Full Circle
Sometimes life gets full of loose ends. "I should have done that," "I wish I'd gone there," "I never tried that thing off the menu," "I'd love to meet that person again." This year so far I've been able to close some of those circles. Here are four stories. Mostly I just want to share a ton of pictures.
Kannonji
I always wanted to go back to Kannonji and tell the woman at the hotel/guest house that I appreciated her words and she helped me with my assimilation into the world of Japanese Buddhism. She gave me the courage to try something completely outside of my comfort zone.
And I also always wanted to go back to Kannonji because I saw the tiny silhouette of a shrine overlooking the sea on a cliff face and I wondered if I could get up there.
Some time in February, before all my crazy business trips, hectic schedule, and balancing my life between work, art galleries, training new instructors, there was one little Friday that both Yossi and I had off together and we went there.
I didn't tell him where we were going, although I informed him that I'd made a dinner reservation at our lodgings. I said, "Drive over to Shikoku!"
He said, "Are we going hiking?"
I said, "No."
So off we went. I wanted to show him that rugged mountain face against the backdrop of the sea, but first we had to get to the general vicinity. So we went to the shrine with the Zenigata where I found big trees and plum blossoms. Then we went to a beach where we played on the sand in the low tide and ate hamburgers. Finally, I asked him to drive me up the mountain behind us to the start of the hiking trail.
"But you said we weren't going hiking. . ."
"We aren't! I am! And you're going to go take a nap, watch baseball on your car TV, and if you have some time buy me a souvenir!"
He looked at me for a moment, dumbfounded. "Really?"
"Yeah."
His features softened like a little boy. "Woopee!"
As we parted, he promised to pick me up on the other side of the mountain.
I had a great hike by myself. Fantastic views, beautiful rocks, and I met some local people to talk to.
But when I got down the mountain, he wasn't there.
"I'm at the waterfall," he said.
But there wasn't a waterfall. I kept walking until I found a lake with no river or waterfall in sight. It was actually a place where water is gathered to use in the fields, so not a natural lake, but it was big enough I thought it might have a name. I asked someone working out in their garden for the lake's name and was relieved that they knew it. After a while Yossi was able to find the lake, too and we reunited! He'd bought me a souvenir, too!
We drove to the very tip of the land to watch the sunset together. As the colors above us and below us changed from gold, to orange, to purple, I suddenly noticed we were late for dinner at the hotel. Yossi phoned the place and asked the woman if it was possible to eat later. She said, "Any time you like!" That was odd, as the website said dinner was only at 6 and needed a reservation.
When we arrived at the hotel, we found out we were the only people staying that night. She held off making dinner so we could soak in the bath before eating. Then she came to our room like a parent to knock on the door and tell us dinner was ready. I was so excited to talk with her about my adventures as a pilgrim. Her cats wandered around at our feet while we talked and ate.
The next day, both Yossi and I had to work early. We got up at 6am to make our way back to Okayama. But it was so worth it.
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Saga
The only prefecture I hadn't been to yet was Saga. A few years ago, I decided to get that out of the way by planning a trip there with Yossi. But some kind of pandemic happened and plans fell by the wayside. This year for Golden Week, I decided to just go for it no matter what. With my heavy work schedule, I had no time to make plans. I bought us Shinkansen tickets and booked a cheap hot spring inn. Then I didn't think about it until the day came.
Saga is well off the beaten track. It doesn't have any particularly spectacular sightseeing points. They're famous for pottery, but so is Okayama or Yamaguchi. They have mountains, but there are more accessible mountains elsewhere. You can eat squid there, but you can eat squid in a lot of places. But a student had shown me a picture once, a long time ago, of a shrine with a torii made of porcelain. I wanted to see it for myself.
Saga turned out to be a lot of fun. I had been so crazy busy with new hires at work that I hadn't made any plans at all. I stopped by the home of a friend who was able to provide maps and some ideas for things to do. His mother gave us a tour of her rose garden, which was not only beautiful, but I learned a lot of things about growing roses that I'd never known before.
The hotel was a 25 minute walk from the station, and the station was in the middle of a wide expanse of golden wheat fields. At night, fireflies rose up from the river to cast their glow. Behind the hotel was a hill upon which was once a castle. 20 minutes from the hotel was a gorgeous waterfall. The local food there is carp. You can eat its crunchy raw meat with sweet miso, or you can eat it boiled in soup. But it has a lot of bones.
Just figuring out the trains was an adventure in itself, but we managed to get to a lot of different sightseeing places in only 3 days. And it was quieter than most places are during Golden Week.
