My last week in Japan I visited two holy mountains, and because of the introspection they both gave me I wanted to post about them separate from the other cultural and historic things in the Kyoto/Osaka area.
The first was Mount Kurama, where Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines share space with ancient cedar trees believed to be the reincarnation of Mao-son, one-third of their Trinity, “…the Sonten Trinity, the ‘Glorious Light,’ the ‘Supreme Soul of the Universe,’ a composite of the three symbols of power, light, and love.” It is also the supposed birthplace of Reiki, …
Tag Archive for Japan
Japan: Kyoto & Osaka
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I’m behind in my posting because I’ve been so busy!! I spent two FULL days in Kyoto (which was not enough) and am spending the day today in Osaka before I fly to Taiwan tomorrow. I also spent a day and a night in Kōya-san, but that will be its own post.
There are so many beautiful things to share, so I’m just going to throw some photos at you. My first day in Kyoto a man in my hostel overheard me asking about breakfast places and he offered to walk with me to his favorite …
Japan: Kanazawa & Kamikochi
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The first things I noticed in Steph’s apartment were two Vermont bumper stickers on her desk and a Settlers of Catan game on the bottom shelf. It sure brought me back to the golden years of college! And oddly enough there are a lot (comparatively) of Vermonters in Kanazawa due to a kind of exchange program between Kanazawa Institute of Technology, where Steph teaches in English, and St. Michael’s College in Vermont, where she and many of the other English teachers got their graduate degrees in ESL (English as a Second Language). It was wild …
Japan: Kamakura & Matsumoto
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Now that I left Tokyo I’m navigating for myself again, which is a challenge here! As soon as I thought I had the train system figured out, I had to transfer at a small station that had a completely different system! The Japanese that I have interacted with (mostly the ticketing people at the stations and staff at restaurants) speak maybe 5 or 10 words of English, if any. However they have been extremely patient and helpful, playing my game of pointing, writing down times and numbers, and miming. It has been a rather fun …
Japan: Tokyo & Nikko
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As expected, this has been a huge change from Mongolia. Even my mindset on my way here was different. I wrote this on my plane out of Mongolia:
“I am feeling big, and full of emotion from a comfortable place somewhere in the center of my chest. I am on my flight from UB to Beijing. For the first time in a month I have had regular internet access and so have restarted the endless parade of ‘what if’s and ‘where to’s. Locating the hostel in Kamakura, Japan on the map. Searching for the cheapest flights …