Kyoto Mountain

I've been in Kyoto for three days now (It weirdly feels like 4), and I love it. Whereas Tokyo felt like Seattle with a better metro, Kyoto feels like a much flatter version of Albuquerque. With a bike, you can be anywhere in the city in forty minutes, which is a massive improvement on Tokyo's easy to use, but not very scenic subway system. Being outside constantly improves my mood, though I think I'm catching a cold. Kyoto is literally riddled with temples and shrines: some 3,000 dot the city. Buddhism and Shintoism coexist side by side so easily here it's often hard to see where one begins and the other ends. I, the history and comparative religion major, regularly confuse the two, though I'm getting better at it. 

Rasmus and I spent the day before yesterday and today hanging out and seeing the sights. We've become fast friends, and I miss him already. He's headed to Osaka, and then to China. I probably won't see him again for some time, if ever. Hostel friendships are brief but meaningful exchanges. Traveling alone is perhaps one of the most lonely things I've done, but also one of the most rewarding. I have made more new friends in the past ten days than I have in the last six months. And nearly all of them are from other places.

Today I spent most of the day with Ben, an Australian from Sydney. We made the decision last night to get out to rural Japan and see what life is like outside the city. Our quest led us via bus and then train to the town of Kibune, located in the mountains north of Kyoto. The town maybe housed a hundred and fifty people, though it seemed like a popular hiking destination. Many Japanese were there, and very few westerners. The hiking trail we took led up the mountain, over the peak where a small shrine was dedicated to the mountain god, over the edge and down three to five hundred meters of steep steps to a huge temple nestled in the trees.

The trees in Japan are similar to Aspen trees in the states, though much larger. Massive, thick cedars tower over us, limbs only on the very tops, as every time a tree falls down, it knocks off the limbs of its neighbor. Some ancient trees are as wide as I am tall, and have ropes tied around them - a Shinto tradition that supposedly keeps away evil spirits. Every once in a while we'll encounter a grove of bamboo almost too thick to see through. I feel as though I am living my imagination fantasyland of Japan.

The temple is beautiful, and we watch as a family inters the ashes of a family member there. The monk's chanting is fast and loud and mournful. I look through the haze of incense and dark lighting at the altar, wondering if this branch of Buddhism believes in a Hell. The dominant branch in Japan is "Pure Land" Buddhists, which in my opinion are very similar to the Abrahamic traditions. They don't rhyme, but the meter is the same.

After the long hike down, Ben and I soak in an Onsen, a traditional Japanese hot spring bath. It has been a long, but productive day. Ben and I are quiet, and as I watch the sun sink below the mountains, I think - alone in my thoughts for the first time in a few days. Japan has been a whirlwind, both exhausting and massively rewarding. I have grown so much in so short a time. I can't imagine what I'll be in five months.

-Doug