At his favorite spot in Arashiyama, the author regularly exchanges whistles with a brown-eared bulbul. But one day, instead of singing, the bird appeared before him in silence and gazed at him for a long time—an unforgettable moment of quiet communication between human and nature in Kyoto.

There is a place in Arashiyama that I now visit without fail.

In the phrase of an old-fashioned expression, it would fit perfectly to call it my “personal boom.”

On a single tree at that place, there is always a brown-eared bulbul.

I converse with him—or her—by whistling. On days when my whistling is in good form, my untimely “ho-ho-hokekyo” startles the bird at first, but he immediately responds in kind, trying to imitate my sound. Yet when I grow too exuberant, his voice gradually becomes softer and softer.

“As expected of you, my lord. I concede defeat,” as if to say.

Perhaps puzzled by the fact that I did not whistle at all yesterday, that very bird appeared before my eyes as I was resting in the shelter.

As you know, the brown-eared bulbul is the most common wild bird throughout Kyoto, yet in truth it rarely allows one to photograph it at leisure.

Usually, the moment it notices a camera, it immediately flies away.

The bulbuls in the Kyoto Prefectural Botanical Garden were especially like that.

But yesterday was different.

For a remarkably long time, it simply gazed at me.