An Impression from 2020 and Happy New Year!

This year, more than any other in my time living in Japan, I was taken by the beauty of woodblock prints. It started with a calendar I had picked up at the end of last year at the Folk Craft Museum with designs by Keisuke Serizawa. His whimsical work follows the Bingata tradition, a hand-dyeing technique that originated in Okinawa. During the lockdown, marking the passage of time by turning to a new page each month was actually something I looked forward to.

Then in the summer, when the cases were lower, I was able to go to an exhibition of woodblock prints by Shiko Munakata. His works are so dynamic, the high contrast between ink and paper just jumps out at you. Before this exhibition, the only real masters of woodblock print that I had come in contact with were Hokusai and Hiroshige, among others. Their styles were nothing like Munakata’s, who embraced folk art.

The Great Wave by Hokusai

Evening Snow at Kamabara by Hioshige

Running Demon by Munakata

Morning Chrysanthemum by Munakata

My new found love for Munakata’s works reminded me of a quote from Frank Llyod Wright, who himself was a collector of woodblock prints. If you are interested in learning more about Wright’s love of woodblock, I highly recommend, "The Japanese Print: An Interpretation" which has a beautiful collection of essays by Wright about the woodblock prints he collected.

It was with this inspiration and some much-needed encouragement from my friend Shu Kuge, who is a woodblock print artist (amazing WIP carving), that I embarked on making my New Year’s card. The creation of which was not unlike 2020, with its ups and downs. I entered the process with huge expectations and a grand plan, but in the process of sketching, transferring, carving, and printing, was humbled. And the image that resulted ended up only focusing on the most essential elements to get the message across. Is the final product different from my original idea? Yes! But in the end, I like it so much more!

This card is meant to capture the liberation and thrill I felt while learning to ride a scooter earlier this year in Hokkaido. My sincere wish for all of you is that you get to have that same feeling of freedom and fun—when it is safe to do—in 2021.

Happy New Year! Wishing you all the best in the year to come.

Bicycling Through one of Japan's Hidden Gems

Hoping this message finds you well and feeling optimistic as we head into the final month of 2020. This past week I had the delight of attending the 5th Annual “Firefly Ride” hosted by Chad Feyen of the Cycling Embassy of Japan and Freewheeling Japan. About 50 riders came together to light up the night with festively illuminated bikes. We biked for about two hours around the center of the city, spreading cheer and bicycle awareness wherever we went. It was a blast and I cannot wait for the event next year when more cyclists can attend.

Photo Credit: @akitadaisuke

You may recognize the name Freewheeling, I often work with them for bike tours around Tokyo, and a few years ago I partnered with Brad Bennett of Freewheeling Japan to design a bike tour around the Noto Peninsula. You can read more about what we loved from Noto in this post from November 2018.

The Noto Peninsula juts out into the Japanese Sea just north of Kanazawa and is rich in craftsmanship, seafood, sake, history, architecture, spirituality, you name it, it’s there. Not to mention it is home to some of my all-time favorite ryokan—Flatt’s and Sakamoto (pictured below).

Over the course of designing the trip, I took multiple trips to the peninsula and found it mesmerizing. As you work your way along the coast, you have the sea glistening on one side and then you have these jet-black roofs gleaming in the sunlight on your other side. The roof tiles are specifically designed for Noto's climate, which needs to withstand both heavy snow and the salt air from the ocean.

In general, the architecture of the Noto Peninsula feels unique, especially compared to what you'll find in Tokyo. But once you are familiar with it, you’ll start to see similarities in other communities along the sea. During the years that Japan was mostly closed off to international trade (the mid-1600s - mid-1800s), internal trade flourished and there were established routes that brought goods from Hokkaido to Osaka where they could be transported onward to Tokyo. The ports where kitamaebune ships (trading shops) stopped developed into very prosperous communities and you can still find large warehouse structures that had been built to house the traded goods. These buildings were what stood out to me most when cycling around the peninsula.

Trading ships (Kitamaebune) at a port in Obama, from the Meiji Era.

This map shows the route ships followed from Hokkaido to Osaka and the major ports along the way.

More than a museum, Noto Peninsula showcases a culture that is both living with tradition and embracing change. I love cycling through the villages and seeing wet suits hanging out to dry after the free divers had caught their fair share of abalone and turban shells for the day. Or tasting an experimental sake from one of the local producers that is incorporating new elements into their brewing process. Or visiting the workshop of a ceramist that is upkeeping the tradition of wood-fired kilns.

Wet suits hang out to dry after a morning spent diving in the ocean to collect abalone.

Noto Peninsula is a place that beckons you back. I look forward to making a trip there again once case numbers go down and travel is encouraged again. I’m especially excited about two new additions in the Kanazawa area (where we start the bike tour). The first is a hybrid workshop/museum where you can learn about Kutani-yaki, porcelain unique to the area. And the second is the National Craft Museum, which actually moved from inside the Meiji Jingu Shrine here in Tokyo, to its new home in Kanazawa just this year.

Popular Kutani-yaki designs.

Wishing you a festive holiday season, however you choose to celebrate!

Fall in Hokkaido's Wild Refuges

Since July of this year, I’ve been studying Japanese full-time and loving it even more so than the first time I was in the classroom (over 4.5 years ago). With more experience in Japan, I can see how there is an application for everything I am learning. Also, since my last experience studying Japanese, I’ve been lucky enough to marry a native speaker, he is always willing to answer my questions with homework and is a willing conversation partner. At the end of last semester, we were studying the kanji (Japanese characters) related to change, specifically climate change, and as part of our final exam, we had to give a 10-minute presentation on something climate-related. I was paired with some of my favorite classmates (I’m mostly in school with students in the late-teens, early ’20s, studying Japanese so they can go to graduate school in Japan) and we chose the theme of mass extinction (絶滅-ze-tsu-me-tsu). It was unnerving to learn about how much and how quickly the diversity of the living world is being lost due to the destruction of natural habitat. Post-final, Eiji and I flew up to Akan Mashu National Park in eastern-Hokkaido, extinction was still on my mind as we explored the vast, wilds there.

We flew from Tokyo to Kushiro, one of the closest airports to Akan-Mashu National Park. Kushiro is a well-known fishing port, so before making the journey inland we visited one of the fish markets to buy dinner. My favorite fish to eat in the fall is Sanma (Pacific Saury), its a long, sword-shaped, silverfish, and is a bit oily like salmon. When I went to purchase it though, I learned that the Sanma catch this year had been the smallest on record and the fish themselves weren't as big as usual (or as tasty). Since I love Sanma so much, I think I'll have to abstain from it for a bit and hopefully others will too, so the stocks can replenish. The overfishing aside, we cooked our purchases over preprepared charcoal and enjoyed a bit of late-season al fresco dining.

Hokkaido is roughly the size of Austria, it’s vast, and the not-so-busy roads, with vistas on either side make it a joy to drive through. To really immerse ourselves in the surroundings, we decided to rent 50cc scooters (which can be rented on an international driver's license). In six hours we drove all the way from Lake Kussharo to the northern outpost of Abashiri—you may remember this area when I visited a few years ago to go swimming in the sea ice—and back. From our scooters, we saw lakes with their own trademark blue color, rocks painted yellow by the sulfur boiling out of the ground, rolling hills, pastures, and the Ohotsuku Sea. It was gorgeous.

Lake Mashu was formed by a volcanic eruption. The blue of Lake Mashu is so striking it has been dubbed "Mashu Blue."

My trusty scooter! 50cc was all we needed to power up and down the mountains.

The pure sulfur coming out of the ground at Mount Iō, an old sulfur mine, has built up on the rock formations making them neon yellow.

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Something I learned about scooter riding, is the direct contact with the wind gives you a big chill. Luckily for us, the Akan-Mashu National Park is rich with natural onsen to warm you up. My favorite onsen that we visited had to be the Kussharo Kotan, an open-air, community-run bath, right on the shore of Lake Kussharo. When we arrived there was a local monitoring the parking lot and we chatted with him for a bit. He was weather-worn, with a great smile and full-beard, when I asked him where to pay, he said “Not necessary!” The bath is an offering from the local community, it’s something they enjoy sharing with their visitors, for free. We arrived right as the sun was setting over the mountains and we got to relax for quite a while before other locals came for their evening dip. It would be amazing to go back in winter when swans migrate to the lake and can often be found swimming in the waters right in front of the baths because they are warmer.

The perfect place to watch the sunset, Kussharo Kotan Onsen Hot Spring.

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Another highlight from our journey was the hike up Mt Meakan. For the indigenous people of Hokkaido, the Ainu, this active volcano is known as a female deity. With its male counterpart, Mt Oakan, on the shores of Lake Akan. The Ainu have an animistic religion and believe gods exist in all things around them from the lakes, to the mountains, to the owls, to the wolves, etc. Just hiking Mt Meakan I can see how they found it powerful, the ascent is almost straight up for about two hours. As you near the peak, the smell of sulfur gets very strong, and the steam coming from the crater is visible. From the peak, you are rewarded with a sweeping view of the Akan caldera and the surrounding mountains. The hike isn’t easy but is accomplishable as long as you are active. And it’s nice to have walking poles for the way back down as the volcanic soil near the peak is loose and easy to slip on.

The view from Mt Meakan's summit, looking down onto Lake Akan and Mt Oakan.

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On our last day in Akan-Mashu National Park, we went to a showcase of Ainu dances and folklore. One of the dances featured the Ezo Wolf, which went extinct in 1889. For the Ainu, the wolf is a particularly powerful god. The Ainu believe that they are only on this earth because their gods are on this earth. And it’s interesting to me, that right around the time of Ezo becoming Hokkaido, and the Ainu being subjugated by the Japanese that one of their gods disappeared. It must have felt like an awful omen for them, a sign of what was to come for their own culture. It has taken years of protest and political action to finally have the Ainu recognized as the indigenous people of Japan (2019) and to win the right to practice their culture freely. Today, there are active communities working to revive the language, traditions, and festivals of the Ainu culture. Nibutani is one of them, and was recently featured in a documentary, ‘Ainu: Indigenous People of Japan’ by Mizoguchi Naomi—it is being screened online at the Native Spirit Festival through November 15th.

On my way back to Tokyo, I watched David Attenborough‘s latest film, “A Life on our Planet,” (Netflix) in which he explained how our planet was stable because of its biodiversity. And it is only a matter of time before we lose our biodiversity, destabilize the planet, and make it uninhabitable for humans (terrifying). It struck me that this fundamental truth, that we humans are only here because of the diverse array of wild animals who share the planet with us, is something that has taken modern-science years of study and research to discern. But it was innate wisdom for the Ainu—they’ve always known that their own survival depended on the prosperity of the living creatures around them.

When Isabella Bird, a very independent and industrious traveler of the late 19th century, visited the Ainu in Hokkaido in 1878, she saw them as 'savage' and underdeveloped. But I think if she were able to visit the community today with the backdrop of climate change, she wouldn't find them savage at all, but as a society with a developed philosophy around what it takes to sustain a healthy, balanced, life on Earth.

