One farm, three temples and a shrine in Japan

{Brooke’s blog, with a little assist from dadd-o on our farm stay}

We are leaving our stay in a traditional Japanese farm house near Miyama with a beautiful old vegetarian Buddhist couple, Keisan and Setsusan. It was spartan and rustic (sleeping on floor mats and one shared outhouse made us appreciate what we left behind) but so wonderful to be out in the beautiful Japanese countryside.

  

The family lives on an organic garden, where they make their own tofu from their soy beans, their own ancient rice strain, Japanese vegetables, some fruits (we had homemade plum juice that was like eating pure magic), and chickens for their eggs (never meat).

We helped pound the rice into a gelatinous paste for mochi, brandy sliced and cooked in the kitchen with Setsusan, the kids fished in the creek for fish which brought a huge smile on Keisan every time they pulled up a squiggly fish, hiked through a beautiful cedar forest that reminded us of hiking through the redwoods on the California coast, went and prayed at their Buddhist temple (he asked that we all pray for world peace), rang the monastery bell, and smiled with our wonderful hosts the entire time.

Meals were a big event, where we would all arrange our many small plates and bowls in a very strict fashion (we kept worrying that we were placing our chopsticks on the wrong side), turned the zippers on the floor cushions away from the home’s altar, and waited patiently for the grandfather to lead the blessing and give thanks for the blessing of the meal.  The food was ‘interesting’ with many pickled vegetables, tofu and egg mixes, soups, and always rice.  Flavors and textures like we’ve never experienced, and some of them were good.

 

At night, they pulled out some traditional games where we blindfolded ourselves and with the help of a partner tried to reassemble a face on the board it was so funny to watch.

 

Japanese society is struggling with the consequences of an aging population (low birth rates mean the population is aging and shrinking) combined with urbanization (34 million people live in Tokyo!) which leaves empty homes in the countryside and dying villages (literally and figuratively) and homes with amazing history, land, and architecture that are nearly free because no one wants them.

We loved the countryside and the people (almost all elderly) in Japanese farm land.

Here we are fishing (for little tiny fishies):

   

On the way home we stopped at a few beautiful temples and shrines.

The first temple we went to was the Jingo-Ji Temple. Before we even got to the temple, we had to climb up so many steps. The first flight was easy and we ran up them but then we went up and up and up. It felt like we could’ve flown an airplane up there. PHEW!! A LOT OF WORK FOR TWO KIDS AND THREE GROWN UPS!! Then and only then we went into the temple. We had to take our shoes off to go into the temple. After we went inside, we went to the pond and saw a large amount of tadpoles.

At Ginkakuji Temple we saw a really small sand and clay replica of Mt. Fuji and the Silver Pagoda. We walked around a path through the garden and walked quite a bit. Really, we didn’t do much at that temple, but it was really beautiful, even in the rain.

Heian Shrine was also pretty awesome and really BIG. It is a Shinto shrine, not Buddhist like the other one. We got to walk in the gardens which were very pretty. My favorite part was when we got to buy some bread and feed the gigantic koi and cute, little turtles. Brayden and I said we could have stayed there for hours. We wanted the turtles to get all our food, because they were so slow and the koi kept stealing from the turtles. Sometimes we would even throw the bread onto their shells, but they didn’t notice. It was really funny.

Omri, our tour guide, told us a story about the ancient Japanese Shinto treasures. One of the treasures is the sword. This was the story: There once was a man who had eight daughters. Seven of the eight daughters were kidnapped by an eight-headed serpent. The old man asked the God, Susanoo to kill the serpent, so he could save his eighth daughter. Susanoo killed the beast by bringing him eight bottles of sake and putting them each behind eight gates. When the serpent stuck his head into the gate to drink the sake, Susanoo slammed the first gate on his head and chopped it off.  He saved the daughter and while he was fighting the beast, he discovered the sacred sword and returned it to the Shinto Sun Goddess.

I felt really happy when we were saying good-bye to the people we stayed with at the farmhouse, but I also felt a little sad, because we were leaving such nice people who were always smiling, telling stories and really full of happiness.  The temples and the shrine were so pretty, especially in the rain.  I really loved the Japanese gardens, they all made me feel so peaceful.