Transcendentaltastic

The other day I took an amazing stroll on some of the trails that weave through the woods on the mountain behind campus.  It was incredible.  One of the first things that I noticed about Japan when I first arrived was how stunningly different the flora and fauna are from what I am accustomed to in the States. This has really started to make itself drastically evident now that it is a bit later in the year and Spring is busy springing.

I set out by myself with no real agenda, ad I'm super glad I did.  I didn't even know until I did it that I was going to end up hiking on this mountain.  I wandered about this park, it's called Sakura (Japanese for blossoms) Plaza, before I found the path that would take me up the mountain.  Japanese woods are a far cry from TN woods.  The forest floor is much less tangled and thick in general, which makes for an easier go of it in places, but it can quickly turn into an impassable bamboo/reed thicket.  Also, Japanese trees tend to naturally be quite a bit more gnarled and twisted. 

A good friend of mine and I were talking early on in our stay here and he made the comment that Japanese nature is especially interesting because it feels like nature without the annoying bits.  Like it is Nature by Japan.  That observation is very accurate.  It seems quite rare to see any trees in a park that either do not have some kind of bamboo framework, either making it grow straighter or fanning out individual limbs, or do not bear some kind of indication growth control from humans.  Seeing some natural trees was especially nice during my little hike.

Even so, I quickly got a bit bored with walking on the path that had been laid out for me by the Chuo landscapers so I picked an opportune spot and veered off.  It is getting into the beginning of the rainy season here in Japan and it had rained the other day, making it somewhat treacherous to be scrambling around on the side of a mountain, but it was an absolute joy to be in some nature again.  After quite a while scurrying about, I started to set back, determined to take a different path than the one I had taken in.  On the way back, I saw a shock of red ahead of me.

In Japan, at the entrances to temples, shrines, and other holy sites there is usually an arch that symbolizes the passage from the profane world into the sacred.  These are called torii in Japanese.  Many are painted red, and as I suspected this was what I had glimpsed through the trees.  However, there wasn't just one as I discovered when I drew nearer.  Maybe 15 or 20 torii adorned the path to the summit of the mountain.  Some were quite dilapidated and some seemed to be in much better repair.  I was absolutely taken with these and had to take many pictures, stopping for a moment to email some of them to my lovely lady.

After I pressed on I found a small shrine, maybe 6'*4', filled with small offerings.  Most temples and even most small shrines like the one I had just discovered have a box or small tray set just inside to put in offerings.  There is always money in these just sitting out, unwatched, unmanned, and attended only very rarely by a priest who will take the collections to the temple. 

My journey concluded, I made my way back to the campus.  In Sakura Plaza rests the original door for the original Chuo University, a law school started in 1885.  This door was moved from it's original location to it's current home on the new Chuo campus.  It's huge and cool, I'll let the pics speak for themselves.

 

It was a marvelous little hike, I came back sweaty and dirty and thoroughly happy and relaxed.

Golden Week!

Golden Week in Japan is a big deal.  It lasts from April 29th through May 5th and includes three national holidays: Showa Day, Greenery Day, and accumulates into Children's Day.  This is probably the biggest (certainly the longest) holiday in Japan, perhaps rivaled by Japanese New Years.  Many Japanese take paid time off from work for the entire week, many companies just close completely to allow their employees time to travel and spend time with their kids.

For Golden Week the school gave us a few days off and we did our best to capitalize on it.  Friday night we did karaoke (quickly becoming my favorite nighttime activity in Japan, I will post about it exclusively later).  We never seem to be able to tear ourselves away from karaoke until 3am, so we usually have to walk back (more on transportation difficulties later), and that Fri. night was no exception.  I made it back home in the morning and spent most of my day Sat. sleeping.  Good thing I went home, one of my friends got in a bit of trouble for partying a bit too hard.

On Sunday, I was able to do something a bit more cultural.  My British friend, Tom and one of our Japanese friends, Yuko, went to a Shinto temple in Takahatafudo.  It was marvelous!  Everything was very pious, very solemn, and uniquely Japanese.  One of my favorite parts of that day was taking a long stroll on this nature trail running off into the woods from the temple.  It was a bit of a hike because the path was rock and dirt and almost vertical.

On Tuesday Pat, Taylor, and I took the train to Mt. Takao, the tallest mountain in our area.  Getting there was a bit of an adventure because we got off on the wrong stop, but we finally got there.  It was incredibly crowded because of the Golden Week festivities but absolutely beautiful.

Finally on Wednesday me and some of he guys went out to Tama Center (it's huge) for the big Children's Day festival.  There were a gajillion people there and way more interesting food than could possibly be sampled.  Tom had some whole fish on a stick, I ate some octopus balls, and we all pigged out and walked around.

Golden Week was amazing, I had more of a culture injection in this one week span than ever before.  It was fun to see the Japanese let their hair down a bit and have some fun.