Thankful to all who worked tirelessly and continue to work to share the Ainu philosophy with the rest of the world.

The Changing Landscape of Japan's Sake Industry

This month I reached out to Justin Potts to talk about Japan’s drinking culture, specifically, sake and shochu. Justin’s background, having worked in support of organic agriculture at Roppongi Nouen (one of the first farm-to-table restaurants in Tokyo), then as a sake brewer at Kidoizumi, and now as the host of “Sake on Air” (a podcast that discusses all things sake and shochu), placed him right in the center of the spirits world and made him the perfect person to chat with. But our conversation didn’t focus as much on the beverages themselves, instead we chatted about the changing landscape of the sake (and shochu) industry and what we can look forward to in the years to come. I've shared high-level takeaways from our conversation, but be sure to listen to the full interview on Soundcloud for a more in-depth discussion.

Justin brewing sake at Kidoizumi.

• Sake - also known as Nihonshu, is a rice-based wine, it’s main ingredients are koji (mold), rice, water, and yeast. This spirit is drunk like wine.

• Shochu - is a distilled spirit that can be made out of almost anything, sweet potatoes and barley are very popular base ingredients. This spirit is drunk like vodka.

Sake Consumption Declining Alongside Depopulation

Something we haven’t covered in this newsletter is Japan’s decreasing population—the country hit a population high in 2008 (Japan Times, 2018), but has been steadily declining since. Between 2010 and 2017 the population shrank by 1.4 million people. And it is projected that by 2065 the population will be about 88 million, which was the same size as Japan’s population in the early 1950s. This isn’t a problem unique to Japan, countries including Italy, Spain, and Korea are all facing similar declines. With the declining population, we are also seeing a trend of individuals moving from the countryside to the city as individuals seek jobs with high earning potential and growth opportunities.

Nippon.com

So how does this relate to sake?? Historically, sake producers served their local community, most of what they produced was consumed by the local population. But as more and more people move away from the countryside producers can no longer survive off of their local consumers. Instead, brewers have to find ways to stimulate demand for their products in restaurants and bars in the cities. But it's not only the declining population that is threatening the breweries, there is also a shortage of staff to make the product. Sake has a very time-intensive brewing process which requires night and day maintenance -- it’s hard to recruit someone into the business when their work is so seasonal, doesn't pay very much, and doesn't offer many opportunities for growth.

Image thanks to Kuro Kura

Coronavirus Hits the Sake Industry

One thing that surprised me when I first visited a sake brewery was that it wasn't in a scenic location, it felt very industrial, just focused on production. I had thought they would be more like wineries, idyllically placed in the center of acres of vineyards. But in Japan, the individuals that brew sake are not the same people that grow rice. Instead, rice growers and sake brewers have a very close-knit relationship relying on one another for information and raw materials. Each year the brewers finalize contracts with the rice producers for their rice between February to April, just at the same time that coronavirus was starting to impact Japan's economy. With many bars and restaurants closed, the sake breweries hadn't been able to sell all the product they had made the season prior.

The brewers were faced with a hard decision, should they purchase rice to make sake, even though they are already holding a lot of bottles that they are unable to sell? Or should they sit this year out and risk not having the rice producer to work with next year because the farmer had to switch rice varieties (from sake rice to table rice) to provide more consistent income, or even worse, they went out of business because they didn’t have enough clients? It’s such a gamble and will definitely impact what is produced in the years to come.

Image thanks to All About Japan

Looking Forward

No one knows what the future holds, but I have no doubt that our beloved sake and shochu producers will find a way to navigate these challenging times and that even as demand for their product in Japan decreases they’ll be able to find new markets abroad.

Since being in lockdown, I’ve actually attended a few different online tasting sessions hosted by Simone Maynard (@sakemistress). She’s hosted events with brewers and is helping to connect sake enthusiasts around the world with delicious Japanese sake. I highly recommend you look into her Facebook page and try to join one of the upcoming events.

Take a listen to my conversation with Justin, more than just a conversation about a beverage this month got us thinking about what does the future of the spirit’s industry look like, how will it overcome these challenges, and even more interestingly, how will this global moment shape the taste of what we drink in the future, could it lead to more aged sakes? More bubbly sake? Maybe even Japan will get on the hard seltzer (White Claw) train like America?

Nostalgia for the 1964 Tokyo Olympiad

I wasn’t alive in 1964 when Tokyo hosted the Olympics, the first summer games held in Asia, but when I watched Kon Ichikawa’s, Tokyo Olympiad, documenting the historic event, I felt called back to something deeply familiar. Not something I experience every day, but occasionally like when I’m wandering down a small alley, combing the used book shops of Jinbochō. The city’s buildings were lower to the ground, life was lived on the street level and the chaos was so accessible.

Last Friday, July 24th, was slated to be the first day of the 2020 Olympic Games. It passed without much fanfare. In my own way, I celebrated the day by watching Ichikawa’s documentary which beautifully captured both the dramatic landscapes of Japan and the intimate moments between spectators, athletes, and even volunteers.

While the film is about the Olympics, and competition plays a major role in the Games, Ichikawa artfully avoided grounding his narrative in that. Instead, focusing on the beauty of the human form and giving as much screen time to the preparations made prior to competing as the main events.

I also found the opening sequence especially compelling. The scene transitions from a rising sun to a wrecking ball, making me think about the country rising from the destruction and devastation of WW2. It also reminded me of all the construction I’ve seen around the city these past five years as the country prepared to welcome guests. And even today, Japan is still recovering from disasters, but these were not caused by war, but natural disasters. The torch relay for the 2020 Games was themed around 'recovery and hope', making stops in areas recently impacted by disasters like Fukushima where an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster wreaked havoc on the community in 2011, and Kumamoto, with a major earthquake and heavy rains in 2016, among others.

It’s interesting to see how the themes for the Games could be so similar, but how different the city looks compared to 1964. One scene in the film pans over the Olympic Village. That same site is now a lush green park, Yoyogi Koen. To think, in 50+ years that site has transitioned from houses for the American Occupational forces, to homes for Olympic athletes from around the world, to a beautiful green oasis in a bustling metropolitan city. I can only imagine how much the city will change in the next 50 years!

For anyone looking to feel inspired about the possibility of global travel, global cooperation, and future Olympic Games, I highly recommend watching. The film is currently available on Criterion, iTunes, and YouTube.

Ariel view of Washington Heights, which was to become the Olympic Village for the 1964 Olympics.

Fountain in Yoyogi Park, the previous location of Washington Heights.

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On a personal note, I’ve been staying put here in Tokyo, in my new-found time, I went back to language school. It’s been incredibly fun (and challenging) to be back in the classroom environment and I’m so grateful for the time to reinvest in my skills. My husband says he can already see a difference, but it’s only been a month, and I think he is a little biased. But the positive reinforcement keeps my desire to learn strong.

The other thing I’ve been working on is a documentary series about the unsung heroes of Japan’s food scene, the farmers! It’s still in the early stages, but as I meet and talk with these cultivators of Japan’s most delicious produce, I’m so curious to hear your questions for them? Feel free to send them my way and I’ll work them into our interviews.

Next month we’ll be back with another interview, hope you are enjoying those as much as I am!

A Meaningful Introduction to Tea Ceremony

This month, I sat down with Ruth Lionberger, a Tokyo resident and tea ceremony practitioner to better understand her journey with tea and how it can serve society.

For Ruth, the most valuable aspect of tea ceremony to modern life is the opportunity to take a break from our hectic schedules, racing minds, and habitual compulsions. Practicing tea invites you to slow down, look inward, and as a result feel calm. The qualities you cultivate through practicing the way of tea flow out and influence your day-to-day life, it becomes an approach, or a way of being. As Ruth says, living a life of tea would mean, “living everyday quiet and unmoved by whatever craziness is surrounding her.”

Since I am not a tea practitioner myself, I think it’s best to hear directly from Ruth as to how she thinks and lives with tea. You can listen to an abbreviated version of our conversation on Soundcloud. We originally chatted for two hours and I could have kept going for many more, this twenty minute segment highlights some of the main points we talked about, hope you enjoy listening!

My Personal Journey with Tea

In his 1906 book, “The Book of Tea,” Okakura Kakuzo worked to explain to an eager, but confused Western audience, what is the practice of tea, where it comes from, and why he values it. As a Westerner who picked that book up over 110 years later, I still felt that same need to understand, to peel back the mystery of the ceremony, and make sense of what it is for, and how it is performed. And as beautiful as his writing is/was, I still didn’t understand tea, it’s only been through hands-on experiences with a few different tea teachers that I think I’m starting to peel back the surface layer and peak into the depths that the practice contains.

One of my first experiences with tea that made me realize there was more to tea than I had given it credit for was at a gathering hosted by my friend, Miho. For Miho, tea is ultimately about sharing imagination, and so before she began her tea ceremony she shared the theme of the event “the winter solstice” and invited us all to imagine how the different elements used during the ceremony: what she was wearing, the tools, the tea, the art on display in the alcove, etc. contributed to our shared moment. It was the first time I was actively interacting in the ceremony instead of just observing and I loved it. Up until that ceremony I had thought of tea as a performance, something I went to watch, not necessarily contribute to. But through Miho’s evocation of our imagination, I realized that the experience was something we were creating together, both host and guest.

The second experience that made me more interested in tea was with Dairik in Kyoto. What I found in Dairik’s tea ceremony was a modern, flexible interpretation of tea ceremony, one that focused on connection and conversation. He still followed some of the traditional procedures when making the tea, but he chatted with us more during the process and also handed the bowl of tea directly to his guests, versus placing it on the tatami mat in front of the guest which is considered more standard. Before Dairik, I had thought of tea ceremony as a “tradition,” almost a dying art form. I hadn’t thought about how relevant tea could be to practitioners today. And while the procedures themselves are thousands of years old, each practitioner is interpreting them differently, reinventing the art and keeping it alive.

Entrance to a tea house at Nezu Museum in Tokyo.

The final experience that sealed my interest in the practice of tea and reverence for the art was with Ruth, at a beautiful tea room in northwestern Tokyo on the grounds of Higo Hosokawa Garden. Ruth asked me to come to the ceremony with a brand new pair of white socks. I’d never been asked to do that in order to attend a ceremony and I was intrigued! Ruth encouraged us to ask questions during the ceremony, taking the time to explain the ‘why’ behind the procedures. My first question was of course, “Why the socks?” Turns out, it was an action to purify ourselves. By changing our socks we were symbolically setting aside who we had been in the world prior to entering the tea room. Our white clean socks were a fresh start not just for our feet but for our souls.

