Wednesday, Apr 11th, Matsuyama, Japan

Greetings!

Most Japanese live on its four largest Islands.  So far, our trip has been mostly on Honshu, the largest of the four by far.  For the last three days, we've been on Hokaido, the smallest.  Tomorrow, we head to the largest of the 8,500 others (Miyajma), and the only one that is entirely a World Heritage Site. 

Cities in Japan are designed around a hill containing either a shrine or a temple (and sometimes both).  Shrines have priests, and are organized to honor millions of Shinto deities.  Temples have monks, and are organized to honor Buddha, and his many representations.

And then there are towns built around castles built by daimyos and shoguns.  Matsuyama Castle, on Mt. Katsu, is one of them.  Most of these were never attacked in their time (we bombed quite a few of them in WWII), and stand mostly so warlords and the Shoguns generals can claim territory and feudal taxes.

We walked up the hill to it, and then up the stairs inside it, and saw the territory.  Today, it looks like any city.  In the 1600s, it was all rice fields and potential rivals. 

But we travel to learn more than who built what hillside shrine, temple, or castle.  We want to know about the culture and people that these structures grew from, and how they exist today.  We ride around the country listening to them, encounter them in shops and restaurants, watch them go to work and care for their kids.  And we try our best to adapt to their living conditions.

Our guide, Kimi, shares her life with us.  And her stories provide us with the insight that we hope will bring us a little more wisdom into how we could lead our lives.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Wednesday, Apr 11th, Matsuyama, Japan.

Tuesday, Apr 10th, Takamatsu, Japan

Greetings!

In 1625, the feudal lord of Takamatsu (Ikoma Takatoshi) began construction of Ritsurin,  specifically constructing a garden around a pond at the base of Mount Shuin (Purple Cloud Mountain).  It took 250 years to complete and open to the public, but it's today one of Japan's finest gardens.

The walk around the main grounds takes about two hours, and passes by scenes right out of the those Japanese hanging drawings you see in great art exhibits.

Around each corner, there appears a group of trees which display the many years of care which you can see currently being applied to their health and beauty.   We saw eight workers in ne set of trees at the same time.

The colors were deep and vivid.  There were so many shades of green: tea leaves, moss, pine needles, and new maple leaves.  In fall, the red colors of the maples stand out in the hills.

But the beauty of the garden was the shape and trimming of the trees, the design of the paths and bridges, the pond and its huge carp, and the gentle gliding of the Japanese boat (wasen) on the lake.

Mid-afternoon, we traveled by train to Kotohira, and to the Kompira Shinto Shrine on the wooded slopes of Mount Zozu.  The Shrine, one of 88 shrines which have attracted pilgrims since the 1300s, is reached by climbing up 784 stone steps that wind their way through the town and up the slope past a Kubuki theater.  We made it to the theater, bought a cool wooden mask, and a banner displaying the other characters, and waited for our other travelers to re-join us.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Tuesday, Apr 10th, Takamatsu, Japan.

Monday, Apr 9th, Takamatsu, Japan

Greetings!

Today, we used eleven means of transportation.  We haven't been on bikes yet, but we've got two weeks left, so stay tuned.  All this for two hours at the Himeji Castle.

Before I tell you why Himeji Castle, how about our night as trainee Shinto followers?  First, something about Shinto Buddhism.

About the time that the chief proponent of the religion (Huiguo) was dying in China, a 31-year-old from Japan (Kukai -Kobe Daishi) sought him out and implored him to teach him all he could.  As followers of Shinto were being persecuted in China, the master declared Kukia his successor, and spent his last two months preparing him to take the movement to Japan.

I'm including this shot of some giant cedar trees in a grove nearby Kukai's main hall at the Kongobu-Ji Temple because one of the beliefs of Shinto is that spirits, deities, and gods dwell in everything.  In most every place we've been, followers of Shinto have emphasized nature, and they utilized these special places as transitions from the "ordinary" world to the "sacred" world.

