Annie's Super Korea Blog: Wow Japan!

Under the Moonlight

Floating, silently in the night sky

The moon cycle continues forever

(The above poety was cited on the side of a building advertising a club in Osaka.)

Asho! Just arrived back in Seoul tonight... it feels very familiar here after spending five big days in Japan. I'm not sure where to begin, so I'll start at the begging. I had to go get a visa in Japan as is required by weird Korean laws.. So I flew To Osaka on Thursday. Coming in on the plane the city is huge and sprawling, mountains in the distance, ocean and clouds. The city is beautifully utopic, sparklingly and full of street sign art. . . I was very lost at first and had to ask the information lady in the subway for help repeatedly. But finally I found both the Korean consulate and the hostel I was looking for, run by Koreans, as the only Japaense I know is Yes, Thankyou, and good afternoon.

These long haired guys are the first friends I met in Japan- They were advertising men's hair products, and demonstrate a look you don't ever see in Korea. The styles in Osaka were much more alternative, from punks to goths to 80's death metal hair, there was some interesting looking fashion. I even saw kids on skateboards, which you don't see much in Korea. Here is a picture of Osaka by night, I was standing on a bridge eatin octopus come with big chings of tentaclaes in them. yum....

After spending a night in the Korean hostel watching how to weave baskets of of newspaper on TV, I met up with my New Zealander friend Gifford who I know from Seoul, and who was also getting his visa. Here we are at a sushi place, yum yum miso soup much better than fried octopus balls. While he had been to Japan many times, he has never been to Kyoto, so I decided to drag him there. The train ride there was is really beautiful--- unlike in Korea, many of the houses retain a traditional look while being modern, the tiled curved roofs and square looking patterns... The country side is also beautiful, with tall bamboo trees swaying on in the wind on mountain tops, which I've never seen before. Japan is warmer than Korea and so there are palm trees scattered around.

In Kyoto we stated at a Youth hostel which was very nice and cheep, and had guests from all over the world. It had rice paper walls inside, a common, its own rock garden and a TV that seemed to be perpetually playing the last samurai. Even had a courtesy Kimono to try on. I made friends with some guys from Australia, and also a big group of girls from Taiwan and a guy from Oregon... we spent the first night drinking hot sake shots together.

In Kyoto-
The first day in Kyoto, Gif and I managed to rent some bikes, with no gears and a basket in front, and set out for my ultimate destination in Kyoto- Tofukuji Temple.
This temple was the important stop for me in Japan, and part of the reason I decided to go to Kyoto. This is because Zen was first introducted to me by the brilliant Hap Tivey, who taught computer graphics at Bard. I signed up to take a class on a collection of Zen Koans with him second semester freshman year, and found out that he had been a monk for a year at Tofukuji in Japan. I always loved to hear his stories about staying there, and got to meet his teacher, Roshi Fukushima, Zen master and caligrapher, who is the abbot of Tofukuji temple.
So going there was a really cool experience! Stories from Hap kept pouring back in my mind, like when he was on"cleaning the outhouse" duty, and the Zen master came up to him, took a big wiff, and said something like, "mmm, smells wonderful!" (you can figgure out this meaning for youself) Or when his ears got frostbitten sitting outside in the freezing cold as Japanese Zen monks are prone to do late at night.

I also remember a story Hap told about a young monk who loved to draw, and wouldn't stop no matter how much the other monks tried to get him to stop drawing. . . They tied him up to a pole, and he began to cry and cry.. with his tears , he drew a rat in the sand. Works of this artist will hang in the temple I think he said. Sorry if I got the story totally wrong, but that's how I remember it 5 years later. =)

Tofukuji was beautiful, full of peacefull rock gardens and trees, bamboos in the distance swaying peacefully... crows flying overhead in the silence.. old old wooden floors I walk on with sox. I asked some of the tour people there if I could sit Zazen, but they said no. Not sure if there was an active monastic population or not, they may have been hiding out behind all the closed doors. I was very elated just to be there.

