or at least I thought.  But they forbid sketching, which just smacks of "buy our postcard," which pisses me off.  So I have lots of exterior shots.  And, honestly, though lovely, I was not engaged by Nijo-ji as much as Tenryu-ji yesterday.  It was a seat of power -- even an expression of power, as the Shogun had it built to remind the Emperor, who was out of power at the time, that he was a player and secondary to the power of the shogun.  It was a place of business and intrigue, but it felt like a cheap penis play in my mind.

As a complete contrast to both Nijo-jo and Tenryu-ji, the famous Ryoan-ji Zen Buddhist rock garden we visited afterward was a study of both minimalism and contemplation.  The grounds there are lush, but more wild and allowed to range a bit.  The shrine building, though obscured by the reconstruction and plaforms, invite a more contemplative air detached from worldly power.  The main feature is the garden of raked gravel and placed stones -- the opposite of the planted landscape garden (also on the grounds), following instead the purest essence of a Japanese garden as described in one of the oldest Japanese gardening tomes as "the art of setting stones."

Alas, the rain was coming down, and lingering was becoming an increasingly damp prospect.  So we went to the Kyoto handicrafts center, as Aaron wanted to do some gift shopping, which he did in spades.  That's where I decided I wanted to take an Ikebana class.  Don't ask.  Just pass the floral clay.

A detour after that to Kyoto station to get our shinkansen tickets back to Tokyo, another dinner at Popolare, and that's my last evening here in Kyoto.  Tomorrow:  Shinjuku.

Boo and boo.  I had a post ready to go, and my hotel reset my internet connection (it happens every 24 hours), and I lost all my work.  Phooey.

Well, brief recap.  First up we headed to Nishiki Market, a great big expanse of covered street market space.  So many things to be found here:  meats, veggies, snacks, fruit, and some other goods like chopsticks and flowers.  Really interesting and awesome walk.  With a shrine at the end.  There are lots of shrines around Kyoto, to say the least.

Our next intended destination was Nijo-jo, home of one of the aristocrats who rivaled the shogun and the imperial family for power.  However, Aaron is fired from being my tour guide:  he neglected to check the hours, and they're closed on Tuesdays in December.  Phooey! Well, we'll go tomorrow, our last full day here.

Instead, we boarded a nearby train and headed to Arashiyama, an area towards the northwest mountains, and probably my favorite area of Kyoto so far, other than the walk downtown along the canals.  Our specific destination was to see Tenryu-ji, a temple founded by a priest who had a vision of a dragon rising from the nearby rivier, hence the name "heavenly dragon."

The shrines are nice, but it's the gardens that draw you in.  They're "strolling gardens" for walking in and around, and we came at a sort of in-between time:  too late for the fall colors, but too early for the snow.  Nonetheless, what color was there, the mosses and bamboo, and the occasional red and orange, stood out against the starness of the bare branches and blue sky.

Finally, we walked over Togetso-kyo, a bridge that spans a southern branch of the Hozu river (the river from which the priest saw the dragon rise in his vision), and it really was like going to another world.  We walked down a riverside path, with little traffic, and the whole sense of that pace and peace you get when you follow any river that's flowing down a quiet, less bustling passage.  I've been along a few sections of rivers that felt like that -- parts of the Suwanee, the Jordan, probably Twain's Mississippi -- where there's nothing much really happening in the way of commerce or urgency.  Just the slow unwinding of life around the flow.

More Kyoto time! I'll keep this one fairly brief as well.

Which isn't too hard to do.  We had a very promising start to our day, at Kiyomizu-Dera, a large buddhist shine on the eastern end of town.  The area is large and picturesque, so I took lots of pictures.  There were some views of the city as well, which added to the panorama.  The walking area wasn't nearly as large as yesterday's temple, although it was something of a steep climb.  But all around this area, there were also local artisans and craftspeople, and we peeked in not a few window fronts.

