Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

Where was the path? I didn’t lose the path, did I? Tell me that I didn’t lose the path! Everything around me looked the same, pine trees, arrow straight in perfectly parallel lines and somewhere in this maze was the path. My hand throbbed and the air reeked of the liquid my mother used to clean the floors with. The wind rustled up the leaves and fallen pine needles around my feet while the sun blinded me as I tried to find my way back to the only thing that mattered: the path. However do I get myself in these situations when only a few hours ago I had the option of sleeping for another three hours or rising early, once again, not for a mountain this time –although that is what I’d eventually get—but to chase a waterfall?






On my first visit to Tenri a month ago I discovered the tourist office and the English maps they provided there. They did not provide English speakers but the maps were well displayed to avoid any misunderstood attempts at communication. It was here where I learned of the oldest road in Japan, shrines devoted to the God of a World War II battleship and a beautiful looking waterfall were some sort of ceremony is held every summer. I would walk that old road one day and visit the shrine another because today would become the great waterfall search of March 2007. This would not be dissimilar, you will find, to the great Internet Café search of February 2007. The map I had made it seem as though the waterfall was only a short walk away from the Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, oh how wrong it was, and once again I found myself walking down the long brick road towards the that huge, picturesque wooden church complex with the mountain backdrop. I was never really satisfied with the images I shot that day due to, you guessed it, the weather. Today I had bright sun and blue sky and the camera lapped up the scenery like a hungry shrine cat slurping down a bowl of milk or maybe cans of god offerings.



Something big was going to happen at the temple as the monks and students were setting up large steel structures that resembled stadium seating. I have seen photos of thousands of people sitting in seats just like this around town and I assume some sort of grand meeting was about to take place in the not too distant future. The city did seem to be overflowing with those people in the black shirts more then it usually was. I mean, these guys practically run the town. I’ve seen them cleaning windows, sweeping streets, signs for their meetings are everywhere, black shirts with their logos are sold in the tourist shops and you can’t turn a corner without running into one. Tenri is Tenrikyo! Walking up to the complex I now passed vendors selling shoes, good and little leather seats for those not fortunate enough to snag one of those steel deals that were currently being erected. Signs around the sing said something about there being a concert. I wonder if these guys could afford Elton John? Some research when I returned to the apartment filled me in on the happenings here.

Tenri is considered by followers of Tenrikyo as “Home of the Parent” as the headquarters here is mother ship, if you all, to all the smaller organizations around the world. All over the city you can find posters and signs that offer the greeting “Welcome Home”. The reason behind this is that it is believed that the Jiba of Tenrikyo’s main complex is where God the Parent resides and so followers will say that coming to Tenri is like returning to your parents and, higher still, the Parent of all of humankind. Services are held at the main sanctuary here on the 26th of every month. These meetings attract followers not just here in Japan but the world over. The services are called Kagura and are performed for the salvation of the entire universe. These services are to bring about spiritual renewal so that followers can obtain a joyous life. This place would be packed with the faithful in the next two days but for now only a few lingered around helping I the process of setting up for Kagura.


Inside the temple I was prohibited from taken photos after the one I managed to snap off before some angry looking guy in flowing black robes came up and told me to stop. I did not try to defy these wishes because inside the church was nothing but pillars and mats and none of those lavish alters you find in the Shinto shrines. Besides, I was looking for a waterfall.




The complex looked much more vibrant on this day with the array of flowers that had now been set up and cherry blossom trees. I left to return another day. Before I knew what all the seats were about and when whomever would fill them would arrive the temptation was there to linger about to see what all the hoopla would be about. If this ceremony was anything like those guys with the large flaming trees then it would be something to see. I wonder if these guys could afford to get Elton John to carry a large, flaming tree while singing Candle in the Wind. Now THAT would be something to see.


We are now in the Sakura season in Japan and if all goes according to design, and in this instance I really hope it does, I will be explaining more about this season with photo accompaniment from the Mecca of Japanese blossom viewing. The blossoms were in fine form as they lined the Tenri street behind the church complex. A carpet of pink was my sidewalk.


