Weekend Part 3: Kouyasan

Sorry for flooding you with updates today, but I'm still several days behind and doubtless there will be more to explain by the time I've caught up to Tuesday evening. I have a test tomorrow so this is also a great opportunity for procrastination.



We arrived at Kouyasan, or officially the town of Kouya, at noon on Saturday. This mountain is the home to Shingon (Mantra) Buddhism and consists mainly of a large network of Shingon temples connected by a long road of souvenir shops. We were greeted by a Swiss Shingon monk named Kurt who seemed eager for the chance to finally speak to someone in a language he understood. He took us to the main Shingon temple but only explained the meaning of the artwork, with brief asides about how we were standing in the entrance to the Department of Trees which manages all the trees for the town. I would have loved to know a little more about that but we moved on.



This is a rock garden-- not a Zen garden, as Kurt insisted, but he explained no more about it.



This is a huge Japanese stupa. Inside was an enormous golden statue of Dainichi Nyorai, the central (all-pervading) Buddha of Shingon.



This is an unretouched photo. It shows the actual colors of Kouyasan on the day we were there. The full fall colors haven't yet come to the Kansai region and it's already amazingly beautiful.

Inside the stupa, the name of which I am too tired to spend thirty minutes looking up, there were some women singing a beautiful sutra. Kurt started talking very loudly over them about dharanis and samadhis, so I decided it was time to break off from the group. I bought a special surprise for Carleton meditation students in town.

The students on my program were planning to sing a song for Kurt at 3:30, but my aim was to get to the mausoleum of Koubou Daishi, or Kuukai. Koubou Daishi was a genius of early Japan. He is claimed to have invented hiragana, written the song we were going to sing (Iroha Uta), built hundreds of temples, and performed miracles throughout Japan. It is generally undisputed that he went to China and brought back Shingon, a form of Buddhism which integrates many different Chinese sects into a coherent and fluid whole, and also makes heavy use of Sanskrit siddham script, which would not have been very easy to learn in ancient China. Like the founder of Tenrikyo, he is thought to be still alive in his mausoleum, and the priests who live there claim that they cut his hair and trim his nails on a regular basis. Unlike her, he does not need a television, as he is in eternal meditation.

But on the way to Koubou Daishi's grave I got sidetracked by a forest of deep and powerful yuugen. Yuugen　幽玄, which is written with my favorite kanji 幽, is a feeling of beauty and transcience which is difficult to describe. It appears frequently in Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, although it goes unmentioned. In this forest in Kouyasan, an old graveyard of monks which was slowly being overtaken by moss and roots, yuugen was unavoidable no matter where you looked.



The pictures I took came out poorly but this should give you a flavor: stairs tumbling apart over time, mysterious siddham letters, moss growing freely. There were sections of the graveyard where nobody had gone, and it was a perfectly silent and peaceful work of nature, like a Miyazaki movie. 3:30 quickly came and went. I wandered slowly through the graveyard.



Towards the end I saw a completely abandoned and derelict grave. The stones had fallen down and roots were taking it over. Someone had left a one yen coin on this grave. I felt I knew what that person was paying homage to.



Eventually I arrived at Koubou Daishi's grave. It was a spectacular place but, as with all of Japan's national treasures, photography was strictly forbidden. I took this photo directly on the other side of the "no photos" barrier. Nevertheless the women seen in the photo thought I was being disrespectful to Koubou Daishi. Well, they did not sell postcards of the inside of the temple, and it was a beautiful work of lanterns and darkness that is difficult to describe.



This is a pyramid of Buddhas and other images left by unknown medieval Shingon believers that they found in the dirt while building the modern mausoleum.

On my way out I ran into Kurt and his remaining followers from my program. He had made them run all the way through the graveyard! I'm glad I broke off when I did. In any case I got to ride a taxi back with him and sing the Iroha Uta to him and the other monks at his temple.

I felt really accomplished as this day closed. We spent many hours riding back to Kyoto but I was pretty much happy the whole way through. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think it's time to study...

