Yoshino: The Second Comming

It is 7am when the southbound train reaches the final stop on the line. I am back in Yoshino, the mountain village now unmarred by the crowds of tourists and functioning, I’m sure, just as it would any day outside of the Sakura season. My time is scarce. As I step onto the platform and out into what looks to be the first day of gorgeous sun since my countryside stroll five days ago I know that at that very moment people are sitting down to breakfast, they are talking about how wonderful a day it is and over their cups of soup, their rice and their steaming teas they are planing a trip to Yoshino. The next train would bring the first trickle, two or three early rises with the same intentions as I. The train after that would start to see a larger selection, groups of flower party goers arriving for a lunch under the blossoms. The third train after mine would bring the flood, crowded streets and mountainsides bursting with Sakura seekers. I would have to act fast. Camera charged. Memory cards wiped. Let’s rock the mountainside Sakura world, my friends.

I awoke this morning at 530. The sun was just starting to climb to kill off another evening of darkness in the daily cycle. The debate begins, the body lobbying for slumber and the mind on the side of exploration. The body nearly won this one, as at 530 in the morning there is nothing more comfortable, more enticing than a bed. Even a bed that is really just a break apart couch pushed together crudely with a futon on top. With my class schedule and a planed three-day trip to the Kobe area I did not seem feasible to work in Yoshino any later then today. Arriving so early had a dual purpose with the first being to escape the crowds and have the village, mountains and blossoms virtually to myself and the second was an issue of time constraints. I was due in class at 345. The train from Yoshino to Tenri takes about 96 minutes and walking to the class is about another 15 so that is nearly two hours in which somewhere a break for lunch needed to be squeezed. I’d already laid out all my lesson materials last night so it was really just a matter of arriving ahead of the students. I figured a maximum departure time would be12:30. The first train to Yoshino left Yagi station at 6:05 and I dragged my carcass to be on it with about as much energy as a three-toed sloth. The long ride into Yoshino is due not to the amount of stops on the way but the waiting time reserved for about four for those clocking in at half the travel time. I dozed listening to folk music after the soothing sounds of Chopin’s light piano works nearly rendered me incapacitated and a permanent fixture of the train seat. There were only three other people on the train. We all arrived in Yoshino at 715 which gave me about 5 hours to wander and roam. No tourist shops were open, no small cart vendors with chicken pieces or hot dogs were out and only three people were my competition for choice photo spots. The two young people I had traveled here with didn’t worry me much. It was the elderly man with the tripod and lens on his camera the size of a cannon that had me racing up the dirt path ahead of him to the spots I had been to on Sunday under clouds of gray. Today, so far, nothing but blue and I was going to exploit it. I was ahead of the three others and on the path muddied from last nights rains and making my upwards yet again but this time alone with my surroundings. The mountain was mine.

It was like entering another reality with a crowdless Yoshino under bright sun. The blossoms were fuller today and opening to the sun. I made excellent time up the mountain using shortcuts found on Sunday and when I made it to the village area I found myself not avoiding cars but traffic that didn’t exist a few days ago. Apparently at this time of year the main road closes to become a walkway for tourists. This happens around 9am when the first trainloads arrive but for now cars were zipping around corners where once stood a table of tacky Yoshino knickknacks. Running on the fuel of a hot coffee in a can, always a good burst to shake off the sleep, I hoofed it to Kimpusen-ji Temple’s tori gate in the center of the village. I will use this time to point out how much I dislike telephone wires streaking across ancient sites. They just intrinsically shatter the mythos and, mainly my issue, ruins photo ops. The gate here is a prime example of telephones lines running across your frame. I could, and have in the past, edit these lines out with the precision of a Hollywood effect artist digitally removing stunt wires in post production but I really dislike manipulating my images in this way as I feel that it is not an accurate representation of the moment the shutter was pressed. Why not add Gary Colemon riding a llama to the picture digitally if you want to deviate from the original?

Ah, to the insanely early riser go the spoils. Temples here are free to the locals before the crowds arrive and are levied the fee of Y500 to access views of the interior. I merrily strolled by the empty admission box and up the temple steps to find a nice view of the area below, enormous chains dipping into equally large water jugs and a odd looking red statue in fine contrast to the brown wood backing. From the temple steps I looked out and say a pagoda I had not seen on the first day. Framed in blossoms, it made a beautiful postcard. Tripod guy had arrived now and was emulating my every move. I call such people image stealers as they leech off my conceptualized photo framing. This guy was none to caring about where he stood either as he walked in front of me on numerous occasions blocking my image and forcing me to wait until he cleared the shot. He was also none to mindful of where he swung his tripod when he was walking and nearly smacked me clear in the skull a few times that day. In fact, this would become the theme of my walk later on when more people with tripods arrived. These are deadly devices when placed in the hands of idiots and I am quite fortunate to have left the mountain that day with all of my teeth still rooted in my mouth. My ducking, leaping and sidestepping skills have vastly improved after being put to The Test of Tripods this morning. Elderly tripod guy was molasses slow in his set ups which gave me time to get ahead of that potentially cranium denting, shot ruining schmuck.

I took an alternate route this time then I had Sunday although still hit a few of the exact same spots and at one such spot I found Sakura the dog, now with nobody showering attention down upon her, tied to a rusted metal spike at the base of a stone staircase overlooking blossom land. Sakura whimpered and stood up when she saw me approaching. I sat on the steps with her and gave the beautiful animal a pat as we both looked over the colorful tapestry of trees below us climbing up the mountainside. Sakura did not look impressed and was much more interested in sticking her muzzle all over me in an intrusive prodding for food. Sorry, pouch, no treats today but don’t worry because in about an hour’s time there will be plenty of people tossing you cookies, pieces of meat and maybe one of those horrid looking fish on a stick delicacies I wouldn’t touch if you paid me.

