British writer and poet Pico Iyer on life, love and mortality in Japan

One morning, Pico Iyer stepped out of the flat he shares with his Japanese wife in suburban Japan and instantly felt transported to the Himalayas.

“A sudden mist enshrouds our little lane and there’s a mountain enclosedness to everything, though in Nepal the trash would never be confined to a single compact square on the street corner,” writes the celebrated author in his latest book, Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells. A woman, he adds, is “padding past in her jammies … I suppress a smile, until I remember I’m in jammies, too.”

Readers unfamiliar with Iyer’s writing would be forgiven for asking why any of this, with the possible exception of Japan’s and Nepal’s contrasting garbage disposal methods, is interesting. Others, however, will not bother suppressing smiles of their own as they anticipate Iyer’s next cross-cultural surprise: “At the bus stop across the street, a young woman appears to be sleeping where she stands, one of those Japanese tricks the likes of me will never fathom.”

Born in England to Indian parents who migrated to California when he was seven years old, Iyer is a sharp-eyed observer of cultural collisions and cross-pollinations, a modern-day Mark Twain capable of leaping across borders by highlighting a single conundrum, irony or ambiguity.

In Autumn Light, he presents to the outside world with simplicity, grandeur and sensitivity an idyllic, upscale neighbourhood in Nara, Japan’s ancient capital. Called Deer’s Slope, the place is inhabited mostly by retirees, many of them a full decade past 70, but agile enough to beat teenagers at ping-pong.