After that, we tried to find a "pottery village" which, for all we know, we may have done, but alas, it wasn't very villagey and most of the shops were closed.  We walked a very long distance north in search of a place that turned out to be where we had started earlier, so it was a bit frustrating.  The walk was also down a rather dull suburban sort of street, but it was fairly warm and the weather pleasant.  When we got to a major street I recognized, we hopped the subway back into town.

There was a place I'd lined up for dinner, an obanzai place that serves organic buffet items.  It was a bit early for dinnerm, so we stopped into a gallery of traditional Kyoto crafts, which was actually really pleasant.  There were no photographs permitted, unfortunately.  But the building was very new, the floors spotless, despite a custodian who was doing a neat trick of sleeping on his feet while leaning on his yarn broom.  There were several craftsmen and women actually making boxes, shaping jewelry, resinating wood, and overglazing pottery in the traditional method -- either shaving down a wooden side with careful precision and an old-style tool; wrapping silver wire by hand into small intricate patterns; grinding her own pigment; or coating wooden blocks with resin and a wood stick -- and the place was very quiet.

All of the items on display were beyond spotless.  They gleamed.  Even the unfinished wood carvings look like they'd just been brushed off by an artist.  The laquered boxes had no fingerprints or smudges on them.  Like I said, the place was more perfect in some ways than an actual musem.  It was very soothing way to finish the afternoon.  We headed over to the obanzai place and had our fill.  Most of it was cold or room temperature, as is typical of a buffet, but it was all tasty and pretty clearly using quality ingredients.

Oh, we also stopped by a, well, mall, with "Exciting Book Store!" and "Ask a Giraffe."  The former did indeed have books, but also tons of other crap reminiscent of Spencer stores, including rubber chickens, "Potty Putt" (a golf tee set you can use while on the john), incense, pig shaped humidifiers, and puzzles of Gundam and naked girls.  And the latter, well, you couldn't ask a giraffe anything, since there were no giraffes, but the café it actually was look quite promising, though we didn't stop by.

After my early blogging today, we went to Fushimi Inari-Taisha Shrine, probably the most impressive, bewildering thing I've seen yet.  And exquisitely beautiful.

Torii are those arches you will often see at shinto shrines.  My understanding is that they are gates that signify that you've left the material world for the spiritual.  This shrine is apparently also called the "shrine of a thousant torii," and that's probably not far off.  It's toward the hills, and there is a large path around the hill and up it, filled with small shinto shrines.  It was originally a shrine to the gods of rice and sake, and later for success in business (as the agrarian foundation of the economy matured).

It's a sprawling area that wraps around this hillside, and if you go all the way towards the back and up several steep, hairpin turns, it's a whole days worth of hiking.  And totally worth it.

And tonight, we successfully made it to Tosuiro, and it was totally worth it.  This was the real deal, and we were the only gaijin in the whole place.  From shoes off at the door, to sitting on tatami mats at the counter, it was a great experience with good food to boot.  After we ordered our meal (I got the five course set) and drink (warm sake, because it's COLD here right now), our waitress -- who is from Kyoto, has never been to Tokyo (much to her consternation), but who was in San Francisco and taking English courses at UC Davis -- brought this very cool, well, glorified hot pot with a chassis.  It was a wooden box that plugged into an outlet, and the main reservoir was filled with water and homemade tofu and some spinach or seaweed leaves.  Built into the unit was also a ceramic cruet for soy sauce, that actually fit into a socket built into the chassis, which enabled the sauce to be warmed to the same temperature as the tofu.

Course 1: chilled tofu with green onion and thick nori.  The texture was not unlike a soft cheese, but with a rich, earthy tone.  Quite good.
Course 2:  soft yuba served on a leaf over ice, with ginger (nice, hot ginger), microgreens of what I think were radish, and an accompanying sauce.
Course 3:  fried tofu with some kind of savory thick sauce; chewy tofu with a similar consistency to taffy, covered in a sweet sauce with sesame seeds; some kind of wakame/carrot hash
Course 4:  fried squares of yuba (one of my favorite ways to prepare yuba, but, y'know, fried, it's like cheating); tempura battered veggie resembling okra; tempura battered squishy tofu; delicious side condiment of salt mixed with finely microplaned lemon zest.
Course 5:  rice in broth with picked plum; two small squares of daikon radish; herbaceous stalks with shaved seaweed; some kind of has with seaweed and (I swear) cumin and possibly onion; tea
Dessert:  a tiny scoop of soymilk and daikon radish ice cream.  No really, radish, this was superb and refreshing.

