Tottori! And Another Mountain

I swear, all I do in Japan is tackle kids during 'english' class, and climb rocks.

This past weekend, some friends and I took a trip to Tottori-ken, famous for having the largest of the three major sand dunes in Japan (the rival dunes are in Aomori-ken and... somewhere else). Tottori also grows nashi (pears) fishes a lot of squid. The squid in Tottori is famous for being fatty and scrumptious, not at all like the chewy and tough tentacles you find in other parts of Japan.

In Kurayoshi, a small, silent town off the beaten path and to the southeast of Tottori City, there is yet another unique reason to visit this least populated of all the Japanese prefectures.

I'll be honest. I forgot the name of this place and as I am at the office, and can't read enough Japanese to figure it out with the web, I will probably not be including said vital information in this post. But it's famous in a quiet way. Very few of my Japanese friends knew about this place, and none of them had been here. In fact, while we climbed the 700 meters up (doesn't sound like much, does it? keep reading. you'll see.) we were the only foreigners invading the very thin trickle of Japanese tourists. Once we got gaijin photobombed - when Japanese people pretend to take pictures of their friends, but aim the camera at you, instead- and more than once, tourists cheerfully and blatantly took our pictures. How does that conversation go at home? 'Dude! Saw a whitey today!' 'EEEEEEEHHHHHH? Nani? Gaijin? Hountooooooo?' Probably a lot like that.

This dude greets hikers/climbers and laughs at their light-headed optimism. 

This is the 'ground floor' where you enter the temple grounds. You pay a fee to get in
here and then after this you pay another fee to go up the mountain. 

Amazingly tall trees

So you start where the big red arrow is. That is pointing at the picture with all the statues
(go back two photos). Then you start winding your way up the mountain.　It's not all
that far, but the fact that you are basically climbing straight up makes it feel like it is
much further!

You climb up this almost right away. It's the
first staircase you encounter after all those
stone steps you schlepped up earlier.

There is really only room on the path to go in single file.

Once you hit the entryway to the mountain path, you have some decisions to make. For instance, if you wear shoes without tracking on the bottom, you have to buy straw sandals. They will not let you on the path unless your shoes grip the path otherwise you will fall off the path and die, or at the very least be painfully embarrassed. And of course, if too many people fall off the path, they might have to close it. 

In the above picture, you can kind of see that the people are wearing little white sashes across their shoulders. You may notice there are supposed to be no side bads, and there are supposed to be no long shirts. The path is tricky and you definitely need both hands and both feet free and aware so you can get your monkey on. 

We didn't climb this, it's just interesting.

Lots and lots of green!

This is the beginning of one of the buildings we came across. To get up to this one, we had to hold onto a chain and walk up a rock.. Straight up, almost. 

A view from the corner of that building. 

It's like throwing coins in a fountain, except you have to be careful
that the coins don't fall off and kill someone. 

 More on this later, i have to get ready for lunch!

Takamatsu and the Ekaiwa

When you think of Japan, if you don't first think of mob members beaten foreigners in back alleys, automated dog washing machines, or Godzilla being badly dubbed, you might think zen. Maybe the wise and calm sayings of that karate instructor in that movie (series of movies, I suppose) come to mind or your inner peace begins to crave the solace of a sculptured garden enclosed behind a Buddhist monastery’s austere stone walls. But day to day life is, of course, very different, and the Japanese seem very incapable of achieving the rest and peace they worship in their art and cultural traditions.

I first thought this when a nationally-touring art exhibit came to Tano. The minutely detailed ink drawings were usually scenes of exquisite peace and quiet; they were moments of stillness in a harbor before fishermen went out for the day, or the unbroken mists draped around cedar forests on a mountainside. Many an old Edo-style building was wrapped up in stony age and time, serene and wise, holding its tradition to itself like a gorgeous kimono, both for decoration and modesty’s sake. But the people who surround me in my town, while lovely, kind and even generous, are not people who sit still well. They aren't likely to sit and ponder a question so much as discuss it volubly amongst each other and ask for a general consensus to solve the problem, then quickly move on to the next trivial pursuit. The individual does not really matter and so cannot find peace, and if the individual can't find it, how can the group which is made up of so many individuals? 

