Can I say what a difference a table makes? I must because I just did. Seriously, over this last week I’ve become somewhat of an expert on Kait’s eight by eight foot apartment. Before, she had me chained to a red bean bag chair before a white shelf that has been far too generously referring to as a work table for too long. After seeing the depressing photos when she first arrived, I’ve maintained that Kait had to purchase a proper table and chairs so her place didn’t exude such an impoverished atmosphere. She resisted, of course, partly from inertia and partly from thriftiness.
Well, now that we braved the lengthy journey to foreign Ikea and returned 10,000 yen lighter but with lots of cardboard boxes in tow, things have really improved. We shuffled around her kotatsu, spread her tiny living nook along the walls and now the place looks more like someone’s home and less like a vagrant picked the double locks on the door and was quietly squatting with the hopes of skirting the attention of her neighbours.
There’s still the issue of the low hanging light swinging square in the widest space reserved for our optimistic exercising. Don’t know how we’ll overcome this obstacle without ruining our tentative feng shui and we might have to settle with a few bruised scalps and battered hands. Now we just need to do something about these spartan walls.
Anyway, up until October 26th, the aforementioned trip to the world’s most ubiquitous cheap furniture warehouse was the most I’d seen of Japan. Hardly what one would consider a good use of a twenty hour flight around the world. That all changed, however, as we boarded the train and took the rails an hour and a half out of Sendai. The concrete jungle brushed away to pine covered mountains and wide gorges with tiny rivers for tongues. Though what the Ouu Mountains lack in grandiose majesty, they make up for with cresting tranquility. These aren’t the Rockies but they’re a pleasant break from steel and asphalt. For most of the trip, they basically appear like a long line of mother nature’s traffic cones set up for a giant’s driving test. But there’s rocks and trees and trees and rocks so it spoke to my and Kait’s inner Canadian.
We deboarded the train before our target at Omoshiroyama Kougen station. You might know it by it’s other name–Middle of Bloody Nowhere. It’s an unmanned station with a single side platform and a perpetually locked booth which makes me wonder how someone boards at this spot. But then I remember that there’s nothing here so no one would be trying to board in the first place.
We, however, were on the hunt for adventure and Kait had heard from some anonymous source of a fabled hiking path that led up to Yamadera from this location. We operated on the false pretence that it was an hour hike which, in my mind, meant it would only take forty-five minutes tops even with our predilection for photography because whenever I hear time estimates it’s usually accounting for the gait of little old ladies. We began our day early, though (Kait had to pay a bill at the post office at nine o’clock so naturally we were both up at six). So we had plenty of time to wander cluelessly behind the handful of Japanese who got off the surprisingly busy train that was making the cross through no man’s territory. We immediately had our cameras in hand since, once passing through the five minute tunnel boring straight through the mountain, we emerged into a valley that actually showed signs of autumn. Unlike the forests leading up there, the area around Omoshiroyama was on fire with the oranges, reds and yellows of dying leaves. More than that, the ravine which would be our hiking course was about thirty feet from where we disembarked.
Needless to say, it wasn’t long before we were descending into the ravine and snapping away with all the wild abandon of two dweebs lost in the wilderness. The scenic beauty of the ravine wasn’t lost on us and we had to pause nearly every ten steps to take a new picture. It helped that our trail was hardly a foot wide meandering path cut right into the rock face that escorted the river and crossing it at breathtaking sections with old, rickety bridges. The bubbling of the brook, the crash of a dozen small waterfalls and the rustle of the leaves was the symphony that accompanied our walk.
This was the Momijigawa Keikoku hiking trail and it was easy to feel that we’d struck gold off the beaten path of the standard Japanese sightseeing docket. There were few others that came with cameras and tripods in hand to explore the moistened rock faces with us. Most were the elderly who braved about thirty minutes into the ravine before turning back and shuffling to the lonely station. This was fortuitous since the few times we found people coming along the route in the opposite direction we had to climb off the trail and stand amongst the rocks in the river until they passed as there was no space to comfortably meet anyone on the trail itself.
Kait loved the the curious furrows the river cut in the valley’s floor. I appreciated the appropriately named Japanese Maple River Ravine’s tree fenced cliff sides and the moss covered stones. Seriously, we probably have a thousand photos of the ravine alone between the two of us. This was even after we’d all but given up on taking pictures after only clearing half the valley. Course, the final stretch had us hunched over and crawling nearly on hands and knees through a concrete hole while a train rattled above us. That hardly makes for fantastic memories.