These were all small portions, which was perfect, and although I've just had some Pocky, this was the result of a craving for chocolate rather than being hungry.

Lots of pictures coming up:

 Mr Squid says:  big blog post. Lots of picture and text.

So far, my new camera is exceeding expectations, and I have lots of pictures.   The burst feature is especially useful.  I used it to take pictures while on the shinkansen (bullet train), and have some excellent pictures of Mt. Fuji from the train, taken at around 100mph or more.  Likewise, there's a "bracket" feature that takes three pictures with different exposure levels that's quite helpful, although requires a little file maintenance afterward to get rid of the ones I don't want; it takes three pictures with different exposure settings -- handy, if I'm unsure myself of what setting to use.  I haven't gotten to play with the night shots too much yet, but I have taken several panorama shots now, which unfortunately don't come out on Xanga well.

We had an easy morning when we left for Kyoto -- plenty of time at Tokyo station, watching the punctual trains and the team of train cleaners (boys in blue, girls in pink) that swooped down upon our arriving train, cleaned it up for the next passengers, swivelled the chairs around to face the outgoing direction and swooped out again.  Step lively! When the hand hits the destination time, the doors close, bells sound, and announcers announce. 

Kyoto itself is gorgeous.  Even our hotel room and the hotel look really nice.  We oriented ourselves a bit and found a restaurant in our guidebook to go to near the downtown district, along the river.  We took a route that goes in between two canals that are alongside a river, and it's just stunning.  I didn't take many pictures, as I was too focused on getting to our destination, but Aaron took several.  There are many, many places along our route, with inviting, aesthetically pleasing entrances.  The cuisines were wide ranging too, from what looked like very traditional Japanese dining, to TGI Friday's (yeah, really).  There was a lot of French and Italian as well, and even a Mexican place.

We wandered around this main street and it was hard to make progress because of all the different buildings that Aaron needed to photo, but I totally understood.  We never found our restaurant, Tosuiro, for a few reasons, including some map differences/conflicts and, most importantly, when we were on the right street and looking right at the place, well, I can't read any Japanese, and Aaron's is self-taught and fledgling.  It was only later when we gave up and were at a Japanese Denny's (not really a Denny's, because there are Denny's here, but definitely a friendly family eats kinda place with all Japanese food, with brightly illustrated menus) that he'd seen a place called "Bean Wet" something.  As we later learned, it's "Tower," and that was the place, "Bean Wet Tower."  All the translations I looked at later seem to want to call it "Bean Wed Tower," but I certainly couldn't tell you which is right, given the very flexible nature of the language.

We tried to hit a few other places, including, desperately, a French one and an Indian one, before settling on the place we ended up, but everything was booked and it was getting late. I'm happy to say that at no time were we tempted by TGI Friday's.  There are just some things you don't do on principle.

Anyway, we learned out lesson and took good advice from one of our books:  have a Japanese speaker book your table and, if possible, order ahead of time for you.  Ms. Shimizu, our hotel Guest Relations manager, was more than happy to perform this service for us, and she wrote out a whole dockett of information to present to Tosuiro when we get there, including the date, time, number in party, and my whole being a vegetarian thing.  I think we will do this for the next few days, in fact, despite the weekend being over.  Happily, we've got our reservations now and I'm looking forward to trying this traditional Japanese tofu place tonight.  Kyoto is apparently especially known for it's tofu.

I've been reading up on the particuarly elaborate political history of Japan, with its warring sects of Shinto and Buddhism (and Buddhism within Buddhism), and the intrigues of the shogunate and the aristocracy.  Kyoto has been, on and off, a seat of power in Japan for centuries, until the Edo period moved it pretty much permanently to Tokyo.  But this was a place of art, culture, spiritualism, and crafts as well as power plays, and it shows. 