Now I can finally say I've been to every prefecture in Japan! And I went to the shrine with the porcelain torii. They were having a pottery festival. Every shop had their wares out on the street. I loved the energy of people walking around admiring pottery. I bought two cups that I don't need but really wanted. I promised Yossi I'd get rid of two other cups in exchange. Anyone want some Japanese cups?
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Kisuki
Two years ago when I was working in Matsue, one of my students told me she lived in a temple. I thought that was just her broken English or something, but I asked her which temple was near her house and told her I'd go pray at her temple on my next day off. The next time I had a day of, it was pouring rain and I didn't go. I didn't think it was that big a deal, but she called up the school and told them, "I waited for Jennifer to come to my house and she didn't come." So of course my manager calls me and says, "Did you arrange to meet a customer at her house?" Nooo. . . ?
Well it turns out, she really does live in a temple.
A few months later, when we'd had to turn our business operations completely online, a young girl began taking my skype lessons because her parents refused to let her go outside of their small farming village. At first she couldn't say a single word of English, but as we got to know each other, not only did she start grasping the language but she'd find things she wanted to tell me. One day she wanted to tell me about her town. It's Kisuki, it's famous for beautiful cherry blossoms, and it's near a very big river. I looked it up and it's the same town where the temple is!
I decided I had to go. When fall came around, I had a business trip to the area so I decided to go a day ahead of time. If I caught the train at 7am, I could get there by 12. I was looking forward to the gorgeous fall colors of the Japanese countryside. I looked up a good place for lunch and a couple places to take a walk. It was certain to be fun.
I did not anticipate heavy rainfall over the mountains causing some bamboo trees to fall and hit the train that left just before mine. The whole line was stopped for 4 hours while they sent out a maintenance crew to help. I had to take a bus to get beyond the place where the line was stopped. It would have taken me until nightfall to get to Kisuki, so I gave up.
But my business trips brought me to Shimane prefecture in the spring. One sunny day I just so happened to have off at the peak of cherry blossom season. I asked my students where the best place to see the blossoms were, and they all said Kisuki.
I am so glad I had to wait until spring. It was so worth it. Early in the morning on a weekday there were no crowds and I walked under two kilometers of cherry trees, stopping along the way to lay on the grass or wander around farm houses admiring the decay of old tools and sheds against the backdrop of fresh spring green and newly opened blossoms.
I found the temple where my student lives and prayed there, leaving her a little message that I'd been by. Then I walked up a hill that had the most fantastic view of the legendary Hii river which comes up a few times in the most ancient texts in Japan. Finally, I had a lovely train ride back, staring out the window at the long afternoon shadows made by gorgeous trees and clusters of traditional buildings. Truly a day worth breathing for.
I feel like I've completely all four seasons in Shimane now. I can maybe start to call it a second home. . ? It sure feels like it, at least. My first home is Kobe, my second home is Shimane, but I'm not sure what Tamano city is to me yet. . .
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Izumo Juso
Nearing the end of my business trip in Izumo, I wanted to do something that made it feel like I'd achieved something.
My friend invited me out for dinner on my last day, but that didn't seem big enough.
Another friend asked if I wanted to take a walk with her in the park, but I turned it down.
I wanted to do something that fed on that connection I feel to Izumo-Kuni, the ancient land of Izumo which is now present day Shimane prefecture, including Matsue and Izumo cities.
Suddenly my hiking app randomly popped up with some new suggestions.
After flipping through them, I decided to try the Izumo Juso. It's a course that takes you hiking across every mountain in the Kita-Izumo range. The entire hike is 13km, but since I don't have a car, it about 15k from station to station. At the end of the hike is Izumo Shrine. I went there long, long ago before I'd fallen in love with Matsue, learned all the history, and began participating in Japanese religion. I thought that would be great to go again, with a much fuller understanding of what the shrine means and where it stands in history.
Because, right, after hiking for 15 km, the best thing to do is stop to appreciate some history and religion? No, the best thing to do is to fall down dead in a heap. No wait, the shrine wasn't even open when I got off the mountain, it took me so long.
The day before my hike, it was absolutely pouring. The downpour was so heavy, so unrelenting, that I couldn't even imagine it clearing up. The forecast promised that the sun would come out the next day, but I couldn't believe it. When I woke up the next morning to heavy, dark cloudcover, all I could do was assume it would rain again. I ate a sulky breakfast at the hotel and started getting ready to go out in the chilly weather. As I did so, something came to mind. Lyrics from a song. "Without faith, I am nothing."
