Yamadera

みんな　ひっさしぶり,

or "long time no see, everyone". Don't worry, you need not be afraid of me writing an entire post in Japanese, for now...

We have gathered here today so you can listen to my story. This story takes us to a very old place. A place shrouded in legends, rich in history and isolated in the mountains only accessible by ascending a thousand steps. There lies the temple complex "Yamadera":

Alright, enough with the theatrics. This story actually starts about two weeks ago when one of my Japanese teachers invited me to join his "Japanese Culture" class on their trip to Yamadera. I immediately said "yes" since this place has been on my list since day one. He told me he had organized a guided tour for us, guided in ENGLISH. After my recent experiences this took me by surprise for sure. The biggest surprise he didn't mention though, and I only found out about when we arrived at the train station at the foot of the mountain. Apparently, the fact that Japan had been closed to foreigners for a good two years in conjunction with a big group of foreign students visiting this famous temple was enough of a reason for the two biggest Japanese news agencies to attach two camera teams to our group.

Sooo yeah, I was on Japanese television yesterday. The interview they did with me didn't make it into this following little online snippet: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/lnews/yamagata/20220611/6020014117.html (in Japanese, duh). I have to find out how to get a hold of the actual full length program that ran on television. Will keep you updated on this one.

The guided tour was awesome to say the least. It provided a wealth of information that I would have otherwise missed. I am now going to share EVERYTHING with you. Consider yourself warned.

I will start with the name. In Japanese it's 山寺. The first character 山, "yama", means "mountain". The second character 寺, "tera/dera", means "temple" (buddhist temple to be exact). So you could translate the name to "mountain temple". Easy enough. On a little side note, 侍 means "samurai". The right part of this character is the one for "temple", the left part the squished character for "person", 人. We then conclude that a samurai is a person that stands in front of a temple, so, a temple guard. Thank you for joining my Japanese class.

Anyway, Yamadera has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries for it's religious and cultural significance as well as it's beautiful nature. The way up the mountain passes through a dense forest of very old trees. Along the path you will find thousands of rock monuments, most of them graves or memorials of monks that lived here through the ages.

I know right... It's breathtaking, isn't it. Too say we were lucky with the weather would be an understatement. The moment we arrived back at the foot of the mountain, ate lunch and got back to the train station, big dark clouds appeared at the horizon. There would be a thunderstorm for the rest of the day. 

In that last picture you can see the gate between the realm of the living and the dead. Beyond, the mountain temple complex is located consisting of places of worship, training grounds for monks, their living quarters and vegetable gardens, all connected by a network of pathways.

The view from up here down into the valley was pretty too, but it almost pales in comparison.

Yamadera was founded in the year 850 AD by the famous priest Ennen who studied Buddhism in China before returning to Japan. He is responsible for establishing a number of temple sites here. Yamadera is said to be the place where he was buried, even though he passed away in a place half-way across Japan and there are no records of his body having been moved here. However, an archeological survey in the first half of the 20th century uncovered a gold crested casket containing the skeletal remains of five humans minus one head. Instead there was a wooden sculpture of Ennen's head. That's pretty weird, at least in my book.

Something else that could be classified as weird is this:

These are the footprints of Buddha. There was a time when it wasn't allowed to make pictures or sculptures of Buddha, so instead they sculpted his footprints. It's obviously the next logical step. Nothing to argue about there. Actually, I find it fascinating. Other religions had the same, and some still have, the same rule. I can get behind worshipping some oversized footprints as a substitute.

This concludes my story, and I am afraid I have to make a confessions: I didn't share every information about Yamadera with you. It would simply have been too much. I can however give you the latest news about my life here in Japan.

My apartment is now completely furnished, finally. I have even been able to cook my own food. I am however limited to cooking mostly Japanese dishes since I can't for the life of me find all the ingredients that I would need for the western recipes. They are also more on the expensive side since some of them need to be imported. But that doesn't matter too much since Japanese cuisine is AWESOME.

I have also started jogging, even though I absolutely despise it. It is quiet amazing how a beautiful scenery can make you forget such things. The route I decided on takes me up a hiking trail to the top of a small mountain, back down again on the other side, and back along a river. It just takes 30 minutes but ascending the mountain regularly takes me to the verge of death. I love it. However, the rainy season has begun so that hiking trail turns into a deadly sliding adventure. 

In addition to this I have joined the ski club at my university. Right now we can't really go skiing so we prepare by getting our gear in order and playing basketball and volleyball in the gym. Communication proves to be difficult but I have been told that my Japanese is improving steadily.

I am also attending the board games night, even though I am not such a big fan of board games in general. However, the attendance is about 50-50 Japanese to foreigners so it is great to make connections for both sides. Despite me initially being sceptic, playing board games with these people turned out to be rather fun.

Concerning my research project I can also report that I am making steady progress. Next week I am helping out one of our Bachelor students gathering field data of impact craters of volcanic bombes, which are essentially large rock fragments that describe a trajectory similar to artillery shells, with a similar outcome. I am also going to help another Bachelor student with her experiment. It's all very exiting.

This shall be it for now. Considering the line up of activities I bet it won't be long before I have something new to report. Talk to you next time.

Cheers,

Nils