Tokugawa's Tomb and the Worst Job in Japan: Nikko, Part 5

The tomb of Ieyasu Tokugawa is at the top of a heavily wooded hill. You must climb two hundred and seven stone steps to get there. (The guidebook says 200 but Ouiser counted otherwise.)

Vending machines are everywhere in Japan and the tomb is no exception. I stopped complaining about the steps after I passed a middle-aged man who apparently is responsible for restocking those machines.

Bless his heart!

Copper gate guarding the tomb

The copper tomb sits in the center of a quiet clearing. The unpretentiousness of the tomb and setting, especially after all those ornate wood carvings, reminds me of Robert Kennedy's grave in Arlington Cemetery.

Circling the tomb, we notice a small crowd gathered at the base of a hollow tree. Mineko tells us the tree is thought to be something like a prayer amplifier so we stand in line to pray for our children and future grandchildren.

Ieyasu Tokugawa's Tomb

Before we leave Toshogu Shrine, Mineko takes me into a building, the Yakushi-doh, that has a dragon painted on the ceiling. A monk gives a brief lecture about the history of that painting (I can only assume since the lecture was in Japanese) and then strikes wooden clappers so we can hear the sound of the dragon crying. Cameras are not allowed in the Yakushi-doh or I would show you what a crying dragon looks like.

Enough of Nikko. I have a zillion more pictures to share but I'll save them for later, for those days when I forget to charge my camera.

Holiday Tour of Yamate

The spirit of Christmas is alive and well on a bluff overlooking Yokohama. The City of Yokohama offers free admission to seven Western-style houses in the Yamate neighborhood and every December those houses are decked out for the holidays.

Yamate is where foreigners lived when the port first opened in the mid-19th Century. The houses we saw this week are less than 100 years old since the neighborhood was destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, but they are quite interesting and worth a visit any time of year.

Val and Rita in the garden behind the Diplomat's House

A nice Japanese businessman pointed us in the right direction when we exited the train at Ishikawa-cho station. Our first stop was the Diplomat's House. We had a hard time tearing ourselves away from the garden which offered a splendid view of Mt. Fuji, meaning we fortuitously picked an incredibly clear day for our walk.

Bluff 18 Ban-Kan

Bluff 18 Bank-Kan was where the Catholic priests lived.  The holiday decor in this house made lavish use of white feathers and alcohol (see left).  Go figure. 

We had to exchange our shoes for slippers to enter most of the houses. Note to self: wear slip-on shoes next time.

234 Ban-Kan, a duplex, featured decorations from Poland

The Foreign Cemetery is at the top of the hill. The Catholics were buried over to the side, reminding me a bit of St. John's Cemetery in my hometown.

While I was resisting the temptation to examine several hundred tombstones, my companions disappeared around a bend in the road. There's really no accounting for priorities. Most of my siblings would have spent more time wandering through the cemetery than the houses.

Now where did those ladies go? Are they ordering waffles inside The Best Cheesecake restaurant? Alas, no. Between the restaurant and the cemetery, I have two great reasons to return to Yamate.

This picture might have been taken in the Ehrismann Residence. A common thread in the house tour was the lavish holiday table settings.

After our tour ended at the British House near the top of French Hill, we descended several hundred steep steps to Motomachi Street where we paused for a late lunch at an Italian restaurant.

Several ladies succumbed to the upscale shops on Motomachi Street - yet another reason to return to Yamate - but I hopped on the subway with the others. I was hoping to initiate one of those Flash Mob song-and-dance numbers on the train but Artistic Explorer immediately put the kibosh on that plan. Next time I'll make darn sure she rides in a different train car.

Blanketing Kamakura with the Quilters

The fact that I haven't added a single stitch to my little Setsubun square since last month's quilting lesson at Hisayo's house was easy to ignore when the Japanese quilters offered to lead Weather Girl, Artistic Explorer, and me to the new Swany's fabric store in Kamakura. Weather Girl hasn't exactly spent the past six weeks hunched over a sewing machine either and, after my failed attempt to take Jen F to Swany's last fall, I won't get a good night's sleep until I find that shop. And if that's not sufficient rationalization, every group needs a buffoon.