So we stayed in a very well-landscaped, finely crafted, wooden structure that felt very much like an indoor campout.  Matted floors with sparse furniture in small bedrooms, communal bathrooms, and a large dining area.  Early morning prayers to the spirits, and intricately prepared organic food, were offerings to create the environment in us to undertake a calm meditative day.

The result is a society which spends a big part of their day paying attention to their actions, and asks for good fortune and the avoidance of impurity from spirits that daily surround them.

We took that charge into our adventure today, and many of us will try to build on it to improve our lives.  Arriving at the Himeji Castle , we ascended the 400 year-old, five-story "white egret (color and design)" beauty with lots of other visitors.  It's the most visited building in Japan, and has been featured in most of the Japanese historical movies you've seen.

Operating for centuries as a showcase of religious and feudal power, it projects a society which in many ways can still be found here.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Monday, Apr 9th, Takamatsu, Japan.


 

Sunday, Apr 8th, Koyasan, Japan

Greetings!

A taxi, bullet train, subway, express train, walk, funicular, bus, and walk took us to lunch, and the start of a day which would end with a stay tonight at a Buddhist temple inn in Koyosan on a thin mat in the cold after a very vegetarian dinner served by the resident monks.

The afternoon began with a visit to the Kongobu-ji Temple Complex, home of Koyosan Shingon Buddhism, founded by Kukai (Kobo Daishi) in 812AD. Kukai is considered the most important religious figure in Japan's history, and the grand master of Shingon Buddhism.  And later in the day, we learned that he's asleep at the second stop we made - the Okunoin Temple.  Being served meals each day, his followers expect him to awaken in 5.7 billion years.

The real treasure of the day was clearly the host of temples and shrines and the cemetery at Koyosan.  A wonderful city burstng with temples, Koyosan sits in a valley between eight peaks high in the mountains of Japan.  It's likened to being in the middle of a lotus flower, but in the snow. We have been carrying around long underwear and jackets throughout the first month of our trip in very heavy suitcases.  Now, we're very glad we did.

Before returning to our inn, we took a long walk through the cemetery here.  With over 200,000 inhabitants (not really dead?) awaiting the awakening, it's more like a sea of monuments than a cemetery.  Add to it that there are thousands of mature (500-800 year-old) huge Japanese cedars, and you get an awesome display of devotion and belief.  Twelve hundred years of transporting almost a million tons of granite, found nowhere near here, to carve and use as tributes to Japan's Shoguns, Emperors, and greatest corporate leaders - is so beautifully exhibited and maintained.

To see all of the photos (lots of good ones) taken today, click on Sunday, Apr 8th, Koyosan, Japan.

Saturday, April 7th, Kyoto, Japan

Greetings!

Today was our first Japanese breakfast.  I've been getting used to stranger and stranger lunches and dinners, but I not my breakfasts.   I guess that's over.

By train, we went to the nearby city of Fushimi to see the Mt. Inari Shinto Shrine.  Built in the 8th century, the shrine is dedicated to  the Japanese kami (spirit, deity, divinity, god, etc.) which takes male and female forms, and often protects the harvest.

The crowds were enormous, and the many young marriages being celebrated and photographed were exciting to see.  Kimonos in every style and color were being worn, and it seemed like every teenage girl in Asia was taking pictures of their costumed best friends.

The paths up to the Shrine are straddled with vermillion gates (torii - bird abode), a pigment used for thousands of years all over the world which has come to be associated with places of worship.  Made from a powder of cinnabar, it was used in Central and South American in ceramics and cave paintings in the Chavin civilization, the Maya, Moche, and Inca empires.  It can also be found in ancient Rome and China.

One of the oldest representations featured there is of a kitsune (fox), a Shinto messenger.  Carrying in its mouth one of four objects symbolizing its powers and foci, the foxes have a long history of portrayal in Shinto shrines and at Inari. 

