I've missed posting for the last couple weeks because I was on vacation in Japan. Quick rehash: I had a great trip in which I got to stay with one of my best friends in Kawagoe (outside of Tokyo), climb Mt. Fuji, visit shrines and temples in Karakura, do karoke in one night Tokyo, let a Japanese family dress me up in a yukata, and even visit co-blogger Martin in Kyoto. There will be pictures and more blogging to follow, but I wanted to comment on the first topic that happened while I was gone, shadows, because I had two pretty great experiences with them while I was in Japan.
In Kyoto, I visited several different shrines and temples, but my favorite was Kyomizu-dera. As I wandered the expansive grounds here and tried to avoid the busloads of tour groups, I happened across a little man holding a grainy picture of a rock next to a flight of steps leading underground. He explained in broken English that I could pay 100 yen to walk through a dark path until I found this rock and, once I did, I could place my hands on it and any wish I made would come true. Well, that's worth 100 yen to me, so I took off my shoes and paid up. 'Keep your left hand on this railing here,' he told me, leading me to the stairs, and I headed down. At first, I was holding a smooth, normal railing and could see well enough from the light coming down from the stairs. But then, after a few twists and turns, the railing turned into circular knobs that made me think of Buddhist prayer beads, and the pathway got completely dark. I mean, my eyes were making up their own images, dark. It reminded me of visiting caves in Georgia as a kid when the tour guide would turn off the lights to show us how dark darkness can really be. My face passed through a curtain that made me gasp quite loudly. I continued walking along and began to feel panicked-- "what the hell was I doing? here I was, in a foreign country, all by myself, and I paid some guy to let me go down into a dark hole? I'm not even wearing shoes! Who knows where I'll end up! I'm just wandering defenseless through some twisting cave? I could fall down a shaft and end up for sale in China! I can't even see where I am!!" But I kept walking, pressing my hand over that railing one bead at a time, stepping slowly in my socks. Eventually, I realized, "you know, I may end up in China. But I'll just have to deal with that when it comes. There's no use panicking about it right now where there's nothing to do. Just keep walking, keep following these beads, and let's just see where you end up." I felt relief, calm spread over me. I took a few deep breaths and another step. Suddenly, to my left, a soft shaft of light appeared, shining directly on the face of a huge granite boulder, grey and unpolished except for a zen circle and some Japanese characters engraved on the top. I followed the beads over and rested my hands on it-- even then I could only see my hands, not even my wrists, in the darkness. I was so moved by this that I actually started to cry a little. After "making my wish," I found the beads again that lead me around one short turn and back suddenly into the light, and the spell was broken.
The other experience I had with shadows deserves a picture. I mentioned that I climbed Mt. Fuji. This involved me joining a Japanese tour group (oops, thought it was English-speaking!) and starting our climb at noon on Monday. We climbed until evening when we stopped at a rest house for some food and a few quick hours of sleep. Then, at 2am, we got up again and climbed the rest of the way up the mountain so we could see the sunrise from the top, above the clouds. There are lots of stories with this but, for the sake of abbreviating this already long post, I'll just mention that after sunrise me and a few other people walked around the volcano's crater to the west side, which is the highest point and actual peak. Here, I was able to see this:
The shadow of Fuji-san on the top of clouds. Incredible.
Ok, I'm already late for work, so more later from me. I know I have a lot of catching up to do!
4 comments:
Wow, Jen. Two really great stories. That first bit is like something out of a cheesy TV show, but it's real and, thus, very cool.
That's really cool that you got to climb mount fuji. Also, when I was a kid, we used to take school trips to coal mines all the time, and it was always pretty freaky whenever they turned out the lamps to show us the real dark.
I want to see more Japan photos!!! Also, is "san" the Japanese word for mountain? Because it's also the Korean and Chinese word for mountain :-)
"San" is more like what you add to the end of a person's name to either show respect or because you don't know them very well. In that Japanese tour group, they called me "Jennifer-san," for example. And they always refered to Mt. Fuji as Fuji-san, which I thought was really cool. I think this is opposed to "chan," which is a more familiar, friendly syllable to tack on to someone's name, like "Jen-chan."
But again, I don't actually know Japanese and was only over there for 9 days, so maybe someone else has a better answer.
More pics coming soon!
Post a Comment