Mono No Aware. Every moment is a breath. Time is ticking away and leaves behind only memories. What remains and what goes forget, when you leave a country? Shreds and fragments only, the further away you get, the less accurate they are. You lose details and in return you see the outline. Clear shapes are easier to remember than complicated ones. Maybe so arise stereotypes. Some is hidden, simplified, myths are created. What are you talking from when you return?

The Japanese love volatile moments. The glowing sunrise in the national flag should indicate it enough. Captured, so the dawn never extinguishes. So you can always remember the beauty of the days beginning. When we arrive in Tokyo, the sun is in the sky, as it would be cut directly from Japan's flag. We travel towards the city center by train. Townhouses, skyscrapers, work-weary faces. In fact, we are landed so gently like never before in a country. Ayako's mother received us right at the airport and guided us perfectly through the crowds. Nevertheless, we are at the beginning of a culture shock, which will accompany us the next six weeks across the country. We have prepared ourselves mentally to it, but it was not enough. It hits us with full force.

So many people. Endless street canyons and everything runs automatically. Electronic melodies from all directions. At the green traffic light, in the supermarket, on the toilet. After a few days, we have compiled a remarkable collection. What we don't know yet: The whole country is covered with a loudspeaker network and punctually at 6' clock in the morning, at noon and at 5' clock in the evening it echoes from each loud-hailer. Since you can't hide yourself so well, somewhere it sounds always. If then completely disjointed songs are played as "Frère Jacques" or "Silent Night" and you hear the same melody, which has been running on the toilet yesterday, suddenly the next day at the grocery store, confusion is perfect.

The train goes down to the underground. The metro brings us almost to the door of the apartment which Ayakos's family provides us. What an amazing place. An incredible starting point for the next days. The twilight begins. From the terrace we marvel at the first time the flickering neon signs and flashing towers of the metropolis of Tokyo. We haven't seen a second such in Japan. Every moment is a breath. Time is ticking away and leaves behind only memories.

The cranes in Kushiro are dancing over the snow-covered marshland. Rangy, elegant. Acrobats artists. Light as a feather they swirl up, land softly and with a perfect bow, throw back their necks. A crane dance is music. No other animal can fulfill a moment with so much beauty. The Japanese love the beauty of volatile moments. Perhaps this is why the crane is sacred in Japan.

To travel in Japan's north, and so to return in the depths of winter, has cost us a lot of willpower. Especially after we've enjoyed in Tokyo so springlike weather. We would have missed the Best of Japan. Not just the cranes, but also the whooper swans which have moved right next to the hot spring their winter quarters. Or the stunning panorama in Shiretoko National Park. Even the giant ice sculptures at the Sapporo Snow Festival would be melted without us.

Every year, in mid-winter the city of Sapporo awakes of hibernation. From snow and ice blocks meter high statues and houses are cut and international teams are vying for the most elaborate, hand-crafted snow figure. The atmosphere is hotter than the sake, which is served on the stands and in the evening glistening headlights put all the beauty in the spotlight. A mega-event, which we pay our full attention for three days and which is sweetened by the hospitality of Motoko's family and Michi from the International Center. She invites us to the Moving Sushi Bar, a sushi restaurant, where the food passes on a conveyor belt by. There are few places in the world that can stuff the hunger of cyclists. In our memories, there are only two. The "all you can eat" pizzeria on our last trip in Brazil and now this fully automatic land of milk and honey. Beautiful moments may be short as a breath, but you can expand and celebrate them. And therein is the Japanese champion.

It steams in the bathroom. The hot water ripples soothing, giving way on the tensed muscles of the biking day. Next to me a Japanese soaps. Deliberately, toes, calves, belly, arms, fingertips. When he arrives at the head, I've already taken two full baths and washed my hair - and I've taken my time.

The Japanese love volatile moments and that is why some try to copy them. The Japanese penchant for the pink color is such an attempt. Sometimes it's really shrill. A cooly dressed teenager walks through the streets and at his belt hangs a pink mobile phone. If I would go to Japan again, I would photograph all these pink stuff and fashion items. Pink is the color of plum blossom. The plums are blooming before the cherry trees. They mark the end of winter and the beginning of the warm seasons. So why not wear all year round pink? The blusher, the handbag, the laptop or the sunglasses remember forever then at the sweetness of blooming plum trees.

We see the first plum blossoms in Kyoto. A special moment. The world begins to live again. After four months of deepest hibernation. We are overwhelmed by the odors around us. It smells of young leaves, soil, springtime. Maybe it's a bit like when we went down in the jungle after a long time on the Bolivian Altiplano. We feel the green as even greener, the world is suddenly again colorful. What a delight when the first mosquito flies into the eye. Honestly. Such moments are indelible, because they are associated with strong feelings. The next day we send our spike tires home.

In Kyoto you could quickly spend a fortune to enjoy all the Top UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Many temples are overrun by the tourists. The more expensive they are, the more people it has. The world famous Golden Pavilion, for example, we can only guess through the crowds. We need a few days until we find what we are looking for. Temples and shrines, which are not at the top of historical ranking, but radiate peace and mood. And so we discover the Zen gardens. Landscapes of stone and sand. Static art, silent as a black and white photo and powerful as a three-dimensional painting.

Imagine the water is dry. It flows in a stream of pebbles down from a mountain into the sea. The sea consists of pebbles. White round pebbles. With a large wooden rake regularly lines are drawn into the stone sea. Abstract - yet you can see the source, imagine the river and the sea immediately. You feel the vastness of the ocean, the long way, which covers the water from its source to the sea. On the way from the mountain into the sea the dry stone river meets the tortoise. It swims against the current. Also it's just a stone, a symbol. The stone river symbolize the course of life and the tortoise tries, however, to swim against the time. To escape the transience of the moment.

Japanese Stone Gardens are a Zen Buddhist's oasis of meditation. In the gardens that we visit, photographing is prohibited. It would also be difficult to pack these places, which appear like a picture, once more in a picture. It would make no sense. It would be like the pink mobil phone at the cool boy's side, that just captures the color and not even the scent of a plum blossom. A weather depth hangs over Japan. We ride in the rain, it softens us and drips a way into our heads. Soon, the depth is not just over our heads, but also in our thoughts. Culture shock can be fierce, can make one sick. What we are looking for here in Japan, where life runs in rigid paths as at home? Where you first have to sit for hours in front of the map, to somehow find a way off the highways and metropolis? Where at each corner is a supermarket that provides twenty-four hours hot food? Almost the rain would have washed away our beautiful moments that we have lived in Japan. Almost. But after three days, the sun has risen again and has wiped away all the gray clouds and the wetness.

It's morning. A bird chirps. We know that this moment doesn't last forever. Soon the dusk will be over and the birds fall silent. Soon we will get up and ride into a new day. In a few weeks the birdsong in the morning will be common again. But now we are here and enjoy the moment. It's an unique one. The Japanese love those moments. The volatile fragrance floating in the air when time is ticking away. For not to loose it they have given it a name: Mono No Aware.