Hiraizumi
So K and I went on a tour earlier today to two places in Iwate Prefecture, the first was Hiraizumi and the second was Geibi gorge. They are both very picturesque places and even though it was raining K and I had a pretty good time. We do both hope to get back down there again maybe during the summer or fall though when it hopefully isn’t raining. ^^
In Hiraizumi town is a tall hill, and on that hill are many temples and shrines. Here’s a link to the official Hiraizumi town site: http://www.chusonji.or.jp/index.html The majority are Buddhist temples, the most famous being the Konjiki-do (Golden Hall) temple and is made of wood from Southeast African rosewood, African Ivory iridescent shells and covered in gold leaf. It’s quite a site to see, such detail is amazing. Here’s a link to a picture from the official site:http://www.chusonji.or.jp/annai/konjikidoh/index.html, you can’t take any pictures of it unfortunately. It was built by this dude Fujiwara Kiyohira for a mausoleum in 1124. The statues are of Amida (the head Buddha) which is the main figure, and of Amida’s attendants. On the sides of each dias are carvings of peacocks gilt covered with gems adorning their tail feathers.
Another temple and the main one for the area is the Chuson-ji (Golden Pavilion) temple, which was built in 1105. The story behind it goes that Fujiwara, the same as above, lost his father, wife and son during battles and realized “that hatred and revenge would not heal the pain in his heart, so he pledged to Buddha to build the temple to help console the spirits of the dead, whether friend or foe, human or animal.” That was from the pamphlet I got from the temple complex.
The Fujiwara family after the temples were built dedicated themselves to transcribing Buddhist sutras (sutra is a word for manual). They had some beautiful ones transcribed onto dark blue scrolls with gold and silver ink. They displayed several in the museum that now surrounds the Golden Hall. They also displayed many other objects, but not anywhere near the 3,000 treasures that they have from Fujiwara’s time.
After that we wandered around the complex area for a couple hours, and thankfully the rain had calmed down for a bit so I could take some decent pictures. We found a Noh theater, which we thought was really cool, cause we had just learned about Noh plays in our Japanese Language and Culture class a couple weeks ago. Noh is a form of play that was created in the 14th century and sponsored by the samurai/nobles class. Noh players wear mask and very bulky kimono’s so that the actor’s personality doesn’t reflect onto the character they are playing. It’s sometimes called “the art of walking” because every movement they perform is slow and calculated to reflect a certain type of persona for each character. Old women move different then young men characters and you can tell from their movements what type they are without having to look at their masks if you’re well versed in Noh (I’m not XD). The stage is in the center of 4 pillars and connected to a door off stage by a narrow walkway called the hashigakan, and painted onto the back of the stage is a pine tree (Cyprus I think) that represents a spiritual area, or an area where spirits have been seen. That type of Cyprus tree is commonly found by temples and shrines as well. The props for the play are very simple, like a plain four walled hut will represent a house, or just an outline to represent what the item is. On the back wall chanters will usually sit and almost all talking not done by the main actors is done by them. There is also a whole art form dedicated to making Noh masks that is handed down generation to generation, as well as the acting itself. Kabuki is like this as well, where it is a family position handed down to the next generation. Here’s the wiki link to Noh if you wanna read up on it more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noh
Oh, I forgot to mention but there shrines are usually Shinto and temples are Buddhist. So back to the trip XD. Beside the Noh stage was another shrine, which I really like the look of, and next to that were 12 little alters each with a picture of a Juunishi (the Chinese calendar animals). I took pictures of them together and of K and mines animals, I’ma monkey ^^ While we were there we bumped into a women who spoke really good English and she said she was from Kobe and that she was a descendent of Heike and her husband was a descendent of the genji that fought an epic battle against each in the Heian period (1180 give or take a few years). This time frame became a tale told by wandering monks who chanted this as a lively hood. It was then eventually written down and became a national epic called The Tale of the Heike: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heike_Monogatari .
We walked around a bit more and came to a shrine with a bath of Torii leading down to a road, and the shrine seemed to be dedicated to kitsune (foxes). They had a bunch of cute statues of the foxes, some of concrete and some of ceramic. After that we headed back to the bus to head to the Geibikei gorge.
It’s a magnificent ravine surrounded by incredibly tall rock walls. It made me feel really small to be dwarfed by such gargantuan walls. We hopped on a boat that had no engine and powered by one man with a pole. Along the way the guide pointed out many famous points such as the Bishamon cave and the Lion’s Snout. The Bishamon cave has a shrine to Bishamon-ten, the god of treasure. At the mouth of the cave they placed an alter box (used to put offerings in) and they say if you can throw yen from the boat into the box as the box passes you be blessed with good fortune. None of the people on my boat managed to, but it was difficult because all the boats had a low hanging rain-canopy. Then after a bit we get off of the boat and walk over a bridge to see a couple more rock formations, one of which was a hole across the water that you buy a little rock with a Shinto mark in it and try to get it into the hole. The guide said if you get it in you are blessed with good luck for a year.
The stream was really clear, and you could see Koi swimming in the water, they liked to hang out near the boat dock incase someone dropped any scraps in XD Then we got back on the boat and started back. The boatmen are famous for singing a local folksong called Oiwake “Parting of Ways” which is about the gorge and boating along it. It was really nice, and then the boatman requested that we (the American group) sing our national anthem for him XD Oh, one of the things they advertise about the boat trip is that you can ride it all year long; during the spring and autumn they put the rain canopy on, during the summer they take it off, and then for the winter they enclose the who cabin and put in a kotatsu (a coffee table covered with a blanket and with a heater underneath) so that you can enjoy the scenic winter beauty from a nice cozy boat.
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Oh, I found this really fun Hello Kitty bag while we were down there, and also this awesomely cute stuffed tako (octopus) ^^ I couldn’t help myself XD
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