Nishi Hongan-ji is the original Buddhist temple in Kyoto, and it's right next door to our hotel, a five minute walk.  The compound is a large area with several buildings, including shrines, ryokan hotels, and living quarters for the monks.  We arrived in the middle of some service, and after removing our shoes, listened to the chanting and catching a glimpse of the rituals from a side door.  The second shrine was open and people -- both gawkers and visitors -- were wandering in and out, sometimes kneeling on the tatami mats, praying, and viewing the shrine.  The shrine itself . . . well, I didn't take any pictures of it, because it didn't seem right, but those pictures from Senso-ji in Tokyo give you an idea.  I had to kneel down at one point myself to see what it was like to do so on those mats, in that place. 

Every time I see a shrine here, though, I want a roadmap to it, because there are just so many things with obvious meaning and symbolism . . . but I have no idea what that would be.   Still though, the effect shuts down my higher analytical brain function and just absorbs the whole thing.  I can look at the small table, and see four bowls, but the bowl has creatures on it, is positioned at several points on the black laquered table, and some of them have lotus flowers in them.  There is the much larger tiered structure of the shrine, raised above the rest, with posts, statues, flowers, designs, but the whole thing is so much visual noise, I'm at sea.  In a good way though.

After Nishi Hongan-ji, we decided to go the Kyoto Tower by the train station.  It's about 100 meters or so high, and offers a great 360° view of the city, with views as far south as Osaka, which is pretty cool, and we had a clear day at that time.  I used my panorama function extensively here, but alas those pictures don't upload into Xanga well.  I was able to see the temple we just visited, Nishi Hongan-ji, and it's offshoot rival temple from 1602, Higashi Hongan-ji.  The history goes that a particuarly clever shogun, concerned by the growing influence and power of the Buddhist priests in Kyoto, engineered a rift amongst the priests such that a whole schism broke away and formed this temple, dedicated to a new sect of Buddhism the "Pure Land" sect.  I think we're going to see this one too, but so far, I've only seen it from the air.

Also visible was some kind of excavation I recognized as using the grid method of exploration.  I saw it a lot in Israel, and it's less destructive than just digging straight down into a pit.  But this site looked like it had found old timber balks or foundations, and they were clearing all around the timber.  Not sure what it was up to, but it looked cool from the sky.

The station was easy to see too, of course, since it was right in front of the tower, and I got to see a shinkansen arriving.  All around the city, we could see hints of shrine or statue, and Aaron pointed to the ones we were going to try and visit.  I'm taking an unusually passive view of matters.  It's weird, when you're used to arranging things for yourself, but I'm not complaining.  I seem to be in charge of arranging dinner, and given my restrictions, that's understandable.  We could see also To-ji, and even older site that dates from 794, and after the tower, we went to visit it.

Oh, a note about the tower.  Being, well, stupid and foreign, we had no idea that the elevator stops on the way down at a lovely café and bar, Kuu, and we got off at this level, which wasn't the exit we expected.  It was a happy accident, though, and I had some warming Macallan whisky, and Aaron, some sake.  Having visited Scotland a few years back, I understand now why they can drink it so often:  it really is nicely bracing against the cold, which is also possibly why they drink so much of it.

But having been mildly warmed on the inside and out, we called the elevator again, but when it opened, there was more than just the friendly lady operator inside.  Tthere was this . . . thing.  We weren't sure what it was.  We'd seen it illustrated all over the tower, and it looked to me like its head was some kind of onion or ornament.  Aaron and I were both, well, shocked.  There's no other word for it.  It made room for us in the elevator, and our terror marginally increased.  It wanted us to get in.  So we did, because we didn't want to hold up the elevator.  It didn't say a word, but it stuck out its padded giant hands, and again, Aaron and I were all, "Bwuh?" It took the prompting of one of the Tower ladies -- a sing-song "Nice to meet yoooouuuu!" -- for us to realize it wanted to shake our hands.  We did so, still as "bwuh?" as could be.  I was suddenly three again, lightly buzzed, and confronted by a small person in a giant suit in the image of an anthropomorphic christmas tree ornament. 