Once we reached the end, we’d also learned why so many people had turned back instead of pressing to the end of the trail. There was nothing that connected the hiking path to civilization save for a single lane twisting road that wove through the mountain range. A quick look at the sign suggested we were 80 minutes from Yamadera itself though this was likely an estimate made for people with motorized vehicles. We started our trek still operating under the naive assumption that the trail itself was an hour from Yamadera and we had somehow spent far longer than normal in the ravine itself.
And when I mention that the road was narrow, it was no exaggeration. Whenever a car came puttering around a winding bend we had to jump off the road to make room for them to get across. This is made even more telling when one realizes that the average Japanese vehicle is half the size of an American one. I felt nervous that we were breaking some sort of highway traffic law until a bicycle came meandering along the road.
The road was pleasant for a road, I suppose. It wasn’t as good as the hiking trail but it still offered some nice views of the mountains though you had to ignore the rattle of the train as it passed beyond the trees. We dragged ourselves into Yamadera proper, near collapsing on some stones at the start of the thousand step climb to the famous temple itself.
Some quick background: Yamadera–Mountain Temple–is actually the common name for a sprawling temple complex that includes the important temple of Risshaku-ji. It was founded in 860 AD (because everything outside of North America is ridiculously old) when the priest Ennin returned from China and brought the principles of Buddhism with him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the first priest to do so and in order to distinguish himself from all his peers in Kyoto he decided to build his house on the distant northern mountain Hiei at the edge of Bloody Nowhere. Naturally, no one came to visit.
It wasn’t until the famous haiku poet Bashou stumbled across the place on his spite vacation from civilization that it returned to the map. For those that don’t know, haiku poetry was created when the poets of Edo Japan decided to hold a brevity contest because epic ballads are so 500 BC and these are the 1600s, damnit! Get with the times! We’re also growing our hair long! You wouldn’t like our music either!
Bashou was so struck by the beauty of Yamadera that he spent his entire three line poem talking about the damn buzz of the cicadas. He could have talked about the buddhist carvings in the blanched stone face, the wide view of the valley from the top of the 1,000 steps, the peculiar beech wood structures that are rare among other temples or even the gold buddha statue in the main complex. But nope, let’s comment on the loudest, most obnoxious insect. Because, you know, it’s not like you can’t find the damn things all across Japan.
At any rate, everyone loved the man of few words and his poems of even fewer words so pilgrims flocked to Yamadera like Japanese tourists to an overly hyped historical monument. No doubt this led to the meandering construction of temples running up the trail. A thousand steps sounds like an impressive number too–it must since Skyrim used it!–but it really isn’t much of a climb. Certainly not enough to justify the weird walking sticks/wood measuring wheels they sell. And I have no idea what all the buildings are erected for since there certainly aren’t enough monks for those to be dormitories and mess halls. That said, the complex is pretty though it’s hardly forgiving for photography. While the steps are wide in the main complex itself, the path hugs the temple buildings themselves so that you can’t get a good angle on them. And as you climb higher, all you can see is their roofs from above. The observation platform isn’t much better since it was swarmed with huffing and puffing elderly Japanese people all congratulating themselves on not having heart attacks.
Seriously, there must have been some sort of nearby geriatrics convention to explain the bus loads of old people that descended on the site. Since Kait and I were pretty exhausted from our walk through the ravine followed by the walk to the sleepy town of Yamadera itself, we had very little energy to explore the temple. Plus, Kait had been there before so this was rather old hat. We snapped some pictures and enjoyed the views before backtracking to the temple’s proper entrance and rubbing a wooden buddha’s belly for good luck.
We turned our backs on Yamadera and hobbled to the JR station. Kait bravely resisted the few ice cream vendors still open while we stumbled into the rail station. We checked the times for the train to Sendai and got disheartened when we realized we missed the train by six minutes and had an hour to wait for the next one. Kait opened her mouth to propose options for wasting our hour when the station master opened the window from his post and asked us if we were headed towards Sendai. We said we were and then he spoke in rapid fire Japanese. After getting nothing but blank blinks, he garbled out some decent English to explain that the train was running fourteen minutes late! An oddity in Japan but certainly one that did us benefit. We thanked him profusely, hurried through the door, got stumped by the ticket booth and then thanked him profusely again as he waved us to the platform.
Seriously, Kait doesn’t appreciate how much easier she has things with so much English around her. The only downside to us catching the 3:13 train was that we were caught on the same train that the high school students used to travel from Sendai’s outlying schools back to the city proper. At the very least we could communicate in horribly butchered French without worry that we would be too loud for the other passengers. Course, we had to trample some unfortunate Japanese kids to squeeze out of the packed car. Oh well, that’s what happens when all you brats crowd the doors!
With feet, legs and knees in full protest, we hobbled back to the apartment and properly crashed after eight full hours of walking and climbing. Overall, I’d consider it a successful day.