This weekend we took another trip, this time to Yamadera Temple in Yamagata Prefecure.  It’s a famous holy site because it houses a 1100 year old flame in a Buddhist temple brought from a big temple in Kyoto, which was brought from a temple in China, and it’s been burning all this time.  In fact, the temple in Kyoto had been destroyed in a war, and the flame from Yamadera was used to relight that flame when the temple was rebuilt.  The main flame is deep inside the temple to keep it safe from wind and the elements, so unfortunately we didn’t get to see it.

It’s also a very beautiful place, it’s built on the side of a volcanically formed mountain, and there are all these Buddhist carvings in the rocky formations.  It also has many temples built on the rocks which give an awe inspiring view with the mountains in the back ground.  Sadly though it was raining when we went, so the mountains were not quite as visible as I had hoped for.  But there were pretty with the clouds all hazy around them.

The only bad part was that since it is on the side of a mountain is there are literally a thousand steps. XD  1105 to be exact.  It was quite a trek up, but thankfully there were lots of places to stop to take a picture or a breather.  There were a lot of people there Saturday too, and pretty much everyone was using a umbrella, which made navigating around people very challenging. XD  I was afraid I was going to poke peoples eyes out with the tip of my umbrella, and I kept poking K in the head with it while I was trying to use the camera. XD



Steps and more steps XD

Aside from the steps, it’s a really nice place.  To quote Eddie Izzard, “it’s got this aaAAaaaAAAaaahh  kinda  feel to it.” It also has a really fresh mountainy and tree-ey smell that’s always so relaxing.  ^^

Oh, these also this story about when the town and temples were founded.  There was this rich lord who was going through the area now know as Yamadera and was awestruck at the natural beauty of the area, so decided to have temples and shrines built there.  There was a famous hunter living in that area already, and who me the lord one day in the woods.  The lord told the hunter of his plan to build the temples.  But the lord also said that he’d like to keep this place a safe and sacred place so he’d like no more hunting on the mountain side, and even though the hunters livelihood might suffer he agreed because honoring Buddah was more important.  When he said that a bunch of animals from the area walked into the clearing where the men where discussing, and danced for them because they were happy they weren’t going to be hunted anymore.  ^^

I like that story, and that picture is from a little book I picked up while I was there.  I’ve got a couple of little story books, 1 because I like the stories, and 2 because they’re written in furigana, which is when they write hiragana next to the kanji so that little children can read the books too.

This guy has an interesting hat.

These are seals attached to the underside of a roof of an archway that’s also a temple.

These are candles and incense that can be bought and used at the temples or taken home for at home shrines.

This is where you burn incense; I’m not entirely sure on which incense you burn for the departed, and which you burn to wave some of the smoke on yourself and to inhale in order to cleanse yourself to go pray. I think the single small sticks are for the departed, and the bundles are for yourself, but I could be wrong.

These are little charms and souvenirs sold to help pay for the maintenance of the temples. Some of the charms are to be attached to the inside of your car for protection, while others are cell phone or key chain charms.

These are statues of Basho, a very famous wandering poet.  He wrote a famous haiku about Yamadera:
Silence and penetrating into the rocks — the cry of the cicada.

These are little Buddha status that you can buy and place at shrines to appease the souls of the departed. The particular shrine these are for is a shrine for children that have died. You can tell which ones are for children because they will have pinwheels and little toys at them.


These are from the top most and most holiest temple. This is where the flame is kept lit, and generally the point of the trek up the steps is to come here and pray. It’s kind of weird wandering around these temples with everyone is taking pictures. Because to us in Western society, when we think of holy we think of churches, and most wouldn’t appreciate people wandering around a church during a sermon taking pictures. XD But Shinto and Buddism are very different from most Western religions.

This is the temple at the bottom of the mountain, where the trek begins. At the center front of the hall is a big wooden Buddha, that if you donate a hundred yen you can rub it. I’m not sure if you rub it for luck or make a wish, but it’s is well polished from all the people who have rubbed it over the years, its so polished its almost soft feeling (yes, I rubbed the Buddha’s belly ^^.)

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The first place we saw on our second day of the trip was Goshiki-numa, the 5 Colored Ponds.  We started off at the foot of the trail which has a nice visitor center and restaurant.  Bishamon-numa, the first pond, which was a beautiful blue and we saw some people feeding ducks.  ^^  I couldn’t believe how vibrant the color of the water was, very cool stuff.  Then we hit the trail and walked for a bit and came to the next pond, Aka-numa, which was a very creamy green color.  We were getting pretty warm out by then, but it felt really nice in the shade.  Then we walked for a bit more and came to the next one, Midoro-numa, which was a crazy reddish and green color.  You can definitely tell that there is some iron in that water XD

Along the way we saw some families enjoying the trail too, and some of the kids had nets and little insect viewing cases.  Bug collecting is very big here from what I can tell, the popular insects to catch are these gigantic beetles that scare the crap outta me XD  They sell them in some pet stores, and I can’t imagine having one of those in my house, blah.