What we Americans originally assumed would be a simple $2 train ride, six-block stroll, and pleasant hour or so caressing bolts of fabric was transformed by the Japanese quilters into one of the most fabulous of many fabulous days I have spent here. Hiroko, Hisayo, and Kayoko decided we would visit some temples, climb a mountain, hike three+ miles, and break bread together before winding up our day at Swany's.

When the family gathers for Matt's graduation in June, I hope to re-create this adventure - minus the Swany's in deference to Ancient Mariner, an only child who had to abandon his dream of playing catcher for the New York Yankees because his mother kept dragging him to fabric stores when he ought to have been perfecting his throw to second base. Here are a few highlights for those of you who can't join us in June.

Jufukuji Temple was our first stop. Generally regarded as the first Zen temple in Kamakura, Jufukuji ranks a mere third on the list of the Five Great Zen Temples in Kamakura because it did not originally follow a purely Zen tenet. Masako Hojo, the wife of the first Kamakura Shogun, Yoritomo Minamoto, built this temple to propitiate his soul when he died in 1199. This was about 300 years before Christopher Columbus landed in the West Indies. Masako was perhaps a nostalgic woman as she decided to erect the temple on the site where her father-in-law had once lived.

Masako invited Eisai Myoan to be the temple's founding priest. Eisai is famous for introducing both Zen Buddhism and green tea to Japan after making two trips to China. He probably leaped at the chance to get out of Kyoto when Masako's invitation arrived because his teachings had made him unpopular with the reigning Tendai sect. Zen Buddhism went on to attract a large number of followers among the samurai, including Masako's brothers who served as regents until her children were old enough to take over as Shoguns.

The green tea contribution might have been overlooked if Eisai had not recommended it as a hangover cure for Sanetomo Minamoto, Misako's second son and the Third Kamakura Shogun. Eisai later wrote "Healing Sickness with Green Tea", a two-volume essay considered valuable in terms of medical care and as an example of ancient writing. Two volumes! And you thought I was verbose . . .



A patient person might have waited for those ladies to move before taking a picture of the temple's impressive entrance. At the end of the day, therefore, a patient person would not have a physical memory of the people we later discovered are members of a - you're going to love this, Kate - Haiku Club that meets once a month to visit various locations and compose poetry inspired by those settings.

Maybe the Haiku Club decided to visit Jufukuji because Takahama Kyoshi, a famous haiku poet, is buried in the cemetery behind the temple. One of Takahama's poems was an apt epigram for my day.

Spring breeze !
On the hill I firmly stand
With the great resolve.




Lured on by a flowering tree, Artistic Explorer ignored the barrier erected across the path. "The sign says 'Please Come In'," I quipped to no one in particular and just happened to spot spontaneous grins flashing across a few haiku poets' faces. I have noticed that Japanese people seem inordinately fond of sarcasm which might explain why I am so happy here.



"Bossy, look! Is that a red camellia blossom on the wall over there? That will surely inspire one of these poets." "No, it is key. The words "Sweet Factory" are printed on the red ribbon. This is a key to a candy store. This is what I consider an auspiciously good omen."



We think this is where Masako's ashes are buried (above).

The caves (above) where the ashes of priests and other dignitaries like sculptors and poets are buried are called yagura.

The cemetery was surprisingly ecumenical (see cross, above).

We didn't go all the way to the top of the cemetery but this picture (above) will give you an idea of the terrain behind the temple. Walking up and down steep steps like that every day could be a reason why obesity is not the epidemic in Japan it is in America.

Coming back down the hill from the cemetery, Hiroko, Hisayo, and Kayoko stopped dead in their tracks to point out a pair of squirrels. If I had thought to take a picture of their faces at that moment, I swear you might have mistaken them for three little children seeing an elephant, giraffe, or gorilla for the first time.

It's refreshing to spend time with people who pause to appreciate the little things in life that I too often overlook.

Next: The last time ever I hope you will catch me wearing Japanese pants and a particular sweater.

Down the Rabbit Hole, Through the Looking Glass, Over the Rainbow: Wrapping Up Ikegami

In retrospect, Ikegami might have been some sort of alternate reality. Life took on a surreal cast the moment we hopped on the wrong train and a man jumped up and down while shouting "Ka-ma-ta! Ka-ma-ta! Ka-ma-ta!" to illustrate an effective technique for finding the correct train. Maybe he's Japan's answer to the March Hare.