It is graduation time here in Japan. The school year is not at all like what I had been accustomed to back home. Here school begins in April and, thus, ends in March. Close to the Tenrikyo headquarters is Tenri University, founded in 1949. The university started as a religious institute in 1925 for, you guessed it, the Tenrikyo faith. In 1949 sights shifted to the modern university with your usual classes although there was still a strong influence of Tenrikyo wafting through the halls. In 1992 the university started a new Department of Japanese Studies which offers classes to students the world over interested in studying the culture and language of Japan. These might be worth looking into as, if they are not too costly, might be an excellent way to spending the summer as a student of cultural study. With the end of the year graduation ceremonies going on I walked by many girls dressed in beautiful kimonos and boys in spiffy suits.




I started the walk towards the waterfall not so discouraged that there were no English signs marking my way as I hoped there would be. The larger tourist attractions, even in the smaller areas of Japan, tend to have English, if only a small sampling, but was not the case here. The walk was pleasant as you passed many beautiful homes and farms sitting mountainside with lines cut in to the earth for the planted rice. Upon turning down one road I found another small roadside shrine, this one a line of stone Buddha’s. These are less popular then the wooden hut like shrines I find all over the place and, yes, there were cans off coffee out for these little ride side stoners.

I was starting to get really parched, my throat still tickling a bit from the sickness of last week. You can always find a vending machine in Japan and sure enough there was one near the stone statues. My thirst was mighty and only one man could quench it. The Bubble Man! And, oh my friends, not just any Bubble Man would do. This was the original, the one and only, back to wage war against his evil twin brother claiming to be him. Bubble Man 2, prepare to be bubbled. Bubble Man one went down cold filling me with grape goodness and a much needed jolt of caffeinated energy.






Passing by the homes and farms you soon find yourself on the oldest road in Japan deep within the cedar groves of Furu Forest. Here you will find the Isonokami Shrine. Strangely there was not a cat in site. Nope, no cats here. This would turn out to be the chicken shrine as a dozen or so hens and roosters where crowing and cawing and running about the place. These chickens would be perfectly cast the in the films Megan and I have envisioned for our future productions as these were rabid little bastards waiting to take a nip out of your leg. I was charged once by a rooster although he came no closer then a few feet away cawing and tossing up dirt. That guy would go down fighting if somebody tried to make a McNugget out of him. Not all the birds were allowed to roam free on the grounds of the shrine as some were cooped up in large cages strewn about the path. You think the birds on the ground were pissed off that’s nothing compared to the evil cluckers in the cages. I haven’t been able to dig up why there were so many chickens at this shrine. The Year of the Chicken is over with, fellas! Humm, actually, I’d rather been walking about chickens then pigs. Maybe there is some kind of religious significance although it is much more humorous to think that these chickens, like the cats, are dropped off by farmers who, for one reason or another, just have to unload poultry onto the ever accepting monks. Visiting here and not taking at least one shot of a chicken would be like going to Nara and not going snap happy on the deer. There was a cow statue in the middle of the site and, again, I can’t understand just why and next to it a chicken statue which made a lot more sense.









The Isonokami Shrinewas once a shrine of the Mononobe warriors who walked the earth prior to the ancestors of the Imperial family. This shrine is home to one of the national treasures of Japan. Housed within the shrine is the Nanatsuaya-no-Tachi sword, a weapon with three blades. The god of the shrine is embodied in within another sword, this one the Nanatsuaya-no-Tachi. Of course, you cannot see any of these famed blades as they are only viewed by the eyes of the monks. I am willing to bet that when nobody is looking one guy has to be raising up one of those holy swords and decapitating chickens just for the hell of it.




The road continues away from the shrine deeper into the forest. You walk by a set of stone steps that look to go nowhere and another one of those poem rocks. I am sure the writings are very touching and thought provoking. I really a need guide who knows the language for walks like this.