Well, then we headed to the next pond, Benten-numa, which was a bright blue color with a bit of a creamy blueness around the edges.  Very interesting.  And then we were off to the last one, Ao-numa.  It was a creamy greenish blue color, with more on the green end then blue.  Between Benten and Ao-numa we passed a nice little bubbling brook.  I love that sound, its so soothing ^^

Then it was a little more of a walk to the end of the trail, where there was a rest center and bus stop.  The bus stop is for a quick ride back to the trail head, and I have to admit we took it.  But we didn’t have the time to walk back because we wanted to see some other places that day.  Oh, I’d like to note that I used past-tense for all the lake colors, because apparently they change color over the course of the seasons, so even though they were a particular color when we went they don’t stay that way all the time.

After that we to the Noguchi Hideyo Museum, which is dedicated to a famous Japanese doctor who helped cure Yellow Fever and Syphilis in South America and Africa.  When he was an infant he fell in a fire pit which severely burned his hand and quite a bit of his body.  When he was a teen he was sent to Tokyo for surgery on his hand which gave him the use of his hand back.  After being healed so dramatically he devoted his life to medicine and became quite a distinguished doctor.  He won many awards and found the vector for Yellow Fever, saving many peoples lives.   But unfortunately he died while in Africa, working on a cure.  He’s on the 1000 Yen note, which is a pretty big honor.

Then we went to a Glass Museum and saw some lovely pieces.  Then we headed back to the hotel , which I’ll talk about a little because I really liked the place.  It was pretty cheap too, for the niceness of the accommodations.  In the driveway they had a van painted like the Neko-basu (Cat Bus) from My Neighbor Totoro.  That’s such a great movie, and I’m pretty sure every Japanese person has seen it ^^  If you ever get a chance, I highly recommend it, it’s such a happy kids movie. 

Well, inside the main building, they had this wonderful eclectic assortment of stuff.  They had these really nice wall paintings of trees and flowers, and right off the dining room there was a big koi pond.  There were some crazy big fish in there XD and some pretty colored ones too.  What was really neat was they had a bunch of wood walk-ways going all over the place with picnic tables stationed throughout.   We called it a night after that, we were pretty worn from being on our feet all day.

 
These are from the town where the Hideyo Noguchi museum is at.

The Hideyo Noguchi Museum

The Hotel X-Teru

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I made this a couple months ago on my other blog  and finally got around to posting it XD  Hope you enjoy!

For those using Firefox I’ve noticed there’s an issue with it playing the music.  The music is very soft for the first 5 seconds, then gets louder, if no sound plays after 10-15 seconds (after all the loading of course) I’d suggest just clicking the link below and watching it from Dream Studio.
http://video.sanriotown.com/video/d402d62932b61025

Matsushima

Saturday K and I took a tour to Matsushima bay in Miyagi Prefecture. That’s actually 2 Prefectures south of the one we’re currently living in, which is Aomori Prefecture. It was quite a long bus ride (4hrs) but well worth it, we both agree it was the best tour we’ve been on so far. The first place we visited was the Marinepia aquarium, we arrived just in time to catch the seal show for that hour. Seal shows are so much fun ^^ The seals names were Andy, Asuka, Noi and Ruthy.  I love all the cute stuff they have them do, they played volleyball 2 on 2, had a race with each other, and a bunch of other fun stuff.

Then we walked around the aquarium and got to see all sorts of awesome sea creatures. They had this giant manta ray that’s wing span was bigger then my arm span! It was freak’n huge! They also had a shark tank, an otter, penguins, electric eels, and hundreds of other things. I have trouble turning off the flash on my camera so I didn’t risk taking any pictures while we were in that area.

After there we headed over to the Zuiganji Temple. Right after the gate into the temple complex is a stand of sugi trees and these wall of caves dug into a rock face that house stone tablets and Buddhist sculptures, many of which were of Kannon. Kannon is known as the Goddess of Mercy and is a very prevalent Buddhist deity. These caves are pretty cool looking, and the statues look very old. The complex itself contains several buildings, the main one being the Temple itself, but there is a nice museum that they built next to the temple containing many Buddhist relics as well as Date Masamune’s armor and a life sized replica of him. Masamune is known as being a great military leader as well as a devout Buddhist. He had the Zuiganji temple rebuilt in 1609 and also founded the city of Sendai, which is now the capital of Miyagi Prefecture. He’s a pretty fearsome looking guy, he had an enormous crescent on his helmet, but it’s kind of funny, the mascot for Matsushima/Masamune is of a cute onigiri with the crescent on his forehead. XD I wonder what he’d think of it as the mascot representation of him?

The temple contains many beautiful paintings on sliding doors and hanging wall scrolls. I picked up a nice book with pictures of artwork since you can’t take any pictures inside the temple. There are some amazing wooden carvings decorating the temple too.

After that we wandered around the city for a bit, got some food and headed to this little island connected to the main land by a little red bridge. There are actually several islands connected that way but we only got to see 2 while we were there. The third one was connected by this incredibly long bridge and if I remember correctly has more Buddhist temples on it, but we didn’t have time to get over there. The island that we did get to that we liked the most was Oshima, and it had dozens of really old sculptures and more caves dug into the rock walls. It was incredible, like walking into history. It wasn’t a really big island either, but it had paths going everywhere, many of which were just the rock of the island worn down by thousands of people over the centuries. There was even a tunnel dug through the rock.

The last thing we did was take a boat cruise around the bay where we got to see dozens of the islands that Matsushima is famous for. A lot had really interesting histories, like this one that legend has it Masamune used to have midnight parties on this one island, and another was where retired horses were sent to live out the rest of their life in peace.

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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 14^th 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 .

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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.

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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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