It wasn't until a block or so later that I stopped and realized and said out loud to Aaron, "Oh my god, Aaron, I think that was an anthropomorphic representation of the tower itself! We shook hands with the spirit of the tower!" Once we thought about it, we decided, yeah, it was.  Which made it even creepier.  Because then I laughed and said in my dirtiest possible voice, "Hello, spirit of the tower.  We were all inside you.  We went up to your top and came down in you.  We went up and down your shaft."  Aaron then wisely forbade me to ever say anything like that again.  Don't count on it, Aaron.

We then continued to head to To-ji.  Alas, it seems like pretty much everything, ever, burned down in Japan, and given the use of wood and the wars over the years, this isn't entirely unexpected. Nonetheless, even the rebuilt places are imnpressive and old.  To-ji also has what may be the tallest pagoda in Japan.

It's beautiful.  The grounds, despite winter basically arriving -- and it's been cold here, let me assure you -- were still beautiful, though in a more sparse sort of way.  As Aaron later pointed out, one nice advantage was that the trees didn't obscure the buildings, if you wanted to photograph them.

Apart from the pagoda, there were two temples, which, alas, I wasn't able to photograph the insides of, because inside were giant statues of Buddha and various attendants.  I was transfixed by them, especially the giant Buddhas.  They had such presence, and their gazes really did seem real.  It felt like you were being watched by gods and spirits and boddhisatvas.  The reconstructed buildings were from the 1600s, but they were sufficiently old and smelled of resin, and dark, and had such a mood to them, and the statues were so vibrant inside -- that the whole effect was so transporting, which I think was the idea. 

We spent a good while there, my battery finally running out (I need to get a new one).  We stopped back at the hotel to bundle up still further, and headed back to Kyoto Station and the tower building to go to a Japanese but veg-friendly restaurant.  Alas, it seems to be gone.  Fortunately, it's a busy area with lots of options, and we found one particularly odd fusion of food called Popolare ("Popular?").  Aaron got soba, I got Japanese radish salad and (sigh) french fries.  They played a lot of 70's music (Shirley Bassey anyone?), heavy rose incense burned, and both westerners and Japanese folks trickled in.

I finally got my ATM card unblocked (my bank had noted my travel on my credit card, but not on my other accounts, so I was locked out of getting money, which was not convenient), and celebrated by buying chocolate Pocky and some kind of citrus infused shochu.  I didn't make it through by a glass before turning in.

Woke up today, Friday, at 5:45am to one of Tokyo's infamous tremors.  Not a big earthquake -- I've felt stronger in San Francisco, but we're on the 23rd floor, so it was probably more noticeable than at ground level. I looked outside, saw a distinct lack of fires, screaming, panic, or giant lizards, and went back to bed.

On the plus side, it's a very clear day out -- the clearest so far, though about 39°F -- and we could see, for the first time, Mount Fuji! We had no idea it was visible from our window.  Took a picture of it, of course. 

The new camera rocks! It can take panorama pix too, so I took one from our view.  It gives you an idea of the sprawl  It doesn't load well into Xanga, alas, but it's pretty cool.  Also, there are at least five graveyards visible right below us.  I included a picture of one.

Heading to breakfast shortly and then boarding the shinkansen, the "Bullet Train" for Kyoto.  Kyoto in two hours with top speeds near 200mph.  Pretty amazing, and that will be the fastest I've ever traveled via terrestrial travel (planes go faster, obv).

Why is it cameras always seem to wait until I'm on vacation to go bad?

My beloved Sony MVC-FD95 is having disk drive issues.  I can't get it to read any disks anymore.  I am very, very sad, and will have to have the camera repaired.  But what do I do in the meantime?

Hey, this is Japan. I bought a new camera.