Weekend Part 2: Mt. Oomine in earnest

These pictures are of the Hahakodou (母公堂) on Mt. Oomine. Oominesan is a mountain sacred to Shugendou, a Shinto-Buddhist syncretic folk practice closely linked to esoteric Shingonshuu (Mantra Buddhism). Shugendou practicioners put on a special outfit fraught with Buddhist symbols and enter a mountain. In the old days they would spend an entire winter inside a cave on the mountain then return to the village, which was thought to imbibe in them the power of the sacred mountain. These days they tend to do pilgrimages. The founder of Shugendou was En-no-Gyouja, who climbed Oominesan for a long stay. His mother was worried about him and stayed at the bottom of the mountain to wait for him to return. This is a shrine to her.



This is the approach to the mountain itself. You see here a Shinto torii (gate) without a shrine behind it. That's quite an unusual sight. Viewed properly you can see a mountain through the gate. The mountain itself is being enshrined as sacred.



Oominesan is off limits to women as part of a 1300-year-old tradition of physical separation from worldly desires. Helen Hardacre thinks that this means shugenja consider women's bodies "impure". She also happens to be a feminist blowhard. Probably women deserve their own mountain at this point, since today more women than men come to train in the Oominesan area, but the mountain is still owned by the Shingon and Tendai sects and it is a sort of natural monastery. In any case, we did not proceed any further up the mountain, and instead took a forest trail along the artesian river.



We walked for about half an hour, and time passed very quickly. The beauty of the riverside was spectacular, as is almost everything in Japan. We found a toad. We found some waterfalls. But the real surprise awaited us at the end of the path. Brian-sensei called us into a slapped-together wooden building on the side of the highway. Inside were some chairs bolted down to metal, and helmets. We were to sit in the chairs and be pulled up to an almost vertical mountain on a thin metal track.

"Cheap monorail," explained our guide.



Some of my friends back at home would have opted out of this death trap, but we were all hardy explorers and took the route of adventure. At the top of the cheap monorail was a cave with lots of pretty colors and Buddha statues. It was much like a cave I went to with my dad in southern France.



At the bottom of the hill there were some taps where people could fill up their water from the artesian spring for free. Several minivans were always coming and going, and never with industrial-sized jugs; always with water coolers or even a box of empty Pocari Sweat bottles. This is quite a common thing in Japan-- I saw it in Oita-ken as well.

We rode back into town, but almost immediately we were out on another adventure, somehow even crazier than the monorail and cave. We put on geta (Japanese sandals) and pilgrim clothing and walked down the street to a perilous waterfall inside a Shingon temple. We were to duplicate the shugendou practice, often seen in anime and kung fu movies, of standing under the waterfall for concentration. What would make it difficult is that we had to repeat a mantra while standing there. Brian-sensei assured us that we would forget the mantra quite quickly.



When I stood under there, I did indeed forget it quickly. I chanted louder than most of my mates, but I got out of there a lot quicker, too. I felt if I stood under that waterfall any longer I would start to cry. I was wobbly when I got out and had to lean on the wall for support. It's something I would like to do again.



We missed the biggest festival of Oomine town by one day. In preparation the Shingon temple was making mochi to throw at the villagers. They also gave a speech but it was not interesting. I did learn that there is a group of feminists in Japan who climb Oominesan from time to time, but it is not a regular occurrence.



The next morning, after a hearty Japanese breakfast, I walked around the town a little, and found cute things. I received a packet of local stomach medicine, which the site coordinator told me was very rare and very good for any stomach ailment. If it is so good why don't they sell it across the country? It's not like it would go bad... Japan is very interesting...



We then took off down a little-used mountain road to Kouyasan (高野山) where we spent the entire day. And what can I say about Kouyasan? Geez! That merits its own post.

edit: Omine town provides a live webcam so you can see if anyone is using the free artesian taps or insanely dangerous tram. Click the buttons 1 through 8 to see the different things available at the roadside. It is more up-to-date than any picture I could provide!

Weekend Part 1: Mt. Omine

I got a lot of catching up to do on this blog. This weekend we visited the sacred Kii mountains of Nara prefecture. It was very eventful and I had a lot of fun. I took a lot of good pictures-- it would actually overwhelm the blog to post them all full size...



