Core Japan experiences: 1st week

A week outside the city, took too long to write this, so its really two blog entires in one... sorry for the mega size. I hope its still enjoyable to read...

Mt. Fuji:

Met a very nice French guy named Karim. We went together in town, exchanged japanese words we had learned and travelled together to mount Fuji. I rode on a very beautiful old pirate ship on a still lake past temples and then spent the night in an authentically beautiful hostel in my own japanese style room. Paper sliding walls, hot spring baths, slippers at the entry, floor rattan mats, you know, proper. A cable car ride up the mountain side culminated in the pinnacle of all Japanese symbols with a crystal clear view of mount Fuji its self. A sight to behold.

the Bath obsession:

The Japanese have an obsession with baths, and every place has [public] luxurious tubs. The idea is you remove all your cloths, sit on a small stool and cover your body with foamy soap suds. With a bucket you splash it off, then you grimace as you enter the over 40 degree hot waters. If you are lucky, the water has been pumped up from one of the thousands of hot spring natural volcanic waters that seem to exist all over the nation. Hot spring baths are such a national obsession [from times past and forth] that even the monkeys are hooked. Little wild snow monkeys habitate in the mountains to the north; bathing with and like humans, I just had to see this!

Nagano and the Snow monkeys:

So, instead of getting closer to mt fuji and climbing it, I went backwards and then up via the high speed train network north into the Mountain and the township of Nagano. The ride to Nagano did not show me that much in terms of views, just tunnels, concrete, hills with concrete, and rivers with concrete, more tunnels, cables, and the odd japanese style house between the spaghetti wires.

Nagano had no cheap hostels available, so I checked into the cheapest hotel I could find [about 30 euros for a single room]. The people at this humble hotel [150 year old building] were extraordinarily sweet and treated me like a dear friend, or a worthy king! He insisted on carrying my bags, fed me tea in my room, and gave me slippers and a key to the private bath... he was terribly sweet and told me all about the town and what there was to do. When I did leave their house the next day, his wife and him thanked me profusely while bowing completely from the waist to their toes, it felt very nice - but also a bit odd, as it would. The nicest place I have stayed [for cash] my entire trip!

In the morning I went to see Nagano's temple, a very beautiful place with even more beautiful hidden streets, all very old, traditional with a startling attention for detail and preservation. Everything looked as if it was built yesterday, not a spark of dust, nor a chip of paint to unsettle the image. It was snowing. And cold, I wear mittens. Ivory black, cedar brown, shadow maroon, tempest reds, dragon, drum, tiger, bell, sweeping monk and praying swan.

After the temple I head out to the monkeys, I just missed my bus - which sucked cause I had to wait nearly two hours for the next one, and then it was a further 40 min walk from the 40 min bus ride to the place where the monkeys live... so by the time I got there, I only had about 1 hour to spend with them - but it was o so wonderful.

They chase each other and play, they stand together: husband and wife hold hands while their child roams around their shoulders. They look you in the eye and you bear witness to an equal soul. Wisdom exudes, poured effortlessly from their eyes. They groom another. They look adorable in the hot water, wading, walking, pushing waves slowly in a sway, relaxing like humans would, only with pink faces and white fur on their backs and little cute bums with two white twirls.

One monkey comes and sits next to me and looks me deep, he takes a liking - hopes for food, he is young. His father sits in front of me in a calm serene pose just taking in the mood, another monkey is rubbing seeds on the ground to open their shells.

From beyond the pool another monkey runs to me, and then walks slowly behind, I'm kneeling in front of a rock wall, he climbs up it, then crouches, makes a little squeak and places his hands on my back. He moves his hands around trying to get me to sway, so I comply; this amuses him. He gives me a little massage, a playful push, it feels so cute to have his hands on my back. Or maybe he urges me to leave... its ambiguoes.

There is a semi-sleeping man near a fire pit with an older monkey, his best friend perhaps, they seem to know each other very well, monkey and man. They sit and watch everyone from their eternal day dream. Flames lick the snowflakes from the air. The man wakes properly from his thick haze and throws another book into the fire, you can tell he has been sitting here for days upon weeks of months beyond years. Always sitting, like the monkeys, sitting to do nothing so long that one no longer considers that one does nothing no more or even that there is something more than the nothing to be done before.

Monkeys here do this best, they are the masters here of the nothing, and yet within their eyes you see a long life filled with a multitude of experience. A life of countless stories of stories to be unfold. The massaging monkey turns from his mantric cute rubbing and sits beside ms, I try and touch his back to groom him in return - but this startles him and he scurries off instead.