I had known that a host prepares extensively for a tea ceremony. They clean the tea room, clean the utensils, prepare a meal, sift tea, sweep out the garden, among other things (by no means an exhaustive list!). All of these actions are in service of purifying the host’s heart and mind. What I didn’t realize was that guests were also meant to cleanse their hearts and mind before the ceremony. That’s partly why guests walk through the garden before arriving at the tea house for a ceremony, to give them time to slow down, look inward, and detach from their everyday lives.  This non-attachment manifests itself through our ability to accept things as they are, rather than wishing them to be a different way. A beautiful example to illustrate the acceptance of things as they are comes from a tea ceremony Ruth recently attended.  At some point during the ceremony, when the host was preparing tea, some of the bright, green matcha tea powder accidentally fell onto the glossy black lacquer tea caddy, while technically an “accident” it turned into a beautiful painting that all could admire, like a constellation of stars reflected in a pond at night. 

Miho made tea interactive, Dairik made tea modern, and Ruth made tea meaningful.

I still have so much to discover about tea and I’m so grateful to them for sharing the art with me.

If you are interested in experiencing tea Dairik is starting to offer online tea ceremonies. Or, if you are in Tokyo, definitely reach out to Ruth about when she’ll be holding her next tea gathering. I am really hoping to join in person in August.

Sweet to be eaten before tea.

Tea ceremony in Nakagin Capsule.

Tea bowl.

Q&A with a Zen Gardener in Kyoto

This month I spoke with Andrew William, a landscape designer, who has started a company, An Design Kyoto, introducing foreign guests to the Zen Gardens of Kyoto. In the conversation we talk about Andrew’s initial interest and experience with Japanese gardens in America, his transition to Japan, starting his company, and creating an online offering so those unable to travel could still have a moment of peacefulness in the gardens.

You can listen to our interview or read the transcript below.

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Q:

What attracted you to the art form of gardening and how did you initially engage with it?

When I really think back to the beginning, it was making dioramas in the first grade. When I was making these worlds, I just felt like I was making something out of nothing. I mean, it was just a shoebox and now I’ve made it into a world So from a very early age, I just had a strong connection to making spaces and to making something out of nothing. As I grew up I was very interested in painting and I always went to art camp in the summers. I was into pottery, and anything, and then I progressed into high school, and I was always in upper level art classes. But when I went to college I was pushed away from studying art, my mom wanted me to study business and be a good example for my younger brothers. I did what my mom said and I thought I’ll study marketing and I could do something creative and artsy that way, but that didn’t happen. So after my first year I switched out of that and went into the advertising school. And the whole time I was taking art classes, as electives, and excelling. One of the electives I took was a philosophy class, and I was introduced to zen, and all kinds of philosophies. I got really interested in zen, and the zen arts. I saw the image of the Japanese Garden, and you know with my interest in art, and I had recently become really interested in hiking and being outdoors in nature. And I was seeing images of the gardens and it was connecting the art, the philosophy, the nature, and then instantly -- there was no question of what to do next, that’s where it all came from.

A:

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Did you graduate from college and immediately move to Japan?

Q:

That’s what I wished, but no. That philosophy class was in my junior year and at that moment it was like okay, what do I have to do, to get out of this in one piece, finish the degree, and I started researching, “how do I do Japanese Gardens in America?” I found a company in Boulder, CO run by an American* who 30 or 40 years ago had been studying Zen in Kyoto. During that time he became interested in gardens and came back to the US and made a garden company. I found out about that company, and then I found a graduate program in Denver, which is right there, and so before graduation I quickly went out to Boulder to meet the company and take a look at the program and what’s funny is I finished my degree in June, and I moved two weeks later.

*Martin, the founder of the gardening company still runs a Zen Temple in Boulder

A:

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When you got there and stepped in the garden, did something inside of you change?

Q:

Totally, I felt everything changed. I was there moving a huge pile of rocks by hand, but still, I was super happy. And there was a crew of eight workers, and then there was the leader, and then there was Martin (the founder). There were three different groups on the site doing projects and I was bouncing in between them, and I had never done anything like this. The artistic nature of it and doing it as a group—which I had never done art simultaneous with other people—to have such a high level, high quality operation, being a part of that. It just made me say ‘Wow! What an amazing profession this is.” Before then, I didn’t even know garden making or landscape architecture really was. That was my first experience, I was blown away, I was so thrilled.

A:

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When you are designing gardens at this time—because we started this conversation about the philosophy class and learning about the zen gardens—were you designing zen inspired places, how would you describe the body of work at this part in time?

Q:

I would say my designs were minimalistic, had a lot of ‘ma’* built in, they had a lot of uniform plantings, and not the English garden style with wild colors. But it was in Aspen and in Denver, so there is no moss there, but I do think I was working with some of the zen design techniques at that time.

A:

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You worked for 11 years in America doing landscape design and I know that your last project was in Hawaii, how did you make the jump to Japan and what was that like?

Q:

When I was in Hawaii, I knew this is the closest I’m going to be to Japan, so I’m going to Japan! You know I’d always wanted to be in Japan, but I ended up having really good jobs in America for a while. But yeah, from Hawaii I just hopped over. But I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know anyone. I was very naive. I thought I’d be able to just get the job and get started, but it was quite complicated, without having contacts in the industry, without knowing any Japanese, except ‘Sumimasen’, I was pretty shocked.

I eventually got the English Teachers Visa, because I was dedicated to making my goal happen, so I thought just to stay in Japan, I’m going to get the English Teacher visa, do that, learn Japanese, make some contacts, and be able to visit these amazing gardens anytime I want. And through teaching at an ei-kai-wa, one of the language centers, I met a woman who was very good friends with the son of the Vice President at one of the highest ranking garden companies in Kyoto, and she got me an interview with him. He didn’t speak any English and at that point I speak some Japanese, but not polite Japanese. I felt very nervous always, but he helped me arrange with a lawyer. It cost a lot about $2,000 US, the company fronted me the money and I paid them back about $100 dollars a month for the next couple years.

The lawyer helped prepare a thick with my portfolio, all my education, letters of recommendation and photos. And then the business had to do a tremendous amount of work proving they were a sustainable business with an ‘X’ amount of money and that they could be guaranteed to pay my salary for a number of years. They had to do a lot of work. And I was very grateful that they did that because they didn’t know me.

A:

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Everyone’s transition to Japan is so different, from those first three years teaching English, did you have any major takeaways?

Q:

Well I will say this about that time, the most amazing thing when you work teaching English is you get a direct portal into the psyche of the people here. You learn about how people think, what is acceptable, what is not, what people like, what is popular, the customs, the traditions, etc. It was an amazing education. I heard from the students that I was a good teacher, but I learned way more from them than I ever taught. And I feel if I had just showed up at the garden company and didn’t go through the years of teaching English, I would have been way worse off.

A:

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I loved your description of your job, that you ‘get to be in the masterpieces of Kyoto’, and spend your time interpreting them for an audience that might not have the background or understanding, can you tell me a little bit more about how your tours came about?

Q:

I was having dinner one night at a restaurant and I was sitting next to a couple from Spain. I was with my wife, who is Japanese, and of course in a restaurant we can order anything we want, we can read the menus, we can communicate. But, I was looking at the table next to us, and I was seeing these folks and their menu, which was just one sheet of paper, and we had a full on book for a menu. And I was like this is an amazing restaurant, and I could see the options in English it was fried chicken, and a salad, and Ramen. They didn’t have any of the choices! I saw them looking at their menu and our menu, and so I reached out and I helped them order.

I’ve always felt that when you are an international person here and you cannot communicate fluently you miss a lot, you don’t really get deep into it. And then in that moment, I thought can I do a service to help folks coming here, maybe tour guiding? And it just kind of evolved into doing freelance tour guiding for a couple companies, while doing freelance gardening, I split my time between the two maybe 50/50 or 70/30. That’s how it all started, sitting at that table in the restaurant and thinking I could do something!

A:

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So then you start guiding, and now with Corona you shifted your tours online. I got to experience it, and I was amazed that seeing something over video, you get almost the same curiosity that you would have if you were in the space. You designed the experience so we could ask questions and I really did feel transported. It was a two hour experience, and I felt like I had gone somewhere else and then I came back. Tell me about the transition to guiding online, have you restructured or changed the tour? Or have you found yourself focusing on new materials now that you are online?

Q:

Actually, no it hasn’t changed that much. Normally in our half-day in-person experience we visit three gardens and for this online tour we just visit one. I had a really interesting observation this morning, from an awesome guest that has gotten to experience the tour both here in Kyoto and then online. She said that when you are in the garden you are just overwhelmed you can move around, you don’t know where to begin. But watching the video, you have to focus in on one space, and you are really led to what you are viewing because you are looking at the video. She said she really liked it because now I could really notice it, whereas before it was everything at once.

I’ve found for a lot of guests when they visit a garden, the feeling is “wow this is beautiful, but I’m missing something, what’s going on here? what is this?” And what I do is give them an inroad, a story, that helps them visualize a mindset in the garden. If you can talk about it in that way, present it to someone, you are not only talking about this garden, but a mindset. And That’s very powerful.

A:

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What defines a good garden for you?

Q:

I have no idea how to answer that actually, because as I’ve gotten deep into what I’m doing, which is not making gardens at the moment, but being in them, and researching about them, and trying to interpret them to my guests, I’ve come to feel like I have so much to learn, But somehow in any creation, the spirit and the heart of the person that made that comes out, and if it is a very deep feeling, that is what the person who inhabits that space can feel, and that’s what I think is the most important. So whatever it physically looks like I have no idea how to say good or bad, but the feeling of the person who created it, I think is actually really important.

A:

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Are there any gardens that you appreciate, but you would never design yourself?

Q:

There is a designer in the Yokohama/Tokyo area, a zen monk, Shunmyo Masuno, who does work all over Japan. He has a certain sensibility that is completely different than anyone else. He designed the garden at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, and it is very minimalistic and stark, but it blew my mind. This guy is on a whole different level. He does a tremendous plaza, the size of a football field, and instead of sand in the garden, it’s cut stones, and then there are tremendous huge stones set, natural stones. His stone composition, I don’t think I would ever do an idea like that, but it blows my mind.

**You can see more of Shunmyo Masuno’s work here.

A:

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What style of garden is your favorite and why?

Q:

I think it would have to be the karesansui style, with the sand and the stone because of the emptiness. The garden that got me interested in this style of garden is at Daisen-in within Daitokuji. It's a very tight space, you have the building, which is a square, and then the garden is basically a band around the square. And even though you are viewing it from the veranda you are in the garden and it just felt like a garden as painting or painting as a garden. You couldn’t say this is a garden, or this is a painting, or this is not a painting, or this is not a garden.

A:

Image by Robert Harding.

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Do you think you need to study zen to be a good gardener?

Q:

In general, no. But if you want to make the style of Garden that I’m talking about in Daisen-in, then yes. But just to be a gardener in general, it could help, might make folks more patient, might make people like some of the demanding and physical hard work it takes to make and maintain the garden. It’s not easy and knowing a bit about zen or being aware of it, helps anyone in any situation. Not just gardening. Helps people through life. Very often in the morning before a tour I’ll read a koan and it will just kind of stay with me all day and it kind of sets the mood in a way.

A:

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Is there anything from landscape architecture or “gardening” that you want to pass on to your children?