It's a next generation Sony camera, but it has all of the features that my FD95 has, plus a few additional nice ones, such as the ability to take panoramic shots.  I wasn't able to use the battery or, annoyingly, the memory sticks.  So the new battery is charging and we're about to go out to the Ginza district to the Sony building to get some sticks.  I used Aaron's Camera to take some shots.  I got it at one of the many stores in an area called Akihabara, known for being an electronics wonderland.  I got it duty free at a store who sold international versions on the 5th floor of their shop, with a clerk who spoke flawless English and was extremely helpful.

We stopped at the large shrine, Senso-ji, in Asakusa, the area in which we're staying.  One of my guide books is quite correct when it describes the carnivalesque atmosphere, but the shrine itself is super cool.  The incense that people smudge themselves with, the loud clinking of coins dropped in metal bins for prayers, and the taiko drums and lots and lots of people.  Fantastic.

Thanks to Hello Kitty Universe, I've been delightedly introduced to Hello Kitty Tarot Cards.  largely styled on the well-known Rider-Waite deck, but made all her own, Miss Kitty populates the legendary cards, filling in for everybody from the poor couple in the "hard times" card, the five of pentacles

To Death herself.

The weeping elephant and the fleeing livestock are priceless. 

There are a couple of interesting differences between the Rider-Waite originals and the Kitty cards.  The five of pentacles has a stained glass window instead of a street light, but the mood is very much the same, and both show precipitation, although I think it's snow on the RW deck.

The Death card is especially amusing.  Both the HK and the RW deck have the Reaper coming in on a pale horse from the left, and both have the setting/rising sun between the pillars.  There is water on both pictures (I'm assuming that the yellow pee color is just the light on the water).  Both cards have "people" (or at least anthropomorphic denizens) on them, inclduding a fallen person trod beneath the horse's hooves.  However, the HK card has one fewer:  noticeably missing is the bishop supplicant to death, the only character to "welcome" death, knowing that what's on the other side is a lot better -- or better be to make up for that whole "worldly" stuff he opted out of. 

The creatures in the HK card not being trampled by the Ultimate Reality's steed, however, are depicted as fleeing rather amusingly pell mell, and wisely going in opposite directions.  You can almost imagine them saying, "Take the pig! Take the pig! He's tasty and made of bacon!" "Nooo! Take the rabbit! lapin a l'orange and you can use his pelt!"

Edited to add:  one more rather hilarious difference is that the actual RW card depicts death holding not a scythe, which is the usual implement he's known to carry, but a flag with a white rose (like the one the Yorkist kings used) on a black background.  Obviously, Miss Kitty was either a) cutting an insufficiently menacing figure without the scythe or b) cutting an insufficiently obvious death figure without the scythe.  So they gave her both the scythe and the rose.

Because Hello Kitty with a flag of a white rose (or just the rose) would look more like some weird farm-animal polo than Death, and then it'd just be way too confusing.  It'd be terrifying too, in its own way, using her "friends" as polo balls, trampling them down in her attempt to get them to sniff the flower, but not in the way I think they intended.

Improvisation and confabulation:

In those patients with frontal damage who do confabulate, however, the brain injury makes them rely on their internal memories—their thoughts and wishes—rather than true memories. This is of course dysfunctional, but it is also creative in some of the ways that make improvisation so funny: producing an odd mix of the mundane and impossible. When a patient who claims to be 20 years old is asked why she looks about 50, she replies that she was pushed into a ditch by her brothers and landed on her face. Asked about his good mood, another patient called Harry explains that the president visited him at his office yesterday. The president wanted to talk politics, but Harry preferred to talk golf. They had a good chat.

Improvisers tap into these same creative powers, but in a controlled way. They learn to cultivate a “dual mind,” part of which doesn’t plan or discriminate and thus unleashes its inventive powers, while the other part maintains a higher level monitoring of the situation, looking out for opportunities to develop the narrative.

From here, via here, via here, via here. 

And one more gratuitous link to the "acting as an altered state of consciousness" bit.