Looking For A Rock In A Hard Place

Another walk today keeping things close to the apartment. I had a few hours to kill before lessons that day so I decided to go out and find a rock. Do you remember that last time I went out to try to find a rock? Think back, now? Give up? It was the turtle rock in Asuka that I wold not have found without the help of a friendly elderly man. Today I hoped the rock seeking would go smoother. Of course it wouldn’t but all that time in sun has left me with such a great tan line. This rock didn’t take me too far off the track today especially in relation to eventually having to head off to teach. It was on the same train line I needed to hop on to get to the class so it was really a sound time management investment. I do plan these things out you know! I started out in the early morning, although ludicrously early as I have done in the past, and walked in the direction of Unebi mountain, a good landmark today as it is always in view and worked well as a compass to guide my way around the more barren areas of Kashihara City. It was hot. It’s getting hot. There’s a whole lot of hot going around. Would anybody like some hot? I got some. It’s going on Ebay. Get your Hot while it’s…errr…hot? Japan is know for notoriously crippling hot days. This was not one of those days but was an omen of things to come. If the heat was cracked this high in May I don’t want to think what July and August are going to be like.




About an hour of walking would bring to the first stop on today’s tour, an unplanned one. To me, in many regards, the best part of exploration is not reaching your intended destination but all the interesting stuff you may find on the way towards it. I suppose, now that I think of it, that is also my metaphor for life. That and never stick your nether regions into a blender. Both great mantras. I had been following the train tracks towards this rock as my map, my every betraying poorly detailed practical joke without clown shoes of a map, told me that said rock were near said tracks. Well, that’s what it said. Maps here, as we know fellow readers, lie more then Lindsey Lohan in the presence of a football team and a Chevy. (Fuck I hate Lindsey Lohan. Hate. Hate. Hate. Does it show?) I soon found myself at a station in the middle of flat, farm lands. The station really protrude as a blight on the horizon but I guess farmers have to get to Osaka too, right? Lord knows there are no strip clubs out here! In front of this station was a very small hill and on this hill was a very small shrine and near this shrine was a very small statue and next to that statue was a very small bowl and in that bowl was a very small coin. Hill, shrine, statue, bowl and coin. How many were going to St. Ives? Ahhh, be quiet out there It’s 2am and I’m going on 3 hours of sleep. See how witty YOU get. According to the map this place was called Musaniimasu Shrine. All searches to turn up information on this place brought up nada. Know it is a shrine like most other shrines I have seen on a smaller scale and a lot more bland. Outside of some nice paintings this place was very much a few seconds of intrigue and then a movin’ on down the road.

The train station in the middle of these flat nowhere lands still had a ticket attendant. English signage out here is quite randomly placed so I tend to miss things by taking my little detours. Ticket Attendant In Nowhere Land Train Station Guy to the rescue!!! He looked so happy that somebody had come here and given his day some purpose. I swear, this guy looked like he was about to invite me into his office for some tea and scones and maybe some topical conversation about Japan’s proposal to cut 50% greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. No time for tea and topical, man, I had to find a rock. I showed him the picture on the map. He looked at me as if to say “Why are you looking for a fucking rock when there’s tea to be had” and with lonely puppy dog eyes he pointed me onward and sulked back into his little ticket taking cubical of solitude. Poor guy.


The rock, and the hill the rock sits on, were not very far away from the station. In fact, I had wandered a little off track in my hunt for this rock. It’s my lot in life to become lost no matter how simple something is the find. It’s the same with me and the remote control, my glasses and the washing machine. So, really this post should be titled Looking For A Rock In A Not So Hard Place but because it is the very un-directional savvy me at the helm of this journal entry you get the current incarnation. When placed on the right path by the lonesome ticket taker man I found the hill in a couple of minutes. At the base of the hill is a sundial which I mistook for at least a few seconds to be as ancient and historical as everything that doesn’t have neon bolted to it in this area. Closer inspection would reveal that this sundial is not hundreds of years old. It hardly looked weeks old, actually. It also looked broken. The thing about sundials, I guess, is all about positioning. They are actually quite useless 85% of the time. No shadows were cast by the hands. No time was able to be told. I wonder if this drove people in the times of old batshit: “What time ya’ got Ralph.” “Hold on, Sam, I have to wait for that cloud to pass to tell ya’. Let’s go cloud. Ah, schucks Ralph, there’s an’otter one. Maybe ya’ll kin ask me ta’morra!”






The hill this rock is on is not a long climb but it was one of the more steep of the recent ascents I have taken. You needed the leverage of the trees and rope that people had wisely tied between the trees as a sort of railing to get up certain spots. This hill seemed like two different worlds of foliage. You start in regular forest and you climb upwards you find yourself surrounded by bamboo. The bamboo is much more appealing to me at this point because I had never actually been inside this type of forest yet. I have walked by them but never entered into one as deep as I was now. Above the trees knocked together in the wind. At first this frightened me as I thought there was something in the trees, a deranged monkey thing ready to pounce. I looked up, the trees swayed creating natural beats as they banked into each other. I placed my ear to one of the taller trees. Inside the water flowed like a facet on high, rushing down the bamboo. It sounded like a waterfall trapped in there. I started banging on the trees, each making different sounds of varied pitch. I had a pretty good tribal beat going there for a moment. It is nice to now know that if all else in my life fails I could probably make it as a bamboo drummer. Do they exist?