The icing on the cake, for Bossy at least, was the tiny lady in the purple bucket hat who materialized in the Daibo Hongyo-ji courtyard when we were lacing up our shoes after exiting the Secret Garden. For brevity's sake, we'll call her Merry Prankster.



Merry Prankster had the mannerisms of a songbird, tweeting away in rapid-fire Japanese for twenty or so seconds then standing as still as a statue with an expectant smile on her face. We shrugged, shook our heads, and smiled apologetically, pretty much in unison after the third or fourth refrain. A casual observer might have taken us for a pale imitation of a famous Motown quartet.

Eventually she pointed to the cemetery on the hill behind us. We pointed toward Honmon-ji temple on the hill in front of us. She reached into the plastic bag she was carrying, extracted a bottle of what looked like tea, waved the bottle in the air, and tucked the bottle back into the bag. We started walking toward Honmon-ji. Merry Prankster planted her tiny feet in gravel and jabbed her index finger toward the cemetery. A stream of Japanese poured from her mouth. It sounded like this: beekaydeekayneekay-SAMURAI-shoodoobeekaymeekaynooshoo.

What can I say? She was vivacious, insistent, and vaguely mesmerizing. Maybe she hypnotized us when she waved that magic bottle. At any rate, for reasons that remain unclear two days later, the Four Explorers accompanied Merry Prankster to the cemetery on top of the hill.



There were many stairs to climb but they were shallow and liberally interspersed with broad landings. In other words, the Explorers were not so winded they could not engage in witty repartee.

- Maybe she's leading us to a store where we can buy bottled tea.
- Maybe she's going to show us the grave of a famous Samurai warrior.
- Maybe she's taking us to the cemetery because that's the most convenient place to dispose of our bodies after she murders us.

That last contribution was Bossy's which will come as no surprise to most of you. Weather and Artistic seemed to find it slightly amusing. Novice just looked completely terrified.

We reached the summit. Merry Prankster tugged on Bossy's sleeve. Notwithstanding the language barrier on top of Bossy's hearing issues, dropping her ear to the level of Merry Prankster's mouth seemed the polite thing to do. Just before dissolving into peals of laughter, Merry Prankster chortled, "I know English."



Duly chastened and completely mortified, the formerly sarcastic Bossy and her fellow Explorers followed the Merry Prankster across the broad summit and partway down the other side of the hill until they reached a monument (above). Merry Prankster claimed the monument honors Ieyasu Tokugawa but Bossy believes Ieyasu is buried in Nikko so this is certainly not the great Shogun's final resting place. Bossy is grappling with trust issues at this juncture.

Merry Prankster chatted with another woman, we'll call her Granny Yoda, at the base of the monument then gestured for us to follow Granny Yoda. Which we did (!) until we reached the edge of a precipice (!) overlooking a pagoda with a shiny golden roof.



Bidding sayonara and domo arigato (for not pushing us off the cliff) to Granny Yoda, we followed Merry Prankster to Honmon-ji temple. We had the temple in our sights, it was just across the street in fact, when Merry Prankster shooed us into a modern temple compound, across a stretch of white gravel the length of a football field, and into a building where we admired a pair of ancient statues, the fierce alpha and omega warrior gods traditionally situated at the entrances to Shinto shrines.

After we emitted the obligatory oohs and ahs, Merry Prankster ushered us around the building to a square of gravel in the rear, an extremely stark setting featuring an octagonal wooden building flanked by two very bushy shrubs about seven feet high. Merry Prankster poked her arms into the shrub on the left and pulled out five small oranges the size of a chubby toddler's fist. Mikan oranges are notoriously easy to peel. The rind had already burst open on the Mikan the Merry Prankster handed to Bossy. Bossy popped the juicy fruit out of the rind and into her mouth in one swift motion. The fruit landed in Bossy's mouth just as Artistic warned, "Be careful of the seeds!"

Bossy scooted around to the far side of the bush to expel the seeds as delicately as possible. Seconds later Novice and Weather joined her and pitched their uneaten Mikans into the bush. "How could you put that in your mouth," they asked in concern/disgust/amazement. "Thanks to you, we're still worrying about being buried in that cemetery." (Note to Self: Assuming we survive the Ikegami expedition, take Novice and Weather to Little Mary's Grave when we are all back in the States.)

