Cherry Blossom Viewing Party #2: Reconstructing Mt. Minobu

Give Party Animal a little credit. Sure, maybe she failed to slap that memory card back inside her camera after hot sake night at Tadodai House, but she did make a herculean effort to drag herself out of bed at 4:27 am the next morning and then scurry over to the bus departure point to meet Sue. And even though those Morale, Welfare & Recreation pranksters switched the bus departure point, she managed to locate and leap on the correct vehicle just seconds before the bus chugged off on a 17-hour trek to Mt Minobu in Yamanashi Prefecture.

The camera fiasco worked to your advantage, dear reader, as Sue is an amazing photographer with equipment even the Ancient Mariner could envy. She generously stuck a DVD of Minobusan pictures inside my front door yesterday by which point I had sobered up sufficiently from the hot sake fiasco to attempt this reconstruction of the Minobusan odyssey.

Sue was not my only friend on the tour bus. Erin, whose husband is on the Seventh Fleet staff and currently sailing the ocean blue with the Ancient Mariner, brought her three boys: studious Ethan, mischievous Matthew, and - my special friend - the irrepressible Seth who was plotting his disappearing act when this picture was snapped. You might recall that Sue's husband, an emergency physician, was sent to Afghanistan in January and will not be returning to Japan until October. What an honor it was for me to spend a Sunday in the presence of these inspiring young Navy wives.

Yamanashi Prefecture, about two and a half hours west of Tokyo, is the home of Mt. Fuji and the eastern foothills of the Minami Alps. Our driver negotiated the bus over hill, over dale, and around multiple hairpin turns before depositing us within walking distance of Kuon-ji Temple, halfway up the sacred Mt. Minobu. Before visiting the temple, we took a tram ropeway (see speck, below) to the top of the mountain to savor the splendid view of Mt. Fuji and the Pacific Ocean. There were several temple buildings, including the inner shrine (Okunoin Shishinkaku), and lots of statues on the mountaintop.

Why does this statue look so familiar? Gadzooks, it's Nichiren, the radical Thirteenth Century Buddhist saint who died in that place in Ikegami where the mysterious old lady kidnapped the Explorers just a few weeks ago. Kuon-ji, as it turns out, is the head temple of the sect Nichiren established, Nichiren Shu, and the place where he asked to be buried. I think I might prefer to be stalked by Van Morrison's moon shadow than the ghost of a radical Buddhist monk.

This is a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha, regarded by Nichiren as the Eternal Buddha as preached in the 16th chapter of the Lotus Sutra. Which, I presume, explains the lotus on which this Buddha is perched.

After inhaling some incense to purify our thoughts (note lotus blossom beneath incense burner), we rode the tram back down to the main temple where we flagged down a passing monk who was surprisingly amenable to having his picture taken.

The temple attracts over 1.5 million visitors yearly. Since we approached the magnificent temple grounds from above and behind, we did not, (sarcastic) alas, have the opportunity to climb the Bodaitei, 287 stone steps leading up to Kuon-ji from the temple town below.

This weeping cherry tree is over 100 years old, hence those timbers supporting its limbs.

We spent an hour or so wandering around the temple grounds, admiring the splendid buildings and lovely cherry blossoms. Since my buddy Seth decided to wander further afield than the rest of us, our fellow pilgrims were treated to the sight and sounds of a six-foot tall frantic American mother racing back and forth across the plaza, which is about the length of three football fields. This is the point when I checked out those 287 stone steps, saw they were as steep as a Grand Canyon cliff, and prayed (to St. Nichiren, of course) that Seth had disappeared in the opposite direction so I wouldn't have to rappel down to fetch him. My prayers were answered.

Our next stop was the temple town for shopping, which I eschewed, and festival food, which I embraced. On offer was sakura (cherry) ice cream, bananas and strawberries dipped in chocolate (above), and footlong hot dogs (below) plus a bunch of other stuff that did not stand a chance of passing between my lips although I was more than happy to egg on a young sailor sucking up his courage to taste something exotic before he moves back to the States in a few weeks.

A bun would have been a welcome addition in terms of soaking up residual hot sake.

Leaving Mt. Minobu behind, our bus took us to Katsunuma where we toured the Shirayuri Winery and sampled L'Orient wines. One tiny sip of cherry blossom wine later, I was elbow to elbow with Ethan, Matthew, and Seth at the grape juice station, comparing the virtues of white grape juice vice purple.

If you click on that L'Orient wine link above, you can see more pictures of the winery and its products. Try pressing the buttons on the left side of the page if you are feeling adventurous.