We met Sawako's mother two years ago when she traveled to Baltimore to see her daughter in her home and to meet her friends. At the time she told us how good she felt that Sawako was well taken care of. Now we are the ones being well taken care of, and it was such a pleasure to see Minato-san once again in her home territory. She and Sawako had debated what would be the most fitting gift for her friends visiting from Baltimore. Well, Minato-san's choice of a lunch in a Buddhist temple in the mountain-top town of Koyasan was heaven-sent.
Our daytrip began as we arranged to meet Minato-san, who lives in Nagoya, at the Namba subway station in Osaka at the near peak of the choreography of rush hour -- I keep fearing that one day we will witness a humongous crash of bodies but it never seems to happen as hundreds of people skillfully avoid any contact whatsoever. While Ron and Sawako went in search of a bathroom, I stayed behind, rehearsing the phrase "Matta aete ureshii desu," ("I am glad to see you again") in my mind. And then there was Minato-san coming up the escalator. After a very un-Japanese hug I managed to blurt out my little greeting to her great delight, expressed in a deluge of incomprehensible Japanese. And then, as Sawako and Ron reappeared, she tentatively said, "I am glad to see you" in English. We laughted as we realized that we had been practicing the same expression in anticipation of our seeing one another again.
We thought our trip a few days ago to the Kii Hantoo peninsula had been the most gorgeous scenery we had seen thus far, but this trip seemed even more spectacular as we climbed even higher mountains by train to Gokurakubashi, literally "bridge to heaven," to reach the village of Koyasan by a tram that took us even higher up the mnountain. Koyasan is a Unesco World Heritage site, home to many temples, Koyasan university, and a huge cemetery that is the burial place of shoguns and emperors. The higher our little commuter train went, the slower its speed, the greater the silence, punctuated by the screeching of the rails that resembled some ancient flute greeting us into this lofty atmosphere.
Our goal was lunch at Sojiin temple, renowned as a place of retreat and meditation but also for its vegetarian cuisine, known as shoujin-ryori. Ron was truly in vegan heaven! It was clear the temple was quite prosperous as we were ushered in to a waiting room furnished with wooden chairs inlaid with mother of pearl. Not the ascetic buddhist ambience we had expected. After a short wait we made our way in our stocking feet and slippers to our tatami dining room, set for four with two long tables facing one another and short-legged chairs, another answer to Ron's prayers not to be asked to sit cross-legged on the floor. The meal was not just a feast for the palate but also for the eyes, as some of our photographs attest. We realized quite a while ago that we definitely lack the visual and oral pixels to appreciate this rich culture fully, but we are doing our best to take it all in.
After our sumptuous lunch served by one of the monks, we toured the rooms and gardens of the monastery. We seemed to be the only ones there, so it was quite peaceful and we delighted as we meandered down corridors that revealed vistas through shoji screens into interior ponds and a garden that was layered in corrugated gray gravel, the greens and reds of the trees, and the silvery ripples of a pond.
We then headed down the main street of the town and found ourselves at the Koyasan cemetery, which has monuments dating back more than 1200 years and is still in use today, even by corporations touting their wares in burial plots that tout their claim to fame, be it electronics, coffee-making or rocket engineering. As we stopped to examine one particular burial plot belonging to Ishida Mitsurari, a skilled administrator for the 16th century shogun Toyotomi, Sawako and Minato-san stopped to chat to a lady who was emerging from the complex who revealed that she was a descendant of Ishida. It took us at least one hour to walk along the cedar-lined path and the graves extended as far as we could see on either side and up the hillside.
It was chilly up in the mountain, but our hearts were warm with gratitude for this special experience, and for being in the company of two gracious ladies, Sawako and Minato-san.
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