Q:

I’m not an eco-activist or anything like that, but instilling in my kids the importance of ecology and nature on a basic level, is something that we do as well and is really important.

A:

An Authentic Zen Existence

It was 4:30 AM on a cold, rainy morning in early March, I rolled out of my futon, dressed to meet my guide, and walked to the zen temple, Zuihō-in, two blocks away for morning meditation. I had been warned that it was going to be extra chilly inside the temple, so I layered up. We also shoved some of the amazing ‘hokkairo’ (the same glove and boot warmers that you use when you go skiing) into our pockets to keep us warm as we sat. I've heard that enduring the discomfort (cold, pain, etc) is part of the practice, but we weren't strictly adhering to that this morning.

My experience with meditation in the past has always been around ‘sangha’, or groups of people who gather to meditate. Afterwards, we’ll socialize, share tea or a meal. The meditation meetups often feel like potluck dinner parties in the way that connecting with other like-minded people can feel spiritual. But on this morning, we didn’t arrive to a packed meditation hall, it would just be the two of us and the priest.

I’m a person who smiles a lot, makes eye contact, says hi to strangers when we pass on the street. But when I saw the Abbott (head priest) that morning at the entrance to the temple, I realized this wasn't the time for effusive greetings. Wordlessly we went into the meditation hall, bowed, and settled onto our zafus (cushions) for a 45-minute chanting session.

When you chant you repeat ancient sutras (or sacred texts), the priest bangs a drum and rings bells that help keep the pace and add emphasis. I grew up going to Catholic mass, if it hadn’t have been for the cantor singing as loudly as possible, even with the whole church singing it would have sounded like a whisper. I remember always being worried about singing off-key. But that morning, at the temple, the sound of chanting and drumming was so loud, it could have been heard from the street outside the gates. The vigorous chanting had the effect of caffeine, I could feel the blood pulsing through my body, and by the end, when we settled into meditation I wasn’t worried about dozing off. I was nervous about how long we would sit for, having assumed monks and priests meditate all day long. But it was only after a few short minutes, maybe 10 or 15, that the monk rang his bell to let us know that we were finished. We bowed and retired to a small room off the hall to have tea. Our chatting was interrupted when the sound of stomping, running, and some tears filled the hallway. The priest with the biggest smile pulled open the shoji (sliding paper door) and told the children to get rags and start cleaning the wooden floorboards. He turned back to me and explained that the kids were all home from school due to coronavirus and that they’d be spending the day with him at the temple. The pride and joy of a grandparent is unrivaled. I realized I was keeping him from his beloved grandkids, so I excused myself and headed back to my accommodation.

Zen Garden at Zuihō-in

Entrance to Zuihō-in

As wonderful as the morning had been, I couldn't help but feel disappointed. After reading so much D T Suzuki, I wanted the opportunity to chat more. Once I returned home to Tokyo, I decided to call my friend, Ian, who had been a Zen monk in Japan for three years in the early 2000’s. You can listen to Ian and I’s conversation via the link below.

For the first few years I knew Ian, I had no idea of his previous identity as a monk. He’s an artist, his photographs are like Zen paintings or haikus—beautiful homages to nature, expressions of miniature moments of ‘enlightenment.’ I’ve also never heard him complain or talk poorly of someone. On our call, he explained that people who trigger him are just Bodhisattvas (beings that stay on earth to help others reach enlightenment). By triggering him these humans give him insight into the places he lets his mind go, and give him the option to choose not to go there. He lives zen.

I can only begin to imagine how much Ian stood out during his time in Japan, he’s tall—like basketball player tall—has blue eyes and fair hair. He moved after he graduated from college hoping to be able to study zen and sumi (ink) painting. Ian was able to do both! And actually his ink paintings won quite a few prizes in competitions here in Japan. It was a bit harder to access the zen. The first time Ian tried to enter the monastery he found a list of the schools in the Kyoto area, called, and politely asked to be admitted. He was swiftly rejected by all of them.

As you can imagine with a society so old, there are traditions and rules that guide everything you do, most especially entering a monastery. But these rules are never openly discussed. It’s not that people are specifically withholding information, it’s just that for thousands of years there’s been a way things are done, for someone who grew up in the culture it is common knowledge, and they aren’t able to diagnosis the gaps in our own personal knowledge to know where we need additional guidance.

One of the people that answered the phone took pity on Ian and encouraged him to first attend a Zen Center, Hosenji, also in Kyoto, and study there.

Ian trained at Hosenji for a year. During that time he learned the rhythms of daily life and the different roles and responsibilities of members in that kind of closed community. He was able to visit a few different monasteries around the country to see if any would be a good fit for his next stage, once decided he was ready to re-approach. This time he had the insight into how it was done. He traveled directly to his desired monastery’s doorstep and humbled himself in a half twisted “child’s pose” kind of position, and called out as loudly as he possibly could “Tanomimashyou” which basically is a word to ‘request or petition’. He did that for three days before he was allowed inside. And then once they let him inside, he had to sit completely still for another five days—out in the open where all the other monks could see him—before they would accept him into the brotherhood.

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Illustration by Shu Kuge

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Illustration by Shu Kuge

Training at Zuiganji

For the next 18-months, Ian was in deep zen training at Zuiganji Temple in Miyagi (about 2.5 hrs from Tokyo by high-speed train). There are two major sects within the Zen family, Rinzai and Soto. While based on similar foundations they differ in their practices. Both do meditation, but Rinzai also employs mind puzzles called, koans. These koans are what had attracted Ian to zen in the first place, even though the koans are thousands of years old they still felt spontaneous and alive.

Ian’s days training in Rinzai Zen started similarly to the young grandkids I had encountered at the temple. Someone would slide open the shoji doors to the zendo (meditation hall) and ring a bell, telling the monks to get up, they’d jump out of their futon, run and get hot rags and wipe down the floors so they could transition the space from a sleeping space to a meditation space. After morning chanting and meditation he’d meet with his Roshi, or Zen master, to discuss whatever koan he was practicing, and then carry on with his chores around the compound.

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Working with Koan

I asked Ian which koan had the biggest impact on him and he said it was the first he was ever assigned. He explains his experience with it below:

“Joshu's Mu….It's the first one I (and any monk under my Roshi) received and it's said that if you truly grasp Mu, then there are no further koans that can meet its power. It reads,

"A monk once asked Master Joshu, 'Does a dog have Buddha nature?'

Joshu replied, 'Mu'."

You're likely familiar with this koan but in case not, I'll expand a little. Buddha Nature is our True Nature, something that all sentient beings have access to at any and all times. So certainly the dog has buddha nature but when Joshu replies with ‘Mu’, (nothingness, emptiness) is he negating that? Or is he confirming it? If you're asking that question, you've already missed the point!”

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Unfortunately, I was asking myself those questions, and have definitely missed the point. But that’s okay if I ever choose to study zen more seriously, I know I’ll have the opportunity to revisit it and contemplate the meaning of ‘mu’.

Beyond chores, chanting, meditation, and meeting with the Roshi, Ian’s life as a monk also included twice-weekly begging rounds where the monks would go out into the community and collect money for the temple and perform services in people’s homes.

They’d also regularly perform services for members at the main temple. One of the most common services they did was funerals. We always think of temples as being spiritual places for contemplation. And they are, but they are also businesses and have had to figure out how to support themselves over the years. That’s why some temples open themselves up to tourists to see their gardens, but for most, these kind of funerary services are their main source of income.

Thirteen out of the fifteen monks training at Zuiganji, were studying in order to take over their family temple. The temple has become a family business, passed down from generation to generation. They had actually been grooming Ian to take over a zen temple in Maui that was looking for a new priest. Ian declined. For him, the study and practice of zen had always been the appeal, not necessarily getting involved in the day-to-day of running a temple. It was probably for the better to have this kind of forcing conversation to decide what Ian’s future looked like. He realized he could spend decades studying and still not reach awakening, plus he had been five years away from his family and friends in America and he wanted to be able to spend time with them.

He said goodbye to his life at the monastery with the plan to return to America and continue his zen practice from there. With my understanding of zen, it’s focus on truth, on direct-action, on not overthinking -- I think Ian’s created a very authentic Zen existence in his artistic, professional, and personal life. He continues to sit regularly, employing the practices of breathing and presence. He works with organizes like Wildtender to lead practitioners on meditations in the wild. He is teaching his daughters the inroads into themselves as well as the zoomed out picture of their relation to the greater world. He can reframe limitations in a way better than any motivational speaker.

“There were so many times when training at the sodo that I felt, “I can’t”. So many times when either the physical pain or mental strain felt like too much and in any other circumstance, I would have stopped what I was doing in search of relief. But because a ‘sodo’ is a very rigid place and there are others there who aren’t succumbing, you don’t either. And what you find is that the limitations you thought you had were boundaries created by yourself, and they can just as easily be moved or eliminated altogether.”

— Ian M.

I had asked Ian about his feelings about the new mindfulness movement that is independent of any specific spiritual tradition. I had expected him to say how inauthentic they were but he didn’t respond that way at all. For Ian, he believes that these practices are so helpful that they should be made accessible, and hopes that “there are teachers of the old school that can work as stewards to bridge it with the new.” In my mind, Ian is definitely one of those teachers. Big thank you to him and to all my teachers for sharing their wisdom with me.

Sitting Quietly and Doing Nothing

I’m writing you this letter from home, where more often than not, I’m just sitting quietly, and doing nothing. Tokyo isn’t on a strict lockdown but the government has asked us to stay home and other than trips to the grocery store and walks along the riverside, I’m doing my best to comply.  

I imagine many of you are in a similar situation. This new idleness brings up a lot of emotions, frustration, fear, sadness, loneliness. Over the past month, I’ve been digging into the Zen Buddhist tradition and I am hoping to offer some words of comfort:

“As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.”

— Alan Watts

In this quote Alan Watts is referring to the act of meditation when he says “sit quietly and do nothing” but in our current situation, I also think sitting on your couch, and absentmindedly scrolling through old photos applies.  Here are a few other Zen teachings that I’ve particularly appreciated at this moment that I’d like to share with you.

Focusing on the Details

The 'focus on the details' especially relates to the theme of many Zen poems. The poems aren’t about grand philosophies of life but about the easily overlooked elements like sounds in the forest or the moon shining through the clouds. These poetic reminders help me notice the joys in my slightly-shrunken-social-distancing universe.

Making his way through the crowd

In his hand

A poppy.

— Issa (1763 - 1827)

Distant mountains

Reflected in the eyes

Of a dragonfly.

—Issa (1763 - 1827)

To those who only pray for the cherries to bloom

How I wish to show the spring

That gleams from a patch of green

In the midst of the snow-covered mountain village.

—Fujiwara Iyetaka (12th century)

Tending Toward Wabi (Non-attachment)

My previous understanding of 'Wabi' was in connection with the idea of perfectly imperfect. But after reading DT Suzuki's "Zen and Japanese Culture", I now associate 'Wabi' with non-attachment, letting go of desires. When you are okay not having every desire fulfilled, then, whatever happens, is perfect, even if imperfect. This kind of thinking gives me great ease as 2020 is shaping up VERY differently than I had previously imagined!