We drove through Tenri City, home to the Shinto-esque new religion Tenrikyo. This is their central temple (webcam). Tenrikyoists believe the center of the world is located on a pole inside this building. Their founder is housed here, having left the physical realm but not yet dead. They have a television hooked up in her mausoleum in case she is bored.



Although it seems somewhat amusing in its principal beliefs Tenrikyo is a very sincere religion dedicated to making the world a better place. Apparently their hospital, built with an interesting fusion architecture, is one of the best in Japan. The site coordinator whom I praised earlier got top medical treatment there even though she is not a believer. We also passed through Oomiwa Shrine, where many students go to pray for luck on their college entrance exams, but my picture of that is not so great.



This is the ryokan (traditional inn) we stayed at in Omine. It was a singularly amazing place that had its own hot spring piped directly into the baths. We literally got royal treatment at meals-- we were served the way nobility were in the Heian period. At dinner we each got a personal hot plate with a fire underneath that cooked the meat as we ate the vegetable course. This spectacular service came at 2/3 normal price (due to budget trouble on the program), one week before the owner's daughter's wedding. She served us herself. The hospitality of Japanese people constantly amazes me.

I have to go say goodbye to one of the program students now. He is going back to America for reasons I will get to later. I'll finish this post up in the afternoon...

Popopare Publico

It is possible for a shallow-minded person to say that if everything stayed open and nothing new appeared, it would take twenty or thirty years to see everything in Kyoto-- all the temples, museums, bookstores, cafes, and bars, on every promenade and every side street. This sort of outlook on "what there is to see" in a city is based on American cities like New York or Washington, DC where it really is a question of empty spaces, tall buildings, and carefully arranged art objects. This is the way we tend to consider tourism, and we tend to recommend the most historical, noisy, quiet, or pretty places to people who come to visit our own towns.

The impression one gets when coming to Kyoto is that there is something slightly different about this city that you cannot find in New York or DC. For one, none of the buildings are very tall, and the taller they are, the more amazed you are about the variety of experiences promised within. A two-story building will have a Haagen-Dazs on the bottom and a Belgian waffle cafe on the top. An eight-story building will have a bookstore, a Muji, two kinds of cafes, three kinds of small clothing stores, and so forth... and that's only the two buildings on Kawaramachi-doori I happened to visit today. Walk into the side streets and you will discover 10x10 grids devoted to building directories; walk into an alleyway and be utterly mystified by the unadvertised hair salon.

Why exactly is this city built this way? Is it bad city planning? Are Japanese people too shy to arrange things in a more orderly way? It is as if it is all set up for a "consumer" on foot, with few offices and many storefronts, but stores are not arranged in an easy mall-like fashion and there is no information on what you are expected to consume-- sometimes the entire explanation is limited to "Bar", and sometimes there is just an enigmatic name like "Momo" with no explanation of what exactly you can find there.

But this is how it is meant to be in Kyoto, and I realized today what that means.

On Monday I stumbled across a cafe called Popopare Publico near the Book Off. It had one of the most attractive facades I've seen in Kyoto. Well, it's not attractive in the usual way, but the more I stayed there, the more it intrigued me-- and put butterflies in my stomach (in Japanese, どきどき) at the concept of going in.



There is something about this storefront that simultaneously attracts and repels me. It is not new, or fresh, nor does it have that sort of finished look that makes you think it is a store. In fact, if you zoom in a little you will see the art is oddly amateurish and captioned with copyright symbols and one feels that perhaps it is not meant to be a real cafe but someone's poor imitation. Yet at the same time the amateurishness is appealing in its own way. It makes the cafe seem more human and less a robotic attempt at perfection, and this is confirmed by the architecture, which is insistent that it is not trying to be made out of brick and stucco, but rather remind you of the pleasant look of brick and stucco. A chain cafe, or "professional" cafe, would not have a real mailbox out front. That sort of thing is strictly forbidden, and to a lesser extent the gas pipes are as well. But to me the mailbox, like the drawings, is an thing insignificant in itself that gives the facade on the whole the assertion of reality.

Yeah, you tell me I'm overthinking this, but clearly a lot of effort was put into this storefront.