Within a moment all the monkeys were moving; one of the more wise elderly ones decided it was time to leave. The bathing complete, they scramble down the gorge. Between the earth pits of smoking sulfur to the other side of the glen. Along all the rocks, between many trees, as far as the gap of the mountain pass permits, monkey-forms are moving between rock and pine to den.

They have all left now, so I consider the time and my long return journey and run the 40 min return walk in 20 to catch my bus. From the station, another train and downwards to Matsumoto where a 5/600 year old castle still stands.

The ride down was slow, and showed me more of what the area looked like. Over populated valleys between stern tall dead-grey-white mountains on all sides, rough mountains of sharp jagged blades that erupted in combat millennias ago. not a patch of soil looked new, everything looked over used, over used, over used, over, over. A use by civilization beyond time. The earth a poor brown, the mountains full of concrete wherever man can reach, wire towers, pipes up the banks, every river bathed in concrete, an unending sprawl of maximum.

Matsumoto:

I arrived late in Matsumoto and stayed in the least interesting hostel of all until now; felt like a school gym room, and I was treated like I was 16 again. The most interesting thing about it was the fact that I had access to a public bath house where locals dwelled.

The castle was beautiful, from a time when bow and musket shared the war field, 6 floors hidden in 5, a water moat around its function, and a film crew who recruited me to act for an internet video tape slogan.

There were many ski fields here, but I figured I was on a budget and not good enough at skiing to indulge. Then I discovered that the alpine park was closed and only opens in april; which was a big shame as I was hoping to do some nature hikes in here while in Japan: in one of the last and only small naturally protected areas left in the country...

So instead I crossed through the mountain-park by bus to Takayama and had a view from the window of what I was not seeing. Mountains of snow, yet more snow, pines, and many-many dams: one every few kilometers is what one can behold. Yet more electrical towers every few seconds. More concrete paved into the hill sides. Non native pines as far as the eye could see. Carved sides in colors in the blues of grey and white. The odd ski lift.

A change of bus, no food to be had but hard sugar, again. Quite a shift to go from nearly no sugar; There is often no choice.

Takayama:

Takayama was a beautiful cute little town, with low lying old buildings. My hostel was fabulous in a very traditional style with a temple surrounded by trees and lifted floors. Here I met Paul, an Irish man of 28. I ate wonderful tempura at night [including tempura ice-cream!] , and gorgeous tofu set meals at lunch. My body was refueled once more. We visited a park, and an old court-government house and here I learned yet more of the social systems that have existed in the past, the classicism, taxation system, torturing, women and maids at the bottom of social rank, and the use of floor patterns [or the lack of Tatami at all] to determine where you are permitted.

A love for Sake:

Paul and I discovered Sake in Takayama. We went Sake tasting in local breweries. Now I never like Sake before Japan, so I was hesitant to give it a go, but I must say, the Sake here is amazing... its is so cheap, and there are so many kinds you can try... from smooth silk, to mild bites, to ones that taste like milk of magnesium [also known as milk of amnesia]... we tried 7 different sake's, and ended up buying the most expensive one they had! Which, for all intents and purposes: was really-really cheap: 3,000 yen for a full bottle; thats only ±18 Euros! The price of vodka in many places. Our beautiful sake was strong: 40% proof, but it went down like water and left a silken flavor in your mouth; delicious.

Psyche [the 1st interlude]:

Up until this point, I was having a hard time. But not in a very obvious way, more like inner turmoil brewing or a calm storm inside. My feeling of being saturated from NZ had returned, and I was feeling itchy feet to keep moving and an inability to remain put in any place for more than a day. Now that I look back, I think I was in a high speed from Tokyo, and so it took some time for me to slow down again to a new pace of life. Everything I did, I did in a fast pace, a quick snap, and then the next train, for the next place to check off on my list... I was lonely, and probably also stressed about uncertainties of my future.

Its odd being here, half way between NZ and Holland; it feels like the balancing point of a blade. the mid point between dream and mobility. Action and familiarity. Future and possibility.

When I probed myself to see why I was so anxious, so unable to relax and enjoy; for this was the main problem: a feeling of being bored, and wanting continual change, the only things I could unravel as possible causes were lingering two-choice-dilemas that I have been faced with before:

Where to live, what to do, fears of unbroken patterns returning, future choices, and importantly, issues related to love and romantic relationships.

Meeting Paul coincided though with a shift, I decided I wanted to meet people from Japan, and I was tired of moving through very cold climates of snow and head down to Nagoya where a Japanese girl I met in NZ lived. This was Saturday. Nagoya is a city of 20 million people. I really wanted to go out, I hadn't gone out once yet in my two weeks here. Paul is Irish, need I say more?