Jasmine, a writer who hails from Hiroshima and is much older than me but has a refined magnetizing beauty that cannot be ignored, pours me a cup of green tea on my first ever junket. It's just before the world turns blue; just before I'm dropped into a Marc Chagall painting by an invisible but all-seeing God with an instinct for romance.
A junket, according to my dictionary, can mean a few things. It can be a feast or picnic. It can be a pleasure trip. It can be an excursion paid for out of public funds. It's the last, for sure, but I hope it can be all of the above.
I take a shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto and change to the Tokkaido Line heading for Otsu, the capital city of Shiga Prefecture, which sits beside Lake Biwa.