Masu Yoshi our friend

After finding this temple, which was difficult in itself, Giff and I weren't sure we were going to be able to find out next destination on the Map, the 1500 year old Kiyomizu-dera temple, called the "pure water" temple for the spring water that flows out of the mountains there. As a team, Giff and I had some different idea about how to navigate the city.
Lucky for us, a helper appeared outside Tufukuji temple gates. His name was Masu Yoshi, and he spoke some Korean! Giff can speak Korean alright, and I can do better with Korean than Japanese at least... Masu Yoshi had a bike and led around to many different temples, a good lunch place and then up the big hill to the pure water temple.
He said his wife was in business, so didn't mind taking the afternoon to show us around Kyoto.. without him, I doubt we would have gotten very far. Kyoto is a beautiful city, with plants blooming all year round, and hundreds of temples hidden away there. The houses still look traditionally Japanese, and while there are many tourists, everyone is polite and helpful.
While we didn't spot any real Geisha, here are some imitations which seemed just find by Giff. . .

Japanese people as a whole were all very very nice and helpful when I got lost, which was frequently, often going out of there way to help us.

Moutn Koya San...
A traveller could spend a week in Kyoto and still only see a small fraction of all the sites there. While these many temples were all beautiful and special, I was more interested in getting to heart of Japanese traditional Religion, a mix between native Shintoism and Buddhism. I was interested to see if all the temples had become only tourist attractions, or if people still practiced religion in the traditional way.

In order to find this some travellers go to Nara, an outlying city of Osaka, home to one of the largest Buddha statues in the world, and also to hundreds of wild deer that roam the streets undisturbed there, protected by the peaceful credo of harmonious living.

Instead of going to Nara, I decided to step a little further out in search of authentic Japanese Culture. This led me to Mount Koya-San in the Kansai region. I told people in the hostel I wanted to stay in a temple, and maybe practice with the Monks, and they directed me to this somewhat remote location. Giff having gone back to Korea, I was lucky a new found friend from Oregon wanted to go there too. Nice to have company when travelling far.

One of the most important concept in Japan is the Wa. I've heard some people refer to this concept as "harmony," and others as "the silence." When I went to Kyoto on my visa run, I kept this concept in mind and tried to find out what a society run on the principal of silence might be like.

The train ride to Koya san was beautiful and one can feel the Wa on Japans silent fast trains where cell phone calls are prohibited and no one talks. The further we rode up into the mountains, the harder the snow fell, on bamboo and palm tree leaves alike. The pure white snow coming down over the mountains called up images of traditional Japanese nature paintings- and its easy to see why this nation is known for its nature-loving streak. The nature in Japan was really breathtaking.

To access Mount Koya san the traveller must go up a steep mountain in a cable car with a track that looks more like a roller coaster ride than a subway. We ascended the snowy mountain with a few other tourists and a Buddhist monk. Home to hundreds of Temples, Mount Koya San has been a place for Monks to hide away from civilisation for hundreds of years, and also a desintation for pilgrams.

There is an ancient grave yard here, which is still in use. Covered in snow, and in huge pine forest, the grave yard was peaceful and beautiful, with statues of Buddhas and Bodhisattva's. I was surprised to see some grave markers in the shape of coffee cups, or with cooperate logos inscribed in them... I learned that sometimes companies will buy employees plots in this auspicious grave yard after a life time of loyal service. If you work for a coffee company, your soul may just have to live with a tea cup for a tomb marker tho.

The Buddhas lining th path, they seemed to be little spirits, clan in scarfs and hats and offerings of sake placed in their arms. People poured river water withh ladles over Buddha sautes to show reverance by a temple. Japans native animistic religion could be seen, with little shines to mysterious redfat little goddesses randomly open for worship late in the day, Buddha statues unlike any I have seen before, painted in opaque black.

We went into a few different temples, one with yellow robed monks chanting and blessing those who passed by. Most of the temples on Koya San seemed to be constructed traditionally with rice paper walls and wooden floors. With the freezing temperatures on the mountain, it was difficult to imagine how they live in these delicate structures with out any insulation. Tourists can stay in many of these temples, if they don't mind getting up at 6:30 with the monks. Hopefully I'll get a chance to stay there another time.

The buildings here were amazingly beautiful, and the people who ran the few shops and restaurants in the town were extremely friendly to us, giving us free beer cookies and sake against our wills. After seeing walking though the main roads on the mountain top, leaving the mysterious back allies unexplored, the sun started to go down, and we began to freeze as we waited for the bus back down the mountain.

Unprepared, my converse clad feet were close to frostbitten, and the peace of the mountain was covered in a blinding freeze. There, standing with my friend and waiting for the bus as the sky grew darker, the pine trees all crackled unanimously singing a song. Underneath it, I caught a glimpse of that silence, a deep peace underlying everything, the illusive Wa, which we left undisturbed the whole train ride back home.