A little higher up I started looking for this rock. Maybe I went up the wrong way. I took out my city flyer and looked at the picture of the rock. Nothing around here looked like this. I leaned back again a large rock to study the map more. The picture did no make the rock out to be really big. I taped my foot against the large rock I was leaning against as I continued to scour the area. I stopped. Looked up at this huge boulder I was backed up to. Nawww, this can’t be it? Could it? The photo look so small. I walked up the narrow path between the bamboo to get a better look. As I did the picture of what I thought was going to be of medium sized unfolded in this mammoth rock now in front of me. This thing was huge! I had found the Iwafune of Masuda.

The Iwafune of Masuda rock is about 5 meters high and 8 meters wide and it sits on a hill top in this forest of bamboo with no other rocks around it. It is solitary. Alone like the guy in the train station. This rock is very out of place here. But it is no just any rock. I wouldn’t have come all this way to just look at a boulder (unless it was shaped like Marilyn Monroe). The upper portion of the rock is fairly flat and on the surface are two large perfectly square holes that looked to be a few feet deep running into the center of the rock. This thing is a complete mystery to people here, like the Turtle rock a few miles away. Nobody can say for sure what it is but everyone has a theory. Some suggest this was a tomb, others say it is a monument. However, to me anyway, the best theory put forward on the purpose of the Iwafune of Masuda is that it served astrological means. A popular theory is that this rock ties in with the Sakafune Ishi rock on the hill out in Asuka (you may remember this as the rock that some believe to hold the indentation of an alien ship). The Sakafun Ishi and the Masuda Iwafune are lined up perfectly, this theory states. It all comes down to rice. Historians believe that the Masuda Iwafune was used to determine the proper times to plant rice to yield better crops. An online article about the subject says: the more important solar point for early Japanese agriculture was "spring doyou entry" which occurs 13 days after the sectional solar term Pure Brightness [15 degree increment from Spring Solstice; for a discussion of Principle and Sectional terms, see The Lunar Calendar in Japan]. Siting west along Masuda Iwafune 's ridge line, one could determine when the sun set at (not "Pure Brightness" itself), but the exact date of "Spring Doyou Entry". He further believes that Sakafune Ishi was later repositioned with its 13 degree offset to also site the sun's setting on this all important day. But this is all speculation. Nobody can say for sure. The Masuda Iwafune to this day remains one of the great mysteries of this area of Japan. I was in awe of it, more so then standing at some of the huge, glorious shrines. This rock was just stupefying and I tried to fathom my own theories on why it was there as I sat above it overlooking it’s grander there in the bamboo grove. The ancients have left us so many mysteries to solve and where before me was just one more. I did solve one question I had about the rock instantaneously. You can’t climb it! At least I couldn’t climb it. When I climbed higher up the hill and saw how deep those holes in it looked I thought that my inability to scale this thing was a fortunate to me. I probably would have plummeted into one of those holes thus giving merit to the belief that it would be used as a tomb.



I walked back down the hill and rested on a bench somebody had made out of the bamboo. I think I was on somebody’s land, though, as walking forward did not get to a road but to a fence with a locked door and a path leading from it to the bench I had been sitting on. I had to climb back up the hill and go back around the rock to the original pathway to get back out to the street. I walked back to the sign the train station guy pointed me towards. From there I decided to follow the arrow pointing opposite of the Masuda Iwafune.





On my way I’d pass my current obsession a lot. I now collect photographs of fence gnomes and statues people adorn the sides of their homes with here. I am now at a point where I know which ones I have previously photographed so I can avoid collection doubles. I hated that back in my hockey card collecting days. Really, I only needed one Craig MacTavish. 80 was really overdoing that card. Was there some accident at the plant that printed out billions of Craig MacTavish cards? Christ, I once got two Craig MacTavish in one card pack. Anyway, I digress. No doubles in fence statue photo collecting.









I continued to follow the arrows and was soon lead to another one of these tombs that really show you nothing but at least the hill this tomb was on gave me a nice view of Unebi and the farmlands. There were road side statues as well to add to the collection and a waving cat to bulk up my varied shots of them. The theme photo files are filling out nicely. A butterfly kept following me around as I walked and was still enough for me to snap off a nice shot of it. I also found the worlds most dangerous playground equipment. Here was what looked like a bunch of electrical wired fastened to steal posts to form an odd looking jungle gym. This was a death trap!















The final surprise of the day was finding Kume-dera, a temple I didn’t know existed. I can’t find much information about it online but it had a nice looking gold statue as well as a bunch of smaller statues scattered around the site. As sick as I am getting of these temples and shrines finding one accidentally still has a bit of novelty. An old couple walking around there smiled at me as I photographed the statues and gave me a little welcome bow. I wish I could have asked them about this place.





I ended the day at the Kashihara shrine to take a few more pictures of the gate pillars leading into the complex as I wasn’t satisfied with the shots from before. A little girl ran into one of my shots, stopped and looked back at her parents. At first I was frustrated for a ruined pillar shot but when I returned home later I found that it was the best photo of the day. Another day of exploring over I boarded a train towards my working life.