Now, the main reason I ended up just staring at this facade for an hour on Monday without going in was a strong intuition that the food would be expensive, and I would be required to talk with the owner in Japanese. You don't really need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the food here is expensive, because the only price listed anywhere outside is $4.50 for coffee or tea, and there is no menu except for a tantalizing promise of "COFFEE, TEA, CAKE, WAFFLE, SANDWITCH, etc." on a card stuck to the windowpane. As for the latter hunch, I stared inside the window, which is not very polite, but it didn't matter because there was nobody behind the counter and all the tables were empty. Nobody seems to come here, and the profusion of placards on the door speaks to a single owner who does not speak English; therefore, the possibility of being forced to make conversation in Japanese loomed over my head.

Ultimately I went to Falafel Garden instead on Monday, and it was delicious and relaxing in the way that all good Kyoto cafes are, but the bizarre name, facade, and pencil drawings of Popopare Publico haunted my thoughts like Lovecraft's cephalopodic anthropoid. So, I returned today, paced around the entrance, summoned up all my courage and went in.

I felt very nervous walking inside, and the Japanese woman who appeared from the back looked quite surprised to see a gaikokujin in her cafe. She was older than I expected, and her glasses enlarged her eyes in a way I had only heard of before in books. I sat down, examined the menu which mostly consisted of rare teas for $6 and sweets for $7-12, and ordered what looked like the most unique item: a waffle with fruit. I still felt strangely like I didn't belong here, mainly because, as I had expected, the food was twice the price of any other cafe and I was the only one there.

"Don't you want the set?" she asked in Japanese. I could save $3 on tea that way, but I was a cheapskate to the heart. "No, just the waffle."

I wasn't sure about the etiquette for being the only person in a restaurant that is almost always empty and having the sole employee making food for you, so I sat quietly and read my Zen book. To my surprise she put real maple syrup on the table. I wanted to compliment her on her taste, but I was still kind of nervous.

Finally the waffle arrived.



There is nothing particularly exciting about this waffle, as it was made with normal batter in a waffle iron, except for the fact that there are three kinds of fruit on it, the sliced apple is arranged with a clumsy grace, and there are sugar sprinkles on the apple slices.

"Is this a... European pear?" I asked her. I thought it was too delicious to be an apple!
"Sugar sprinkles...?"
"Uh, no, the fruit."
"It's an apple."
"Really!"
"Is there something wrong?"
"No... it's delicious!"
She smiled, and started to clean the waffle iron. "Where are you from?"
"America." I explained I was studying Buddhism at Ryukoku University, which surprised her. "I'm living in temples and doing zazen and stuff." We talked briefly about my study abroad and where I studied Japanese (I insisted I was not very good), and I said I had gone to Fukui-ken to see the temples there (I didn't know the word for "monk training").
"I was born in Fukui-ken!" she said.
"Really!" I said. We talked about something else that I forget, then she went to the back. Well, I didn't know enough to get to know her name, but I learned something neat.

When I was done I put my fork over my knife and called her. She was using her computer at the end of the hall. I paid up and she said something with unfamiliar words, but from the word nihonjin I got the gist of it-- she thought I was being as polite as a Japanese person! We both laughed, I thanked her for the meal, and I biked home grinning. Why was I grinning? I just paid $8 for a waffle. I thought about it and grinned even more.

On that ride I realized what it is about Kyoto that makes it so great. It is not a big city made by faceless corporations. It is, like Alpha's Yokohama, a city of people. Where it succeeds it is because someone created something personally, and executed it with love. It is not a dead city designed for the clueless tourist, but a living city made for someone who knows who it is they want to see, and whose idea of happiness they want to experience. I am glad that, as a foreigner with such a limited understanding of the language and culture, I got a little taste of that.

You can never see all of Kyoto. Everywhere you go, except for the temples and fast food establishments, it is not just about a place, but the people you see there. And those lives are constantly changing.

Miscellany Wrapup

I was taken out for a birthday dinner of spaghetti and cake. To Westerns this may seem like an unlikely juxtaposition, but that's the fault of the Japanese spaghetti restaurant, which calls itself "Second House, Spaghetti & Cake".