“Wabi means insufficiency of things, inability to fulfill every desire one may cherish, generally a life of poverty and dejection.”

— DT Suzuki

Another story I love in relation to 'Wabi' is about the Silver Temple in Kyoto, also known as Ginkakuji. Both the Golden (Kinkakuji) and Silver (Ginkakuji) Temples were originally retirement villas for Shoguns (military rulers of Japan) and then transitioned to Zen Temples. The Golden Temple was built by Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu in 1397. This was considered to be the epitome of temples, covered in the most highly prized metal, gold. Years later, in 1490, when Ashikaga Yoshimitsu’s grandson, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, went to build his retirement villa he decided to build the temple in an inferior metal, silver. Due to war, the construction of the villa was never completed and the silver foil never applied to the exterior. But actually, in its incomplete state, the temple is even more beautiful than it’s sister temple in the West of the City. The Silver Temple, Ginkakuji, is by far one of my favorite temples in Kyoto. 

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Kinkakuji, Golden Temple, Kyoto

Ginkakuji, Silver Temple, Kyoto

Spending Time in Nature

It’s interesting, but the major Zen Temples in both China and Japan were referred to as mountains (Five Mountains of Kyoto). There is such a strong connotation of Zen practitioners taking themselves away to the mountain monastery to meditate, that even when temples were found in the center of Kyoto or Kamakura, it was still referred to as ‘a mountain.’ At the beginning of this month I was able to travel down to Kyoto and visit on the Zen Monastery’s there, Daitokuji, it was explained to me, that the gates that separated the temple grounds from the general walking areas were meant to act as a portal and transport the visitor from the city to the mountains where they could do their spiritual work. Living in the city, I don’t have easy access to mountains, but instead, I’ve been using my daily walks along the riverside to connect. And as with Zen, where the change of seasons is highlighted and prized, I’ve been cherishing the change each day in the blossoms on the cherry trees.

“Changeability is frequently the object of admiration.”

— DT Suzuki

Here's a video my husband, Eiji, helped me put together to show the change in the blossoms each day. 

Ritualizing the Everyday

DT Suzuki said, “The Japanese are great in changing philosophy into art, abstract reasoning into life.” One of the clearest examples of this translation of Zen philosophy into art is the tea ceremony. Practicing Zen is to practice "seeing reality directly" and when you practice the art of tea, the actions before, during, and after are meant to cleanse the sense doors (sight, smell, sound, taste, touch) of the practitioner, so they come away with a cleansed spirit.

“When water is poured into the bowl, it is not water alone that is poured into it—a variety of things go into it, good and bad, pure and impure, things about which one has to blush, things which can never be poured out anywhere except into one’s own deep unconscious.”

— DT Suzuki

While I don’t have a tea practice, I treat the preparation of my morning coffee as a mini “tea ceremony,” focusing on doing just what I’m doing and not multitasking. Sharing the cup of coffee with my partner with full heart and sincerity and taking the time to drink it in and enjoy the moment. If I can carry the quality of present moment awareness with me into the rest of my day, it’s a gift to be treasured. Especially during these unprecedented times when the news takes over all my attention, every moment of the day is an opportunity to practice zen whether it be cooking, cleaning, or even lying down.

Embracing Absurdity and Spontaneity

I’m not sure how many of you are on Instagram but earlier this month my family put on a talent show. I decided that my talent was to be a robot that could produce haikus based on topics from the audience, it was absurd, yes! and it was an answer that just came to me, without much thought. Was it ‘talent’? Not really. But that’s not what matters because it was a very spontaneous response that was true to who I am. 

Spontaneity in the Zen Buddhism tradition relates to the practice of koans (mind puzzles) that help students of zen realize the ultimate teachings. Often teachers engage in a question and answer session with their students and a perfectly appropriate answer to the question “What is this jar, if not used for carrying water?” is to kick the jar over. It’s a spontaneous, non-conceptual response that maintains the “reality” of the moment. It perplexes me how it answers the question, but that doesn’t matter, I’m still too much of a novice to attempt such koans. 

Non-striving

Zen claims that all humans have Buddha-nature, an awakened presence filled with compassion and wisdom, and since humans are inherently good, to do actions in the hopes of accumulating merit is pointless. Furthermore, the motivation behind the action takes away from its sincerity.

“All beings by nature are Buddhas,
as ice by nature is water.
Apart from water there is no ice;
apart from beings, no Buddhas”

— Hakuin Ekaku (17th Century)

I've been conflicted that I'm not doing enough, but I have to go back to the idea that sitting quietly and doing nothing, is in itself something quite impactful.  In "Zen and Japanese Culture" Suzuki mourns that “we moderns have lost the taste for leisureliness, that we find no room in our worrying hearts for enjoying life in any other way than running after excitement for excitement’s sake.” With our new-found time at home and some of these Zen perspectives, I think we may be able to prove Mr. Suzuki wrong!

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I loved all the Haiku topics I received, feel free to send me any other topics you'd like to have me write a poem about!

Learning the Beauty of Everyday Things

We just finished up a delicious Thanksgiving feast at my friend’s restaurant in Tokyo, Locale, and as I reflect upon what I’m grateful for—beyond friends, family, health, and husband—I have to say I am very grateful for the writings of Soetsu Yanagi and how much they’ve opened my eyes to the beauty in the everyday objects surrounding me.

Soetsu Yanagi is a philosopher and art critic and together with two potters, Kawai Kanjiro and Shoji Hamada, he formed the Mingei movement, aimed at promoting their philosophy of beauty and introducing various handicrafts from all over Japan. The word Mingei was invented by the founders and combines two Kanji characters, ‘Min’ meaning, the masses or the people and ‘Gei’ meaning, craft.

“民芸
Min-Gei”

At the movement’s heart, is the goal to rewire people’s perception of beauty to include the utility of an object, not just the outward appearance. As Yanagi wrote, the perception of beauty at the time too heavily relied on an object being made by someone famous or having a high price tag. By spreading their philosophy they were hoping to empower individuals to intuitively discern beauty—free of definition or prior approval.

In 1925 they first coined the term and by 1936 they had opened the Japan Folk Craft Museum in Tokyo. This movement came to rise at a very interesting time in Japan, the country had reopened to the Western world just about 50 years prior, the Great Kanto earthquake had leveled Tokyo in 1923, and the country had undergone rapid industrialization between 1890 - 1930s. People’s lifestyles were shifting away from rural and agrarian to industrial and urban. Soetsu Yanagi and his contemporaries were working to bring attention back to the contributions of the provinces (areas outside the cities) and to demonstrate a specifically "Japanese" aesthetic that existed in the crafts that they created.

Ceramic dish by Shoji Hamada

The Mingei Philosophy

1. Object is made for daily use

2. Object is not expensive

3. Object is produced in great numbers

4. Object’s creator is not famous, and the work is not signed

5. Object is made of carefully selected material

6. Object is sturdy (not overly fragile) - it can stand the test of reality!

Yanagi explains that in the Mingei universe, objects, people, and processes are honest, sincere, wholesome and utilitarian. It’s a utopian view of society for sure, but who wouldn’t want to encourage a vision of the world (people, places and things) that are more humble, wholesome, and useful?!

Reading these tenets about 100 years after they were first written, I feel like they are ideals we are still working toward, and that with climate change our need to find a new relationship with the things we make and consume is of paramount importance.

Pitcher by Yumiko Shimoya

Photograph was taken in Mashiko at the annual pottery festival.

Engaging with Mingei Today

As part of my immersion into Mingei, and relearning the beauty of things around me, I’ve been trying to engage with crafts as much as possible. My immersion has included:

Reading Soetsu Yanagi's "The Beauty of Everday Things." In one of the essays, Yanagi introduces the term ‘muji’ which means 'simplicity,' and how he felt the Japanese tendency toward and eye for simplicity was going to be one of their greatest gifts to the West. Isn’t it ironic that almost 100 years later, Muji, is a very successful company, and in many ways HAS been a great gift to the West! Wild!

Visiting the Japan Folk Craft Museum in Tokyo to see the objects that Soetsu Yanagi collected over the years. Seeing his collection of articles helped me to better understand how he evaluated beauty. Take note, on December 14th, they'll start a craft exhibition where you can actually purchase pieces, it will be the perfect place to pick up Christmas presents!!

Traveling to Mashiko, where Shoji Hamada had his studio and which hosts a pottery festival twice a year (recommendations for future visitors to Mashiko). Thank you to both Akio Nukaga and Hideki Takayama for their time and energy to show us around. They are carrying on the Mingei spirit, and I loved meeting the next generation of craftsmen.

Taking a woodblock print workshop. This was an important experience to try and understand Soetsu Yanagi's emphasis that woodblock prints are in fact crafts, not arts. While there are some artists that have made very famous works (i.e. Hokusai) he feels that the general use of the woodblock print was for spreading information and religious images. The woodblock enabled mass printing and thus should be considered a craft, not a fine-art.

Mending a broken object with kintsugi. Kintsugi is a technique to repair objects with a lacquer mixed with gold or silver dust. It is a topic that Soetsu Yanagi touches on as he explains the beauty in the imperfect, and that how imperfection is an expression of absolute freedom. It was a fun meditative experience to repair my Grandmother's ring holder and to think about the benefit we can receive when we draw attention to imperfections rather than try to hide them.

When I was at kintsugi class, my teacher handed me a brush. I was so struck by the brush’s design that I commented on it. The teacher smiled and shared that this particular brush was made of disposable chopsticks and nylon fiber that he cut from larger paintbrushes to create the perfect tool for spreading very small amounts of lacquer over cracks.

I’m pretty sure Yanagi would have also found it beautiful. The perfect combination of form and function, not seeking the recognition of ‘beautiful’ from others, but naturally living in a state of beauty. I was proud that my recognition of beauty had started to expand from the purely visual arts to also include utility!!

Waribashi Lacquer brush by Kuge Sensei

Soetsu Yanagi explained many more crafts in his essay and I'm excited to engage with them in the coming months/years. Some at the top of my list to try and weaving cloth made of banana fiber (Okinawa), making washi paper (Fukui), and revisiting tea ceremony (something that Soetsu Yanagi felt was at the center of Japan's ideas of beauty).

Personal Relevance

As a hobby, I enjoy taking photographs and one thing that I've found language to explain since reading Soetsu Yanagi's book is why I enjoy the beauty of photographs taken with a film camera, more than the ones taken with a digital camera.

“My hope is that my work will be not produced, but be born naturally.”

— Shoji Hamada

Soetsu Yanagi returns to the theme of natural beauty again and again in his essays. He describes it as, "The fact that beauty emerges from the handicrafts is due to nature’s refusal to bend to human whim, to nature itself exercising freedom."

Nature in a way lends its strength to human hands and enhances whatever we are creating. He also explains that if humans are to try and manufacture some imperfection, to try and mimic nature it is visibly inferior to the intuitive eye because it feels so forced.