Saying goodbye to Sakura, I continued down the road and found turnoffs I had missed before because of the crowds blocking them from view. One such side street lead to photograph gold in the form of an amazing view of Kimpusen-ji Temple poking out over the blossoms. Later this area would become a lunch spot where the owners of the yard would charge Y300 for the privilege of such a view (these Yoshino village folk sure now how to turn a buck) but right now, the sun now full over the mountains and the blossoms dancing with the wind, I walked down to the edge of the lawn, camera cocked, shutter ready and finger poised for rapid fire. A few more steps down this side street brings you to an equally impressive view of the valley bellow which was nearing full blossom mode this morning. The area bellow me was just a sea of flowers and trees and suddenly my body didn’t feel so tired anymore as there really is something about nature and the sunrise and early mornings that just make the weights lift, troubles drift and eradicate pains as for a few moments nothing matters but the stunning view before you. This view would only get better higher up the path. I had chosen the low road last time, the one that took me to graves and a view from the other side of the valley but my map, now a casulity to my photograph nature, up somewhere on Mount Yoshino in a patch of grass where it fell out of my pocket as I crawled along the ground looking for angles, this map told me that there was an observatory with the best view of the village and surroundings and so this time I took the high road.

I mentioned this last time but the climb up Mount Yoshino is not a difficult one as you have a road you can walk on or, what I choose, well crafted trails taking you upwards. Because I had spent so much time taking shots of the temple over the blossoms and sitting with the dog some tourists from the second train in had arrived and managed to pass me. It was like a car race out there now as these huge camera carriers with their tripod weapons were scooping up prime photographic real estate on the mountainside as I shifted gears into high to pass them again. My MP3 player doubled as my clock and halfway up the observatory path I found I had about an hour and a half before I had to start heading back to the train. Along the way I found more shrines with frightening statues where, hidden near the back, were three walls lined with similar Buddha, other statues tucked around corners, more old gravesites and, of course, the cherry blossoms trees blooming so beautifully against the blue sky backdrop.

Though the climb is not as laborious I was starting to become tired by about the 75% mark, the toll of all the uphill walks of the last two weeks hitting my leg muscles. But pausing would allow the others to catch up to me so I bite down and braved onward cutting a swath off the path and into the wooded areas and underbrush to find increasingly better views of the village, valley and mountains the higher up I climbed. My obsessive picture taking got the better of me again as shooting off 15-25 photos of basically the exact same shot with inches in variation eats up a lot of time. There was still about 20 minutes before I would hit the observatory and I was quickly approaching the time I needed to start heading back if I wanted to catch the 1230. Tired now, breath becoming panting, I decided the views I had seen were pretty spectacular as is and I didn’t think the observatory could add a better coat of paint. I turned and walked three steps back towards the station, paused, damned my curiosity and turned around to sprint up a staircase on my way to the observatory above. I found the view to be a bit of a let down, honestly, as things were so miniscule from this height but there was another shrine found here at the top of the mountain which made the hike a bit more worthwhile.

Yoshino-Mikumari, a shrine from the Heian Period of Japanese history, is devoted to Ameno-mikumari, the god of water with mikomori meaning the distribution of water. It was built in 1604 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Honestly, this is another site where cutting electric wires just take you out of the surroundings. The owl statue was the best find here and with me running over schedule and facing the possibility of being really late I tore out of there and back to the station stopping ever so briefly to end my morning in Yoshino with village specialty, a tasty ice cream. The flavor? Do you really have to ask? On the way down I faced the crowds and had to fight and push my way through them. At noon the a chime rang out acrossed the entire mountain area and I noticed for the first time speakers had been set up on the polls. It was the Sakura folk song as though played on a broken piano and was both cheesy and charming at the same time.

I pulled into Tenri 45 minutes before class with an empty stomach that needed filling. The ice cream cone ignited the fires of hunger. As I was exiting the station one of those Tenrikyo folk stopped me, actually flagged me down as I was wearing my headphones at the time and, well, wouldn’t you know it, he was trying to recruit me to join! First the Jehovah’s and now this guy. I’m a virtual magnet for religious recruiting! I liken that bagging a foreigner to these people is huge points akin to, say, running down an elderly woman in Death Race 2000. I politely tried to vacate the conversation but he was a persistent black robed man who spoke excellent English on account of having lived a few years in Seattle. “Do you know where your parent is?” he asked. “Probably in Ontario cleaning something at this point of the day,” I replied thinking of my mother, broom in hand, in one of her mad house cleansing sprees. He started to go into his pitch about Tenri being home of the parent, the joyous life and all that Tenrikyo jazz. When I informed him that I was late for work he asked me for my address so he could stop by and continue our conversation. I declined this. “Can you at least give me your name?” “Sure,” I said and scribbled down an alias telling myself to remember that, in Tenri, to the followers of Tenrikyo, my name is John Alderwood. What is the deal with wearing the same top half of a uniform anyway but allowing anything to be worn below? Are closest full of the same shirt? Before I managed to pull myself away he handed me a piece of paper which reads:

TENRIKYO
Do you know the original parents of all human beings?
We call our God the parent, Tenri-O-no-Mikoto. God the Parent is God of origin, God of truth, who created human beings and the world where there was no form.
God the parent created humankind so that by seeing us live the Joyous Life, God could share in our joy. The living of the Joyous Life is, therefore, the purpose of our existence. Since God the parent is our Parent we are all God’s children, and thus we should realize that we are all brothers and sisters. Please call us anytime if you have some questions or problems! Towards the Joyous Life.

Problems and questions, hummm? Maybe I could get these guys to do my taxes. The hunger was no attacking with blazing guns. 35 minutes of lunch. Big Boy salad bar here I come!

Enjoy the pictures.