For instance, this beautiful garden was created by a feudal lord for his private relaxation and leisure. The house is positioned with a lovely view of a man-made lake, the sculptured greenery like scenery around it is as though nature had a tasteful manicure in anticipation of a lovely romantic dinner with a long-loved partner. But the majority of the tourists I see walk through the garden move quickly, snapping pictures, chattering to each other, and briskly stepping onward to the next offering. The only people sitting down to enjoy the iris garden were two foreigners. 

I wandered off from the group, because I have a perverse sense of forced independence. I like doing my own thing when and where I want to do it and I don't have much pity on the group as a whole. But they survived of course, because they were the majority. It must have been rough, though, since I am the life and soul of every party.

Similarly, in Shikoku Village, I found the same experience, especially among my own traveling companions. 

Shikoku Village is a reproduction of what old houses in the mountains of Shikoku were like. The village is carved into the mountain side, a veritable Hobbiton of little round houses connected by sweetly curving paths and marvelously constructed wooden steps. There is a rose garden, a striking bamboo forest, and a multi-tiered waterfall whose overflowing creates a constant and harmonious, reflection-inducing hum. Our group spent about an hour here and promptly moved on to the next place. I spent most of the time wandering alone, listening to the water, staring into the crazy third dimension of bambooed-space, or following my feet down stony and wooded paths. 

Not so my fellow tourists. They walked quickly, talked quickly, enjoyed quickly, and seemed to promptly forget. There was no reminiscent talk later in the trip about the beauties we just saw. There were no conversations about old Japan or sugar-cane processing from the 1600s. It was like a snapshot in an overfull album – glanced at, admired, and quickly forgotten under the onslaught of the next page. 

It's Lonely at the Top and, Eventually, You Have to Make Your Way Down

The temple grounds are pretty amazing. Still carved out of the many tiers of the mountainside, stairs and little stone paths lead you up and up and up, while on all sides you remain surrounded by tall trees. When you look out from this man-made refuge, you can see all the greenery enveloping the world on either side of you, and straight out in front of you is Yasuda-cho and the ocean beyond it. I don't have a picture of it because the sun was going to over-expose. 

The Main Entrance and a number of small buildings, very pretty
and dainty.

Another buddha sitting by a trickling waterfall.

There are fountains everywhere, because there's a spring that bubbles up from the depths of the mountain and finds its way out here. So the sculpted gardens are always alive with the tinkling giggles of running water. 

Up above this lovely little opening, there are a number of temples. I don't know what they are praising or waiting for, but I would point out that almost all temples and shrines in Japan (Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines) have bells. When the pilgrims come to pray at the shrine, they ring the bell so the gods wake up and hear them. I suppose the gods do not care the rest of the time, until the pilgrim proves his investment by killing himself to get up this mountain. If that's what it took to get the gods' attention, they better damn well be awake and listening all the time. What if I die of exhaustion and can't ring the bell? Those feckless deities. 

Entertainingly, the post on the left says Yasuda Town (Matsumoto something)
 and the post on the right says Tano Town (Marunaka Taxi Service). They
donated the posts to the temple. From here you can see a pilgrim
retreating after praying at the temple all the way up here. 

You can see the incense pot in front of the steps and if you look behind the hanging lamp
you can see the bell that you ring to wake the gods up. If the pilgrim before you looks like
he might be a little bit of a limp fish, ring the bell extra loud because the gods will probably
have gone back to sleep and put their earplugs in.

Last couple of shots. This was a big picture post. Ha! 

I honestly couldn't read any of the inscriptions or descriptions of anything, so I don't know what the place is dedicated to or what it's about. I could google it, but I booked myself all the way up there. You google it. 

Anyway, as you turn to head back down from the main temple, you pass this nice looking pilgrim who is also headed back down the mountain:

If you look right in front of our friend with the walking stick you can see a dude all in red. You are going to pass him next on your way down the mountain. 

And he's a scary bugger.

I'm constantly amazed at people making statues of scary gods. Or demons or Satan or anything like that. It's a blessing to not be able to see them, (conversely it's a mixed blessing to be able to see them, I suppose) and I don't know why anybody would want to give them real concrete places to hang out. It makes little sense to me. But inaka Japan (and cosmopolitan Japan, if it comes to that) is full of these statues. 

After taking a lovely tour of the temple grounds, I turned around and made my way down the mountain. It was slightly easier going back, because I fell and gravity helped me out (I jest), I reclaimed my bike and then walked it most of the way back down the street. I don't really trust my brakes these days. 

There you have it. Up soon will be pictures from my most recent trip to Takamatsu. Yee-haw. Stay tuned.