When I take photos on film, not all of them are great, really only just a few are decent. But the film photos that do turn out are far superior to the images I take on my digital camera because the forces of nature get to play a hand in making the beauty shine through. And if I were to try and edit the photos after the fact to achieve the same effect, they never look nearly as good as when it occurs naturally. I will work to include more film photos in my future newsletters (the ones above were all taken on digital).

So the journey continues, what a gift this past month has been. I love that for me there are yet, so many undiscovered themes, villages, craftsmen, and craft. Excited to continue sharing with you as I encounter them.

For anyone with even a slight interest in Japanese ceramics, crafts, tea ceremony, or design aesthetic, I highly recommend reading “Beauty of Everyday Things.” Soetsu Yanagi’s passion for the objects he collects is infectious and his way of explaining their beauty isn’t overly esoteric. It’s illuminated so much for me in what I see around Japan day-to-day and I think for a visitor coming over it would be a great primer to get you excited for what you are about to experience.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

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P.S. Shoji Hamada is 100% the original hipster, I mean look at those glasses, I'm sure bartenders in Brooklyn would be gaga over them!

A Quick, Little, Guide to Mashiko

Where to Stay:

• Mashiko Dokei - quaint, family-run inn, close to the main street of Mashiko

• Mashiko Satoyama Resort Hotel - larger hotel complex, what it lacks in design it makes up with onsen bath

Where to Eat:

• Tonkatsu 吉川 - I don’t think you’ll find a larger portion of tonkatsu anywhere in Japan. It’s delicious and crisp, and the style of tonkatsu is the one where the panko outer layer stays connected to the juicy pork inside. Delicious!

• Starnet - cafe with store attached, coffee, tea, sweets, and set lunch

Where to Visit:

• Shoji Hamada Memorial Mashiko Sankokan Museum - loved seeing his collection of works from around the world, plus the buildings that he reconstructed on the property are an architectural treat

• Tonoike Sake Brewery - for both tasting, or even workshops if you book in advance

• Pejite - gorgeous building, housing all kinds of crafts from furniture, to knives, to clothes

• Toneriko - up the hill from Starnet is another beautiful shop/cafe with a collection of different artists’ works

Artists in the Area:

Click on their name below to see their work on Instagram.

• Akio Nukaga - ceramics

• Hideki Takayama - woodworking

• Keisuke Okada - woodworking

• Douglas Black - ceramics

• Yumiko Shimoya - ceramics

• Maki Nitta - iron

When to go for the Festival:

• Over Japan’s Golden Week, May

• First Week of November

How to Get There:

• Take the Shinkansen to Utsunomiya Station (gyoza capital!) and from there you can drive to Mashiko, it takes about 1hr on the Shinkansen, and then another 45 minutes in the car. I think it’s nice to have a rental car so you can visit other destinations in the area like Nikko or Oze National Park. If you don’t want to take a rental car, you can also take a bus from Utsunomiya to Mashiko.

 

Cycling the Shimanami Kaido

Japan is known as the country of 7,000 island, 6,852 to be precise. But where are all these islands exactly?

We think we found them, or at least a good portion of them, while cycling the Shimanami Kaido from Onomichi to Imabari. The Shimanami Kaido is a highway connecting Hiroshima Prefecture to Ehime Prefecture in Shikoku. It was built with cyclists in mind, as there is a very clearly marked path for the entire 70KM. Along the way you cross six architecturally-unique bridges and from the bridges you can see the green/blue ocean dotted with countless volcano-shaped islands.

The waterways running between the islands are teaming with life: cargo ships moving majestically from port to port, fishing boats out checking their nets, and teenagers taking advantage of the sun to do a little wakeboarding.

Cycling the Shimanami Kaido gives you a glimpse into a pocket of Japan that changed drastically since industrialization, but hasn't caught up to Tokyo, Osaka or even Fukuoka in terms of pace of life and density of the population. Still plenty of green space here.

It's also a region that residents are surprised foreigner's pick to visit - "Why here?" residents ask.

Well, because…...it’s scenic, an experience of rural Japanese life that isn't so far out of the well and well connected, it’s not an intimidating distance by bike, very accomplishable, the architecture of the bridges is iconic, the area has a rich history and there is delightful Japanese hospitality to be experienced along the way. It's an easy decision really.

If you are thinking of trying to fit this experience into your itinerary - here is a bit of information to help you do that.

Shimanami Kaido Itineraries

The whole route is about 70 KM (43 miles), and can be covered in one day, but doesn’t have to be. Below are a few different ways to incorporate the Shimanami Kaido into your Japan itinerary.

Half-Day

28.5 KM

1. Half-Day - Electric Bicycle - Distance 28.5KM

This itinerary has you starting and finishing in Onomichi. It enables you to use electric cycles and takes you across a few of the bridges. I would recommend this for someone who is interested in cycling, but doesn't want to commit to the distance. It's a nice 

• AM - Have a hearty breakfast and pick up some water and snacks for the road. 
• 9:00 - Pick-up bikes from rental store at Onomichi Port
• 9:15 - Ferry from Onomichi to Setoda [Ferry Schedule]
• 9:54 - Arrive in Setoda 
  • Explore around Setoda - Kosanji Temple and Hirayama Ikuo Museum are not to be missed
• 12:00/13:00 - Start to cycle back toward Onomichi (if you are cycling at 10KM per hour it should take about three hours to get back)
• Cross the Ikuchi Bridge and Innoshima Bridge before ferrying from Mukaishima to Onomichi
• 15:00/16:00 - Return cycles to the rental station where you picked them up!
• Potentially stay the night in Onomichi - there are some great views and good baths to be had

One-Day

41.5 KM or 48 KM

2. One-Day - City Bike (w/ basket) - Distance 41.5KM or 48KM

The beauty of this plan, is it gives you a lot of freedom around where you start and finish. If you rent a regular bicycle you can drop if off at any of the terminals along the way. In my opinion the bridges between Ikuchijima to Imabari were more architecturally stunning and so I would focus my time on them. In this example, you start from Imabari, but you could also start from Onomichi and accomplish the same route.

• Let's imagine you spent the night before the ride in Matsuyama after ferrying over from Hiroshima - after waking up and having a good breakfast you would make your way to JR Matsuyama Station and take the Yosan-line Limited Express bound for Imabari. 
• 8:10 - Train departs Matsuyama for Imabari
• 8:46 - Train arrives at Imabari 
• 9:00 - Pick-up bicycles at the rental terminal at the train station
• Bike from Imabari Station to Setoda Port (48KM)
  • Cycling at 10KM an hour this would take almost five hours
• Cross the Kurushima-Kaikyo, Hakata Oshima and Tatara Bridges
• Explore around Setoda (Kosanji Temple + Hirayama Ikuo Museum)
• 18:00 - Return your bicycles to the rental station by Setoda Port before it closes
• 18:40 - Ferry from Setoda Port to Onomichi (arriving at 19:19)
  • Alternatively, you could stay at one of the Ryokan on Ikuchijima and return to Onomichi the following day

Two-Days

70 KM

3. Two-Days - City Bike (w/ basket) - Distance 70KM

If your itinerary allows for more time along the road, all the better. That way you can move through the islands slowly, and give yourself time to deviate from the path to explore. You'll need to rent a bicycle that can be dropped off in a different place then it was picked up. I would also recommend having a basket on your bike, so you don't have to carry things on your back while you ride. City bikes have a basket and can be dropped off anywhere along the course, so fit this itinerary well!

• Day 1 : Onomichi to Setoda (28.5 KM)
  • 9:00 - Pickup bicycles from rental station by Onomichi Port
  • Ferry from Mukaishima to Onomichi and then bike across the Innoshima Bridge and Ikuchi Bridge
  • Stop along the way for Botanical Gardens and mountain top views
  • Arrive in Setoda - visit the local sites (Kosanji Temple + Hirayama Ikuo Museum)
  • Check-in to your ryokan, have a nice bath and delicious dinner
• Day 2: Setoda to Imabari/Sunrise Itoyama (48KM/41.5 KM)
  • Enjoy breakfast at your ryokan and then get on the road
  • 9:30 - Cycle from Setoda to Imabari crossing the Tatara,  Hakata-Oshima and Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridges
  • Stop along the way for mikan ice cream, beaches and sweet cafes
  • 18:00 - Return cycles to Sunrise Itoyama (just off the Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridge) or to Imabari Station Terminal
  • Spend the night in Imabari or train over to Matsuyama and stay there

One-Day

70 KM

4. One-Day - Cross Bike - Distance 70KM

This is the simplest of all the itineraries. It is for a physically fit person that wants to accomplish the course in one day. You can start from either Imabari or Onomichi  - although the onramp to the Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridge can be intimidating, so it may be better to start from Onomichi and go down it rather than up!

• Pick-up bikes the night before your ride, so you can get a head start on the day.
• 8:00 - After a hearty breakfast, start out on the road
• Work your way across the bridges, stopping for photos, snacks and potentially a sight seeing spot or two (time allowing).
  • If you are cycling at 10km per hour you it will take between 7 - 7.5 hours to cycle the whole way. 
• 18:00 - Be sure to give yourself plenty of time to arrive at your destination and return your bicycles to the store by 18:00 when they close. 
  • If you are renting from Giant you can pay 3000 yen extra to be able to drop it off in a different location than you picked it up! Definitely recommend this option, this way you get the advantage of a nice bike with lots of gears, and the convenience of returning it when you finish.
  • If you rent a normal bicycle from the Shimanami Rent-a-Cycle, you can leave your bike at any station along the way

Rental Cycle Options

***Recommend reserving bicycles ahead of time****

• Giant - a range of cross bikes, more gears, lighter bikes, no baskets. Can pay 3000yen extra to drop off at a different location than where you picked up.
• Shimanami Kaido Rent-a-Cycle - range of options from electric, to tandem, to city bikes. Less expensive than Giant. Different bikes are available at different terminals, so reserving ahead is crucial.
  • You can pick-up a map of the area/course at any of the rental cycle centers or tourist information centers.

Accommodations

Onomichi

• Bella Vista - Gorgeous Seaside Hotel
• Setouchi Minato no Yado - Minimalist, traditional house
• Airbnb - Entire house, bright and airy, sleeps four

Ikuchijima

• Suminoe Ryokan - Right next to Setoda Port, traditional ryokan, lovely garden and sea views
• Juicy Fruits - Closer to Sunset Beach, man who runs the pension is a farmer and will share oranges when in season!
• "Log House" Airbnb - Entire house, air mattresses for beds, sleeps eight, 10 minute cycle from the port 
• "Koune Paradiso" Airbnb - Private room, sweet host, provide food

Imabari/Matsuyama

• Shimanami Guesthouse Airbnb, Imabari - Entire house, sleeps five, free parking available, right in front of Imabari Station
• Shimanami Cycling Airbnb, Imabari - Entire home, sleeps eight, 20 minute walk from station
• Sen Guesthouse, Matsuyama - Bunk or private rooms available, lovely staff and roof to watch the sunset from
• Tatami Suite Airbnb, Matsuyama - Private room, sleeps 5, engaged hosts, close to the castle in Matsuyama

Here is the best site with list of accommodations along the Shimanami Kaido. 