I soon came to a roadblock in the middle of the path. Now would you be doing this to such a tourist attraction? I would not be deterred by such warnings. Actually, I was sure the barricade was only for cars as fresh footprints continued forward so I sidestepped by the warning signs, looked to my right, read a sign and quickly stepped back. Wait a minute, did that read what I thought it did? “GUN HUNTING AREA”I slowly stepped back over the line mindful of flying bullets and reread the sign. My first read was erroneous. The sign actually said that there was no gun hunting allowed in this area whereas I believed it said that this was a hunting area. All I needed was some hunter thinking I was a deer. You want deer, buddy, go to Nara. They will come right up to you. Blast away! Now, seriously, don’t. The deer are sacred there and, besides, who would eat all those deer cookies. Oh, yeah, the toursists!




I had walked longer then I should according to my map and still no waterfall. The path turned upwards and so I found myself walking up my second mountain in two days. I didn’t want to walk up another mountain. I just wanted to see the base of a waterfall. This climb was not as easy as Minimashi. No flat trail. No stone lanterns to tell me where I was going. There was only a hard to follow path overgrowing with weeds and underbrush through a maze of newly planted pine trees. At the start of the path I had noticed a pile of logs and stumps. This area was being clear-cut and replanted which accounted for the perfection in the lines of trees. I assume the was made by the tree cutters. Lumberjacks? Can I call them lumberjacks? I hiked upward listening for anything that sounded like it might be a waterfall but only the sounds from a nearing baseball field carried upwards to me. I kept climbing and soon the path became even harder to follow. Was this even a path? Was I just creating my own path? I used the trees to hoist me upwards as they were so thin and evenly spaced it was almost as though they were planted for this purpose. Hunger was taking me over as I had not eaten anything as of yet thinking the falls to be that quick walk, a few photos and then it was off for a meal. This mapmaker really needs to learn about perimeter proximity as higher and higher still I climbed and not even a droplet of water around me. All I found were tree stumps, spider webs and mud. Lots of thick, gooey, shoe eating mud.



I had had enough. I was about to turn back when I noticed a clearing above me. What the hell? A few more feet couldn’t hurt. There I found a fallen tree (or, more probable, a tree placed there by the forest choppers for a resting spot) and from this spot you had this spectacular view of the city of Tenri below peaking out behind the cedars and pines. I stopped there and rested. I realized that I wouldn’t find the waterfall that day but the hike was not a total waste of time as the discovery of this peaceful clearing was a nice consolation prize. I sat listening to the calls of nature, eyes closed. The air was clean and the wind felt cool over a body that had worked up a sweat in its trek up here. The sun shot down and the birds chirped away. This was the stuff Thoreau wrote of. This was my Walden.

Ah, but man cannot remain on a Japanese mountain forever, especially a hungry man, and after some quiet meditation I started the trip back down. As Megs and Teo know, I can climb up things with the agility of lynx…the climbing down is where I run into some trouble. My mountain climbing with them once landed me terrified on the edge of a shale hill, jagged and murderous looking, with both Megs and her beloved trying to coax me from the spot where I was paralyzed with fear. They tell you to not look down but it is hard to not look down when you are supposed to be going down. Where the fuck are you supposed to look? Up? This climb today was not as treacherous as those jagged shale rocks and I had the trees to hold on to. Oh yes, those wonderful pines showering needles down onto me. They stuck to my face. They stuck to my hands. Worst yet, the fell into my coat and underneath my shirt where a collection of them clung to my back. Those buggers itched as they scratched into my skin and I had to pause every few steps to scoop out as many of them as I possible. If I could only find the path. Shit! Where was it? I’d lost the path. I walked one way through the trees and then back to where I came from only it was no longer the log and the clearing. I had lost that too. Everything looked exactly the same and nothing was recognizable. Images started flashing through my mind. Starvation. Falling exhaustedly onto a bed of pine needles. Animals eating away at my flesh. Tree cutters finding me weeks later partially decomposed with a recorded video of my dying farewell on my camera as my final words.

The brief wave of panic passed and I realized that if I just kept heading downward I had to eventually find the road and so that is what I did careful of my step. Twisting an ankle or breaking a leg would not bode well for fending off those nasty visions.


