Lucky Day!

Well today is your lucky day, as well as ours. We got a late start; Kyoto seems to wear us out. We had a lazy morning where we lay around reading books and watching baseball. By the time we got out of the house it was already 1:00.

Our bicycle ride had a very inauspicious beginning. I, being the man, feel a need to lead the way constantly. Christina is more cautious. Leaving Nakaya-cho I bumped into her trying to get in front, but no one fell. Consequently, we were slowed down enough to meet a Jamaican-American, Stephen. He seems like a nice guy. We ended up speaking with him for nearly an hour as we rode through the streets to the Hankyu station. He came to Japan to teach English 6 years ago and has just finished writing a book about his experiences in Japan. The book is intended for mature audiences and contains many observations about Japanese culture and in the view of a Western black man. We discussed our impressions of japan so far and it was nice to see another foriegners perspective was similar to ours. He also told Christina about some free Japanese lang classes she could attend. Very nice to meet him.

Once we made it to the station we headed for a line, one we had not ridden yet. This line did not take us to Kobe, Osaka, or Kyoto, but up in the mountains, into Northern Nishimomiya. Our goal was to explore and to locate a hot springs/spa on the northern border of our region. We switched to the JR line in Takarazuka and then through a couple of tunnels until we reached our goal Takadao.

Takadao, we thought was a hot springs/park, but what it really is, is a collection of three traditional Japanese hotels. The cost of one night is about 150 to 200 bucks a night. In the first hotel, they had private baths in each of the rooms. The second hotel had a public bath for their guests to use. We didn’t go into the third hotel. The Mukogawa River, at Takadao is in a narrow gorge. There is a one-lane bridge that connects the two sides. A small town, 10 houses or so, is about a kilometer downstream of the hotels. On both sides of the gorge the mountains are covered with thick vegetation. Trees grow from the edge of the river all the way over the tops of the hills. The train station is in the opening of a tunnel. One side of the station is actually on the bridge over the river. We walked between the hotels and the town exploring both sides of the river. We may return for a stay in the hotel or for hiking a loop that begins in the town.

On our return, we stopped at Namaze. This is the lucky part of the story. Namaze is the town with the large golden Buddha, the largest Buddha in Nishinomiya. At the train station, the attendant showed us a map where the Buddha was located, but as we walked through town, neither of us felt like we were going the right way, but I insisted on continuing. Guys have a built in GPS, so even though I didn’t feel like we were going the right direction, something beckoned me on. Right before we turned around, I saw a grade school on the other side of a graveyard, I told Chrissy that we would walk around the block and return. As we got on the far side of the block a bell began to chime. A few steps further brought us in front of the temple gates. It was 6 o’clock.

We walked into the temple courtyard, past a small pond, to a dragonhead spitting water. As is the custom, I washed my hands with the water from the dragon and proceeded deeper into the temple courtyard. Through another gate, we came upon the woman ringing the bell with a log about 5 feet long. The log is suspended from the edge of the roof. She would swing it back and forth occasionally making contact with an old traditional copper bell about 4 feet tall. I waited for her to finish with the bell and then asked her, “Buddha?”

She nodded, crossed the small courtyard went up some steps and opened a rice-paper sliding door. She nodded to me again and disappeared. I followed her up the steps, taking my shoes off at the bottom, as she had done, and bent over in the doorway. I didn’t want to enter. Inside was the Buddha. I called to Christina; she was still in the first courtyard where the pond was. The temple looked like it was about to close, so we were going to leave. When she came up the steps, she didn’t know what to expect. She did not expect to see the Buddha. She came up beside me and we both gazed in at the temple and the Buddha. There was a statue on each side of the Buddha, to act as his servants. A pillow lay on a platform in front of the Buddha for praying. Incense stands, gold trees and ornately carved inlayed wood lay in front of the Buddha. It was a very opulent view. As we looked in, a man came up behind us in a t-shirt. He asked us where we were from in English. We spoke with him for quite a while.

He was the priest of the temple. His wife was ringing the bell; she does so every day at 5 a.m. and 6 p.m. in the summer and 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. in the winter. He was born in the temple and has lived there his whole life. He is 42 years old. He explained to us that the temple was built about 800 years ago. The windows and doors were all made of rice paper. He lived in the house on the temple grounds; it was in the first courtyard. The house also had rice paper windows and doors. He said it was very cold in the winter and very warm in the summer.

He walked us through the small graveyard. The first grave he showed us was of the founder of the temple. A grave lay on each side of the first. The one on the right was very new. He said it was his predecessor, his father. He slid a small stone back from the front of the obelisk and exposed the cremated remains and bones. He continued to walk us around the graveyard, to the backside of the temple. He explained that graves used to be for individual people, but in the last 30 years they had begun interring families in a single site. He explained that the large wooden placard on the grave contained the name of the dead and names of descendents. These were placed on the tombs for the bon or obon festival. They also refer to the cremation fire as Bon. Any liguists out there want to check and see if this is where we get our term "bonfire"?

As he walked us out toward the front gate, he invited us into the front of his house. As we were talking to him about his life in the temple we had asked him questions about the structure of his house. In the entryway, we were able to look up into the rafters of the house. His house was built about 150 years ago. Arched timbers 18 inches in diameter formed the bottom string of the rafter and wood posts and beams every 4 feet or so formed the structure of the roof from that point up. There was no insulation. In fact the peak of the roof had a louvered cap to expel heat in the summer. Light of the setting sun lit the attic for us to see.

So that was our lucky private tour of the temple with the largest golden Buddah in Nishinomiya.

Luckily, we had our camera today. Unfortunately, this is one of the last pictures we took, so we didn’t have any battery left for the temple.Not to worry. This temple is definitely a place I plan to return to. It is a long way from the bright lights and crowds of Namba and not nearly as significant as Kyoto, but it provides a nice taste of quiet small town Buddhism.