Access

If you are moving around the country by train, here are recommended routes to access the Shimanami Kaido. 

• Hiroshima → Onomichi
  • Hiroshima to Shin-Onomichi (31mins) by Shinkansen
  • Bus or taxi down to the rental-cycle center by the Onomichi Station and Ferry Port (10min drive) 
• Okayama → Onomichi
  • Okayama to Onomichi Station (1hr 18mins) by JR Sanyo Line
  • 5 minute walk to rental-cycle center
• Matsuyama, Shikoku → Imabari
  • Matsuyama to Imabri (35 mins) by JR Limited Express Shiokaze 
• Kyoto → Onomichi
  • Kyoto to Fukuyama (1hr 17min) by Shinkansen
  • Fukuyama to Onomichi (19 mins) JR Sanyo Line
  • 5 minute walk to rental-cycle center

Shipping Luggage

It would be cumbersome to carry your luggage with you while biking the Shimanami Kaido. Luckily though, Japan makes it super easy to send it ahead. You can ship your luggage from any hotel or convenience store. They say to leave at least 48 hours for luggage to arrive, but I think 24+ hours is enough if you are shipping within the region (for example: Hiroshima to Onomichi). If you are shipping from a hotel, they will help you fill out the form, you just need to give them the address, contact number and delivery date desired. 

If you are sending from a convenience store, then you'll need to go and request a haitatsu (配達) form - the blank one below is called a yu-pa-ku. 

I've filled in the below form with the address of Suminoe Ryokan on Ikuchijima. You start with the zip-code, then the address, then the name of the hotel and finally the phone number. Do that for the destination as well as the original location. The attendant will help you fill in the arrival date, size of luggage, arrival time, etc.

 It's very reasonable to ship luggage, for a 30 liter backpack I've paid about 1,300-2,000 JPY. So worth it to not have to worry about carrying everything!

BeHere's Winter-Hokkaido Guide

This past February BeHere made our second journey to Japan's northern most land of Hokkaido. The first trip was in January of 2016 to go skiing in Niseko. I’d heard that it had some of the best powder in the world and as a newbie, I wanted something really soft to fall into. The ski did not disappoint and I loved every second of pizza’ing my way down the mountain overlooking Hokkaido’s version of Mt Fuji, Mt Yotei. I highly recommend individuals interested in skiing make a trip to Niseko. And since you've come all the way North, there are a few other destinations you should visit.

This second trip focused on the other amazing winter attractions Hokkaido has to offer. I built my itinerary around the annual Snow Festival in Sapporo and also visited Otaru, Yoichi, Abashiri, and Utoro along the way. Again. I loved every second of winter in Hokkaido. It was like living in a snow globe. At the end of this post you'll find our Google Map with all the restaurants, attractions and cafes we loved in Hokkaido.

Sapporo

First stop on the adventure was Sapporo. It’s a very modern and vibrant city, the largest in Hokkaido. In the summer I can imagine it full of beer gardens and more manageable summer temperatures. But right now it’s snowy and icy. There are convenient sand stations on most corners and I was amazed to see concerned citizens sprinkling the sand on icy patches on their way to and fro.

The main draw to Sapporo had been the annual snow festival which takes over Odori Park for two weeks in February. During the day you can tour the ice sculptures and watch performances. You’ll also find school children running around chatting with visitors and practicing their conversation skills. They’ll even teach you a thing or two about Hokkaido’s best products. Absolute delights!

At night the festival is all lights and sound. The ice sculptures turn into backdrops for projections, stages open for concerts, the beer and fish are abundant and the ski jump is active. It’s almost a completely different event from the daytime and I would recommend experiencing the festival at both times.

Outside of the ice festival some of my other stops in Sapporo were:

• For a history lesson: Sapporo Beer Museum
• For the best soup curry: Curry Samurai
• For a good coffee: Mingus Coffee

Scenic train from Sapporo to Otaru.

Yoichi

Next stop was Yoichi to visit the Nikka Whiskey Distillery. We took the scenic train from Sapporo to Otaru and then a bus to Yoichi (about one hour in total). From the train station it’s a five minute walk to the distillery. The distillery offers tours in Japanese that will introduce you to the facility and the whiskey making process, ending with a complimentary whiskey tasting! The facility has English translations under the plaques around the distillery, so if you don't speak Japanese, you can tour the facility independently. Whiskey is not brewed during the winter because of the cold temperatures, but will restart again in the Spring. Even still, the distillery was a gorgeous site, covered in a blanket of fresh white snow. Beyond the distillery there isn't much to do in Yoichi, so after I finished the tour I took the bus back to Otaru. If you are interestedIf in learning more about the founder of Nikka and his Scottish wife, watch Massan, a made for TV series about the pair! 

 

Otaru

Otaru is absolutely charming and a haven for seafood lovers. Coinciding with the Sapporo Snow Festival, Otaru holds its annual lantern festival where it places tea lights in snow sculptures along the canal and walking paths in the city. After touring around the canals and lantern lit walkways we made my way to Sushi Kodai for a three and a half hour sushi feast. Normally a standing sushi bar wouldn't entertain customers for so long, but the chef at Sushi Kodai makes it feel more like a family reunion and encourages interaction between the 11 or so diners at the bar. The tight quarters create a warm and friendly environment and I’ve never had so much conversation across sashimi before. 

Otaru is full of sushi restaurants, so if you cannot get into Kodai, you can try Isezushi or Masazushi.

The last train returns to Sapporo from Otaru at 11:10 PM. You just have to make sure you've finished your Nihonshu by then!

The entrance to Sushi Kodai down a lantern lit alley in Otaru.

Abashiri

From Sapporo we headed way, far north to Abashiri on the Ohotsuk sea. Abashiri is home to many ancient ruins from the Ainu culture - one of Japan’s native cultures - as well as a creepy prison museum, so much delicious crab and blue beer. The real attraction that brought us this far north was the possibility of seeing ryuhyo - drift ice.  The cold winds from Siberia make it possible for drift ice to form in Abashiri and all along the Ohotsuk sea off the northern coast. 

There is a bit too much to see in just one day, so if you can spread out your travels to include at least a day and a half in Abashiri it would be better. There is the drift ice cruise on the Aurora, the Museum of the Northern Peoples, the Ryuhyo Museum and the Abashiri Prison Museum. You could easily spend a couple multiple hours wandering around the massive prison museum - and since it closes at sundown you need to get there with plenty of time before that. The bus system is well organized, and amazingly on time even with all the snow. They run two buses an hour between all the major tourist destinations. A day pass will cost you 800 Yen. 

Utoro

From Abashiri it's about two hours to Utoro, a destination within Shiretoko National Park. Shiretoko is a nature lover's paradise, from the bus we saw wild foxes running along the ice and huge eagles nestled out in the waters. There are tour companies in Utoro that bring you out onto the drift ice for a walk and a swim, we worked with Gojiraiwa! It was mind blowing. The fact that technology has created a fabric that keeps us warm and dry and able to get into arctic waters without contracting hypothermia is incredible.  

The Aurora Ice breaker ship in Abashiri and walking on the drift ice in Utoro deserve their own article, stay tuned for more details in the next blog post! 

Reflections

What struck me most this trip, was the amount of external influence I saw in the buildings, industry and historical figures. In Hokkaido industries were both foreign and familiar all at once. There was dairy farming, beer brewing, a prison system and while it was an idea you would normally associate with Europe or America it had it's own Japanese twist. At times I would look around and wonder if may we had wandered our way to Amsterdam or Berlin by accident. Just because the surroundings were so reminiscent of those destinations with the brick building, roofs and canals. Hokkaido was largely populated during the Meiji Era when Japan was opening itself up to ideas from the Western world. It set up commissions with foreigners to help consult on the industrialization of the area and it shows. But not in a, "Japan lost it's culture" way, but more in a appreciation for their ability to accept new ideas, refine those ideas and incorporate them into their lifestyle. 

It was hard to leave at the end of the week. But the saving grace was a last minute stop into New Chitose Airport's ONSEN! The onsen is open 22 hours a day, from 10am to 8am. And you can stay there overnight if you have an early morning departure.

There is so much to see in Hokkaido and we cannot wait to get back there. Planning a trip for this summer that will take us to the Sapporo International Art Festival, Biei, Wakkanai and Shiretoko! 

Highlights Map

If you are planning an adventure up to Hokkaido here is a handy Google map with some of my favorite destinations from the trip! 

Hiking the Kumano Kodo

Let’s say you only have five days in Japan and you want to do something that will give you a holistic picture of the many rich traditions this country is founded on—more than visiting Tokyo, Kyoto or Osaka—I would recommend doing the Kumano Kodo.

The Kumano Kodo is a series of trails linking the three grand shrines of Hanto Peninsula: Kumano Hongū Taisha (熊野本宮大社), Kumano Nachi Taisha (熊野那智大社) and Kumano Hayatama Taisha (熊野速玉大社). Some of the shrines have been around since the 9th Century, and are still in good enough condition for UNESCO to grant them the title of World Heritage Site (see more about the criteria). The trails are mostly wooded, with the occasional highway walk. The towns along the way are small, a world apart from the chaotic heaps of Tokyo. And the history and spirituality are rich. Japan’s first religion was Shinto, a form of nature worship, many of the waterfalls, trees and rivers you encounter along the way were once revered as gods with living spirits. Even now, you still feel the reverence for nature as you walk along the trails.

You can walk for as short as one to two days or as long as 10-12. In October, I took a group of three down to Wakayama Ken and we spent 4 days working our way on foot, by bus and a boat from Kii-Tanabe to Kii-Katsuura. To date, it is one of my favorite experiences in all of Japan.

Day 1 - Tokyo to Kii-Tanabe

• Train from Tokyo to Kii-Tanabe, about 5.5 hours on trains. In Osaka you'll transfer to the Kuroshio line towards Shirahama.
• Stay in Tanabe with some great Airbnb hosts and bathe at the local onsen, 弁慶のさと湯, before bed. 

Day 2 - Kii-Tanabe to Chikatsuyuoji

• Wake up early and grab snacks for the trail before getting the bus from the station to Takijiri.
• Once you get off the bus at Takijiri stop into the Kumano Visitor Center and pick up any additional maps, stamp books, and snacks you want for the trail.
• Stay at Minshuku Chikatsuyu.
  • We didn't leave enough daylight to make it to our accommodations. So ended up having to call them and they were able to pick us up in their car and bring us back, thank you so much!  

Day 3 - Chikatsuyuoji to Yunomine Onsen via Hongu Taisha

• Take the bus to Hosshinmon and hike to Hongu Taisha from there. Along this route, you'll be able to see down onto the large torii marking Hongu Taisha.
• From Hongu Taisha walk to Yunomine Onsen.
• Yunomine Onsen has a Unesco World Heritage Site onsen, Tsuboyu. Get your entrance ticket to Tsuboyu across from the public bath in town. They let two people in at a time for 30 minute sessions. Bring your own towel and no soap!
• Stay at Minshuku Yunotaniso.  

