BOOZY SOUVENIRS: Amer Picon et Picon Bière
Adam McDowell contemplates the elusive ...
There I was, sitting on the wooden platform and staring at the rock garden at Ryoan-ji one sunny late-fall afternoon — seeking my moment of Zen, I suppose — when a pair of elderly gentlemen walked up behind me, figuring (correctly) that I looked like an English-speaker.
Cheerily introducing themselves as members of some sort of volunteer tourist-greeting…