Next, we visited the Yasaka Shinto Shrine, first begun in 656AD.  The complex consists of several buildings, a main hall, and a stage.  Ordered by Emperor Murakami in 965 to be the site of imperial news and the reporting of great events to the guardian kami of Japan, the Mikoshi of the shrine were paraded through the streets of Kyoto in 969 to ward off an epidemic that had hit the city.

Finally, in the late afternoon we walked to the Gion District to have an early dinner and be introduced to a Maiko (Geisha in training).  This 16-year old apprentice performed a short dance, and answered questions from us on her life and career.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Saturday, Apr 7th, Kyoko, Japan.

Friday, April 6th, Kyoto, Japan

Greetings!

Before leaving Takayama, we packed an overnight bag for the trip to Kyoto.  You've all seen plenty of photos of our travel in a train or bus, so I'm going to assume you don't want to see lots more of them.  But we did spend much of today traveling.  The scenes out the windows were great, and especially the ride by bullet train (Shinkansen).  I am going to help you experience the last bus ride, however.  It was, as one of our co-travelers said, "an immersion".

Kyoto was the home of Japan's leadership for over eleven hundred years.  In 794, Emperor Kanmu moved the country's capital to here (Heian-kyo).  Previously, there had been 49  emperors, dating back to 660 BC, but this new period is often referred to as the "thousand year capital", because of its permanence in Kyoto.

The period (Edo) of the Tokugawa Shogunate dominance of Japan lasted from 1603 to 1868, when Japanese society was under its family rule, and the country's 300 regional Daimyo.  Of course, it was the Samurai military leadership (hired by the daimyos to protect them, who ran things.

Nijo-jo Castle was the place where the first Shogun (Tokugawa Ieyasu) gathered his daimyos (friend and foe) together, and the hawk was displayed on the meeting room walls as his symbol of power.  The floors were held together with an intricately-designed nailing system which chirped "like nightingales" when walked on to warn the occupants of attacks during the night.

Next, we traveled to Kinkaku-Ji, a Zen Buddhist temple, also known as the Golden Pavillion. Built as a Shogun family villa in 1397, it was destroyed 75 years later.  Re-built in early 1500, it was again destroyed by a novice monk in 1950. Finally, re-built in 1955, its three-story, gold leaf design, and extensive gardens, place it among the 17 World Heritage Sites in Kyoto.

In the early evening, we returned to Kyoto to find our hotel dinner accommodations in some ruin.  In pouring rain, our group scattered to the restaurants nearby.  Pat and I found a very memorable seven-seater downstairs just off the main street, and had the chef all to ourselves.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Friday, Apr 6th, Kyoto, Japan.

Thursday, April 5th, Takayama, Japan

Greetings!

Today, we walked around the town of Takayama.  If you've been reading or watching films about Japan's history, you know about the Shoguns.  What you don't know about them is that there were families of Shoguns that dominated Japan for centuries.  One of those families (Tokugawa) made Takayama their homebase.  From 1600 to 1868, the family was the last feudal military government in Japan.  Almost everything you need to know about the Shoguns, you can learn about in this town.

And the perfect person to explain it to us is Mac, our local guide.  And his added talents are his love of saki, and his previous background as the physical education teacher to half the students in the town.  Still struggling with English, he has no problem guiding us to all the right historical and current places of interest in the town. 

From our hotel, across the river, to the many temples and Shogun government offices, and to the many shops which continue the artistry and craftsmanship which was necessary to sustain this central powerbase in the heart of the Japanese Alps, we walked and Mac talked.

In the late afternoon, we were released to find our own way to what had peaked our interest on the tour.  Pat and I visited some temples in the hills (including the Sugurayama Hachimangu Shrine), and finished up before dinner with the Kusakabe Folk Crafts Museum, a replica of the famous Tosho-gu Shinto Shrine in Nikko, and a the Higashiyama Walkway.

To see all of the photos taken today, click on Thursday, Apr 5th, Takayama, Japan.