Day 4 - Yunomine Onsen to Kii-Katsuura

• Take the bus from Yunomine Onsen to Kumano Gawa Village.
• From Kumano Gawa Village float down the Kumano Gawa toward Shingu.
• Once in Shingu visit the second of the three grand shrines, Hayatama Taisha.
• Take the train to Kii-Katsuura - beautiful fishing village. 
• Stay at Nakanoshima - my absolute favorite ryokan to date.

Day 5 - Kii-Katsuura to Tokyo

• Wake up and take the bus leaving from the train station to Nachi Taisha. You can get off a few stops ahead and walk up the beautiful stone path through the trees.
• There are a few different places to visit, the main shrine, the pagoda and the waterfall. All are worth it. Hike back down to the bus, to Kii-Katsuura.
• Highly recommend Amai Cafe for a spot of lunch or coffee before the train.
• Another 5+ hours of trains to get back to Tokyo. The Kuroshio line hugs the coast most of the way to Osaka and is a truly beautiful and scenic ride.

I’ll be taking a very small group to hike the Kumano, March 26th - 30th (slightly different itinerary than the above). Message me for me details - as of now we have two spots left!

Or you can book accommodations through:

• Kumano Travel
• Booking.com (many of the inn's from Kumano Travel have accounts there as well!)
• Calling the inn's directly (only a good option if you speak Japanese)

Gifts I am Excited to Give this Holiday!

Sharing my 2016, Japan-inspired, gift guide.

I had a lot of fun buying presents this year, it was actually a little dangerous...

Monday with a Monk

There is a delightful little temple about one hour east of Tokyo towards Chiba.

It feels more like visiting the house of your aunt/uncle, than a holy place. But in many ways, that sense of familiarity and approachability make it all the more sacred.

A day here will leave you feeling joyful and at peace with the world. 

The temple is run by a monk named Bidou San. He has been the head monk since he was in his 20’s (over 20 years now). He took the position young, as it was passed down from his grandfather, to his father, to him. 

Bidou San in his working uniform. Smiling, even in the rain.

In Bidou San’s sect of buddhism - Nicihren Shu - monks are allowed to marry, eat meat and fish, drink alcohol, basically, whatever they please. They live a modern life, with a strong sense of spirituality blended in.

When you visit Bidou San at his temple, he’ll take you on a tour of the grounds (outside and inside) and explain the meaning behind the symbols/books/rituals around the temple grounds. 

Bidou San explaining that this book keeps track of the days that members of the temple passed away. Each morning he says a prayer to remember the individuals lost on that day.

The main alter.

I loved learning about why their are dragons painted on the ceiling above alters - one as a symbol of transporting the souls from this world to the next and the other as a bringer of water, to put out fire - historically fire was one of the temple’s biggest dangers.

Dragons above the alter.

I’ve been to so many temples (definitely over 100 now since living in Japan). But this was the first time I was able to get so close to all the special objects and to receive such in-depth explanations of their inclusion and meaning on the altars.

After touring the grounds we went for a calligraphy lesson. Calligraphy is also an act of meditation and requires the same kind of purifications that you would go through when going into the main temple. The room, body and heart are all cleansed before you pick up your brush.

Depending on time and weather after you finish calligraphy, you may have the treat of attending a tea ceremony hosted by Bidou San’s lovely wife. They’ll guide you through proper ways to handle the cup and drink the tea. It is truly a moment to relax, slow down, and just enjoy one another’s company. It was during the tea ceremony that I got to learn more about Bidou San and his family, and what their lives look like day to day.  

An absolute treat.

An intimate glance into a religious man’s life in japan. Highly recommend.

Logistics

The temple

Getting there - take the train to Ichikawa-ono Station. It's about a 4 minute walk up the hill from there.

Booking a tour - You can book through Tabica.

Easy Day Hike from Tokyo

Takao San is a 599m high mountain, 50mins from Shinjuku, Tokyo by express train.

It’s height is humble in comparison to neighboring mountains like Fuji-san. But the draw to it is large.

On New Year’s Eve you’ll find many devoted, hiking the mountain to be at the summit for sunrise.

In summer, you’ll find hoards of friends, cheers'ing in the beer garden (which is nomihodai and tabehodai - all you can eat and drink).

And for those not interested in hiking, but still interested in a good view, the summit is easily accessible by lift or cable car. 

In general, Takao, with it's crisp mountain air, is just a welcome respite from the concrete induced heat of Tokyo. 

While weekdays are less crowded than weekends, you can still expect to have companions on the trails. Takao is a really popular spot for day trips from schools, for seniors to get in their exercise and for trail runners. 

Tip: Take the Keio Special Express that runs from Shinjuku to Takaosanguchi. Since Shinjuku is the first stop, you may even be able to get a seat. The Special Express will have you at the trailhead in less than 50 minutes (leaves from platform 3).

There are many different trails to climb, all varying lengths and difficulties. Here is a site with a good breakdown of the different paths and lengths.

We took Trail 6 up the mountainside. It is the longest, but also a super gradual slope that follows the river bed - after strong rains part of the trail turns into a stream and you can hop from rock to rock, or hike straight up through the stream. 

Tip: Wear waterproof shoes.

The water was crystal clear and there is actually a spring that you can drink water coming straight out of the mountain side. It was delicious!

At the summit there are food and drink stalls, but we brought our own picnic. And found a quiet spot to sit down and eat.

There is a great viewing platform on the summit - that on clear days you could see as far as Shinjuku - or even Mt Fuji! It was way too foggy to see anything for us, but we could imagine it’d be nice.

On the way down we took the Inariyama Trail. It’s the second longest. It was super slick after the rain - with lots of mud. This path is a bit steeper and full of stairs. The mud, stairs combo made the descent a little treacherous, may have been helpful to have some walking poles on the way down!

I’d be interested in trying some other trails to see if they are more scenic or enjoyable for the descent. Or I’d just go back down the same trail we came up (#6) because it was so beautiful.

After you get down from the mountainside, you could checkout the newly built onsen, or soak your feet in the ashinoyu - both by the station.

Definitely make sure to clean your boots before you board the train. They have the sweetest little station complete with bucket and scrub brushes right out front! #onlyinJapan

If you are a visitor, and have come to Japan after the Fuji climbing season is over - Takao is a great alternative. If you want to make it extra special, you could stay in accommodations close by and summit at sunrise. The mountain is open to hikers as long as they bring their own light.

Happy trails.

Summiting Mt Fuji for Sunrise

There are more beautiful mountains in Japan to climb, that’s for sure. But Fuji is worth doing once in your life. There is nothing like the view from the summit - or soaking in an onsen overlooking the iconic mountain afterwards.

Hikers.Before, During and After.

Before.

7th Station.

Summit.

Descent.

My companions on this Fuji Hike were Angelica, Jesse and Yesenia. All first timers, all active in their own way - surf, cycle, yoga. They braved altitude sickness, sleeping very close to strangers and sore knees to summit. They all agreed that the payoff at the top was worth it, but that there were ways to make the experience better. Here is a bit about what we learned in prep for your own Fuji climb. 

The Climb

Hand-drawn itinerary. 

We left Tokyo at 7:45am from the Shinjuku Highway Bus Terminal. Were at the 5th Station by 10am and on the trail by 11am. We worked our way up at a fairly quick pace, stopping at stations along the way for water, treats (Snickers!) and photo opportunities.

 We arrived at our accommodation, Goraikoukan, for the evening by 3:30pm. After lounging around on the tatamis and stretching, we ate dinner (5:30pm) and climbed into our bunks. The cabins are crowded, everyone said you are sleeping like sardines, and they weren’t kidding. You are lying arm to arm -  8 people to one bunk section. It was a little overwhelming. And the cabin cleanliness was questionable. I highly recommend bringing your own sheet, or maybe a micro sleeping bag to put a little distance between you and their linens. Lights out in the cabin was 9pm and it was mostly quiet till around 2am when everyone started getting up in prep for sunrise.

Tip: Bring a clean sheet, eye mask and earplugs. Will contribute greatly to getting good rest. 

Bunks are efficient with space. You share blankets with individuals next to you, and hang your hiking gear on hooks above the bed.

The Summit

Our party woke up at 3am, drank hot tea, ate toast with jam and then headed on our way up for the final ascent. 

Headlamps and hikers.

You can see all the headlamps working their way up the mountain side. It was relatively less crowded than on  a weekend, but we still waited in line to get to the summit.  The climbing season for Fuji is short, the Yoshida trail is only open from  July 1  - Sept 10th. Weekdays are less crowded than weekends. If you can manage to go on a weekday,

Tip: Time your climb for after school is back in session to avoid the bulk of the crowds. 

3776m above sea level. 5:20am. Sunrise over Yamanashi Prefecture. Perfection.

Being above the clouds and watching the sun peek out over the horizon is unforgettable. It was very cold and windy at the top of the mountain, so it was good to have gloves, hat, scarf and extra jacket.

Tip: Bring a thermos and fill it with hot tea or coffee, you’ll appreciate a nice warm drink while you stand still, and wait for the sun. 

The Descent

Most previous hikers emphasized that going down Fuji was much harder than going up. It's true. The descent, on switchbacks, with loose gravel is harrowing for the knees. Having hiking boots with good grip and hiking poles to stabilize you as you work your way down was crucial. We made our way down the mountain in 2.5 hrs.

Tip: Wear a face mask on the descent to keep all the dust out of your mouth and nose!

2.5hrs down. Switchbacks and loose soil.

Post Climb Onsen

Almost exactly 24hrs after leaving Tokyo we were back in the Fuji 5th Station Parking lot. We had a cup of coffee at one of the Station cafes and then took a bus to Kawaguchiko Station (about 30mins). At Kawaguchiko Station we caught a local bus to Yurari Onsen (15 mins). For 1300 JPY you get access to amazing baths and on clear days, a beautiful view of Fuji. A post hike bath was exactly what we needed to refresh ourselves and feel comfortable getting on the train/bus back to Tokyo.

Tip: Pack sandals and a clean pair of clothes for after the baths.

Clean. Happy. Content. Hikers, post bath.

Packing List

Hiking boots
Hiking poles (so helpful on the walk down)
Warm wool socks
Tshirt
Thermals (top and bottom)
Insulated layer
Water proof layer
Hat
Sunglasses
Beanie, Gloves, Scarf (summit is CHILLY!)
Sunscreen
Change of clothes for after onsen
Sandals
Head lamp
Water bottle
Sheet or sleeping bag (for hut - cleanliness is questionable)
Eye mask
Ear plugs
Face masks/bandana to cover nose and mask (keep the dust/soot - out of your nose/mouth)

Logistics

Bus tickets

Accommodations

Approximate budget - 22,000 JPY

Accommodations - 8500 JPY

Transportation - 7000 JPY

Hiking Poles - 2800 JPY

Incidentals  - 2400 JPY

Onsen - 1300 JPY