You can't go to bed every night without faith that the sun will rise again. You can't live each day as your last. There's just too much anxiety that way. We all have to have some kind of faith in the rules of nature or nothing will ever get done. Imagine if you didn't have faith that 2 plus two is 4 and had to count it on your fingers every, single time. At some point you just have to believe in it and run with it. In the same way, I thought, I have to have faith that the sun will come out and I'm going to have a great day. If I sulk too much, I'll end up missing the train.
So I opened up the window and told Matsue, "I believe in you! I'm gonna have a great day!"
Thus started 8 hours of adventure. I only had a map, I had no idea what kind of terrain was beneath that red line drawn across topography. I had no idea what kind of animals, what names the mountains had, what stories they told. This wasn't like hiking in Kobe or Okayama where I know where I'm standing, or somewhere I've seen often from the ground. This was me throwing myself into the unknown. Sometimes I got a bit lost, or didn't know which path to take, but somehow or another I managed to find my way.
A few points of interest were. . .
A deer! Most deer in Japan are Nihonshika, but this one was Honshujika. I had no idea, but the area I was hiking in was a nature reserve for these deer. It was exciting to see one, if only very briefly as it fled from me into the shadowy underbrush.
A shrine falling apart under the trees, with a statue of an old man off to the side. He bears a long beard and has a large, bulbous nose. His face is stern, very serious. I don't know who he is or what story brought him to life, but I'd love to find out.
Flowers. There were so many mountain flowers blooming on trees and falling to the ground. Some of the shapes of the flowers were pretty amazing.
At the top of one of the hills was a sign on the side of a shelter that said "Be careful of bees." Right below the sign I could see a tiny gap between wooden slats where honey bees were darting in and out.
At one point I was going down a steep slope, my hat was sliding down my face and I didn't notice a low hanging branch. I rammed my head into it, and had to sit down for ten minutes in excruciating pain. When the worst of the pain had dimmed, I staggered on up and down the trail with a throbbing headache. I thought maybe I was nearing the end. There were only two more stops listed on my map. I figured one would be the valley between two hills, and one would be the last point to climb. Just then I found myself face to face with a rocky wall and a rope going up. Normally, this would be my idea of fun. But my head felt awful, I was tired, and I'd eaten almost all of my snacks. At first I was just thinking "No, I can't do this." But then I realized that was my work-brain talking. At work, when faced with a hard task, I just have to do it. But out here in the forest, there are no restrictions. So instead of heading up, I laid down on a log and took a break. I reminded myself that I could just nap here as long as I needed to. There are no deadlines. Slowly, slowly the pain in my head simmered away. I gathered back my energy. Then it was up and rock climbing! I made it to the top and found an excellent view of the land below with the Hii river snaking away toward Kisuki, the ocean curving around the bay, a cluster of trees where surely Izumo shrine stood in its glory. But I could also see that I was nowhere near finished yet. I could still see a couple more hilltops ahead.
This season, mountains bear all shades of purple in little pockets here and there. There are Kiri trees, wisteria, and purple mountain azaleas. Little tiny violets and other purple mountain flowers dot the edges of trails. So even tired and a long way from home, I could enjoy little surprises here and there. I also saw a lot of snakes. Most of them were green or black, harmless and shy. But one was a pit viper. They aren't very big, but they can kill you. And when it saw me, it froze right in the middle of the trail and decided to stay there until I went away. I backed up and waited, but it didn't move. Finally I went and hid behind a tree. It decided things were safe then, and slid down under some fallen leaves. Phew! I'm glad I know to look for these things, especially at that time of day, or I could have been bitten.
Finally I got down to the bottom of the last little mountain and found a pretty waterfall as a last reward for my efforts. The forest gave way slowly to farms, then a little town, and finally a few shops closed for the night around the outside of the great Izumo Shrine. I gave a little bow toward it, even though I couldn't go inside, before heading off toward the train station. Going back on the train, I passed by all the mountains that I'd climbed. This time I could look up at them and know their names, the curves of their trails, the faces of their fauna, and the sounds of their trees in the wind. It's quite a different experience to look up at a mountain that you've labored on versus one unfamiliar to you.
When the train arrived back in Matsue, I waited for my friend to pick me up to go have dinner. Looking for a place to sit down, I found a little foot bath with steaming hot water. It was the perfect thing I needed just in that moment! I warmed my tired feet until my friend's car pulled up. Matsue, you're too good to me, always!
There are many things I'd still like to do in Izumo-Kuni, in Shimane, in Matsue, but I felt satisfied enough to say the whole two months of heavy work was worth it because of the all the new experiences I was able to have.
Jennifer