I also had a chocolate cornet. I post this image in a rare bow to my weeaboo readers.

I bought a set of Shingon mandalas for only $17. These mandalas are two images of heavenly realms full of bodhisattvas who are active even now trying to bring compassion and lovingkindness to the world. The bodhisattvas in the Womb World, for example, are arranged on a compass fringed with esoteric meaning, with the most powerful incarnations of Dainichi in the center, and images of specific reincarnated individuals on the edges. So, don't think of them as physical maps. It's difficult to say what a physical map of the womb world or diamond world would look like--as an atheist I would say there is no material component to these worlds at all.

I will find a Zen zafu and Pure Land prayer beads to go with these mandalas. I think they will go nicely together in my dorm. Now, what sort of meditation do Tendai Buddhists do?

And in American news...

I saw this on CNN early this morning. John Roberts was talking about the smear campaign, trying to do the equivalency dance, and actually said (I'm paraphrasing) "Obama is trying to tie McCain to the Keating Five". Now, maybe I'm wrong, but isn't that like saying John Lennon was "tied" to the Beatles? He was a Beatle! John McCain WAS one of the Keating Five. (MD, TPM)

Imagine the uproar if Michelle Obama was revealed to have joined a black nationalist party whose founder preached armed secession from the United States and who enlisted the government of Iran in his cause? The Obama campaign would probably not have survived such an explosive revelation. Particularly if Barack Obama himself was videotaped giving the anti-American secessionists his wholehearted support just months ago. (David Talbot, Salon)

Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

Palin also told those gathered that Obama doesn't like American soldiers. "He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, 'air-raiding villages and killing civilians,' " she said, drawing boos from a crowd that had not been told Obama was actually appealing for more troops in Afghanistan. "See, John McCain is a different kind of man: He believes in our troops," she said. (Dana Milbank, WaPo)

Abbot Installation, Part II

On my birthday I had rice gruel for breakfast with ground up sesame and salt. I was all like, "Sweet! Rice gruel!" I loved this stuff at Hokyoji. Compared to the plate of pickled veggies and tofu for lunch it was practically edible.

After breakfast we walked into town, that is to say, the county route. I had a second breakfast of a croissant and strawberry milk from the conbini, and we found an old shrine nestled in between some houses.

On the stairs upward we encountered a spiderweb hanging across our path. It was soon clear that nobody visited this shrine, ever. There was a bottle of sake at the bottom of the stairs-- it seemed that someone wanted to make an offering but was unwilling to climb to the top. Luckily there were no ghosts, just three separate shrines overgrown with moss and lots of spiders small and large.

When we came back down the stairs we encountered a big surprise. There were stepladders, buckets, towels, and a bunch of middle-aged women preparing themselves in the little alleyway. I learned that the community was getting together to clean the old shrine, today! I came back in the afternoon and discovered that the spiders, vines, and sake had been swept away...

...but they left the moss, because they like moss. This country is so awesome.

The new abbot blessed a bunch of kids before his formal installation. I guess this is a typical part of an abbot installation ceremony. Maybe the kids get merit?

The abbot was installed with a lot of theater. An emissary arrived from Eiheiji, the head Soto temple I mentioned previously. He walked from the train station to the temple with a 50-person entourage, which was quite a sight, but not really photogenic. Of course, everyone had to make a speech. That's what the Eiheiji and Soujiji abbots were there for. A young boy in training and several old monks questioned the new abbot. Then the monks did some dramatic shouting at each other, apparently a "dharma battle" where their knowledge of Buddhist teachings was called into question. It was quite loud but all scripted. Here's the new abbot.

Finally we were all treated to an enormous feast with two bottles of sake for each of us and a bag full of presents. What a way to celebrate my 21st birthday!

The train did not arrive until 5PM so we had four hours to wander aimlessly through the middle of nowhere. Everywhere we went in town, people knew why we were there and would greet us not with a normal "hello" but a grateful "gokuro-sama deshita", which means "you must have really exhausted yourself to come out all the way from America to our little town." I climbed a hill.

Sake was enjoyed by all.

The group sung Happy Birthday for me three times and I read a book by Yukio Mishima. The end!!