Now, when you are climbing down a mountain and using trees as leverage I implore to watch what trees you are grabbing onto. Some of these trees have teeth! I nearly lost a good portion of my hand to a tree bearing hundreds of sharp thorns. It was an evil nasty hungry thing just aching to take a bite out of my hands. After clearing this tree, if you would have been standing in the forest near me this afternoon, you would have witnessed a man kissing the sleeve of the coat that was covering his uncut palm. If the thorns and itchy pine needles weren’t bad enough I now had some sort of rock or tree branch in my shoe and every time I thought I had removed it there jabbing at the sole of my right foot was still there. This thing was invisible.



After much slow and careful descent I soon made it to an area I recognized because of a wild orange tree growing there in a clearing. One of the main rules of wood hiking is don’t eat anything growing wild. Berries that look like cherries can be deceiving. I know it was probably foolish of me but the oranges looked so good. This was the Eden tree to me at that very moment and I didn’t need no asp tantalizing me towards it. I picked, pealed and bite into the succulent fruit sucking out the sweet juice and spitting out the seeds. The orange gave the energy I needed and I was quickly back on to the road. A half-hour later I was back down the arcade walkway passing the Japanese eateries but I already had my restaurant picked out and this one was of Western origin. No, not McDonalds again!

Near my classroom is a Big Boy restaurant. Yes, THE Big Boy! Big Boy, famous for its hamburger totting chubby boy in red and white suspenders started in 1936 in Glendale, California. The company operates 455 restaurants in the US, Canada and, yes, Japan. I had walked by on my way to class a few times and today would go in with a hungry so large they better have some extra truckloads coming in. The Big Boy made the mistake today of offering an all you could eat salad bar. I was on plate three when my meal of grilled chicken, still sizzling on the skillet, arrived. I would have another salad, this time fruit, to polish off a much needed meal. It was the best I'd had in weeks and that is not a disparaging remark on the Japanese cuisine but one from a man who had just climbed up and down a mountain itching of pine needles in near starvation.

Sitting in the booth next to me were my “junk shop” purchases from earlier on that afternoon. The former teacher of my Tenri class told me about a junk shop located in the walking arcade near the station. I had missed it every time but today I made a point to track the place down. I found it wedged between a corner road and a small grocery store. Junk seems to indicate trash in the minds of most but to me these places are treasure chests. There are two things in life that seem to stop me cold and hold me spellbound. Late night television infomercials and used book, clothing and antiques shops. My city walks would always take me at least once into one of these places and though most times I never purchased anything I always loved going through the old dog eared books, clothing or various interesting trinkets. Used stuff holds much more interest to me then the new. Used stuff tells a story, has the lived in feel and is so much cheaper. Megs, if you were here you’d be picking up your eyes. This shop was just a wall to wall room of Japanese artifacts you’d think belonged in a museum and not on some dusty rack. They had dolls and masks and armored samurai helmets. There were racks of Japanese kimonos, male and female, and shelves of musical instruments. Old Japanese records were mixed in with tea sets and ceramics. I did not stay long as the hunger was getting to me but I could spend hours in here and probably miss 80% of the items. An old woman caught me shifting through the kimonos and smiled a toothy smile saying something to me in Japanese that I, of course, couldn’t understand. I had my phrase book with me and we managed a little conversation with the bit of Japanese I knew and the bit of English she knew. I explained to her I was looking for gifts for my family here and that I would be living in Japan for a year. She explained to me the significance of the kimonos and outlined the differences between the heavier darker ones and the lighter colored ones. She probably would have explained away everything, all the wonderful items adorning this shop’s shelves but her husband pulled her away. I told her I would be back to this place and maybe we would find each other here again. Of all the used stores I have been into, and there have been many, this one, probably just by the virtue of it containing so many foreign items to me, is the best one. Yes, I will be back. I left that day carting a large box and a bag or two of items for you folks back home. What presents await? You will have to wait until Christmas. Yes, I know, I’m evil! Remember, patience is a virtue, good things come to those who wait and, ummm, don't cross the streams.





I made it to my evening lessons in time to watch this beautiful blood red sunset sinking low over the homes and telephone polls. The sky was just beautiful and it looked last a pastel painting. I was home a few hours later and into a shower to clean away pine needles from the crack of my ass. Another fine day to satisfy the wandering gypsy spirit. Yes, I didn’t find the waterfall but where’s the adventure in sticking to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to?