Compared to the adventure of getting there, Honmon-ji itself was fairly anticlimactic. Bossy's camera died - from Mikan poisoning no doubt - about halfway across the temple grounds but here are some of the early highlights to reward anyone with the patience to have stayed with me this far (Hi, honey!).

The Kyozo sutra storage building (above) is among the historic landmarks that survived the 1945 air raids. That's why Bossy took this picture. Looking at it now, Bossy sees Granny Yoda is standing near the building's entrance. Did she follow us from the cemetery?

A dragon is spitting or vomiting water into the purification tank.

Weather thinks this statue (above) is the patron saint of curling. Bossy thinks (a) this statue is the patron saint of janitors, and (b) Weather might have overdosed on the Winter Olympics.

Novice takes a picture while Artistic, Merry Prankster, and Weather head toward the five-story pagoda, the "oldest and largest wooden tower in the Kanto region".

We had lunch at a lovely cafe near the train station. I had a salad and a piece of toast three inches thick and deeply scored to encourage optimal butter penetration. Weather had pasta with every possible variety of mushroom, while Artistic and Novice settled on a seafood and rice concoction. For the benefit of any readers who might be interested in exploring Ikegami on their own, we left the base at 8:00 am and were back home by 2:30 pm.

Killing Time in a Cemetery

Indulge me if you will:

Step 1 - Try to imagine half the films Woody Allen made between 1980 and 1995.
Step 2 - Now try to imagine me cast in the Woody Allen roles.

If you have managed to do that, you now have a fairly accurate mental picture of my weekly sessions with Dr. T.

This week we talked about cemeteries.

We also touched on Tiger Woods, Scrabble (my mother), typical family menus on Burr Street (my mother), the milkman with a hook for a hand, calcium, my brother Dave's dietary habits, One-a-Day multiple vitamins, the Guinness World Record for stretching a can of tomato soup (you-know-who), the Battle of the Bulge, my parents' courtship, malpractice insurance in Japan, the oversupply of lawyers in the United States, Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth II, cancer, and how Japan's power structure has evolved over the past 700 or so years, but I have an abundance of cemetery pictures from my visit to Kaminoge this week so I'll try to stick to that topic.

A Tokyo tour guide back in 2006 had provided a general explanation of those tall prayer boards you can see in some of these pictures. I knew descendants of the deceased pay priests to inscribe prayers on those boards but I did not realize they are expected to do so every year for 50 years, although very few people outlast their parents by 50 years. (I think I just heard Martin Luther turning over in his grave.)

Several generations of a family share the same gravesite. Dr. T's parents and brother, for instance, are interred with his paternal grandparents in the town where Dr. T was born. He used to visit their graves and purchase prayers every year. Now that he lives in Yokohama he is only able to visit the graves every five years and he is obliged to pay the priest to write five prayers for each family member to cover the years he did not visit. (I almost snorted tea through my nose when Dr. T pantomimed dragging a load of lumber across a cemetery.)

Dr. T and his wife do not have any children so who will put prayer sticks on their graves when the time comes? They have several options, including two traditional options promoted by priests:

• formally adopt a relative's child who will assume the obligation in exchange for inheriting the estate, or
• transfer the obligation to a priest who will be happy to write prayers every year for about $100,000 in advance (American lawyers call this a 'retainer').

These days many Japanese, including Dr. T, raise an eyebrow or two at the choices spelled out by the priests. Dr. T is thinking about asking a cousin who lives near the cemetery to take care of his prayer sticks. Some people are avoiding the prayer stick quandary entirely by directing their ashes be scattered.

It seems I've managed to spend my knowledge of Japanese cemeteries much faster than my supply of pictures so I guess I'm going to have to see what I can find out about the brother who died.

Social Whirl

Have you been holding your breath and drumming your fingers in anticipation of the Anpanman tree? It turns out those little figures are solid rubber and it's taken me three days to coax, shove, and hammer a needle through one little noggin.

Hearing of my plight, Dr. T gifted me with a surgical needle but don't look for any progress on this project until mid-month. Bear in mind I am living on a military base where the holiday social whirl is compressed into the first 13 days of December. This is so all the Sailors who are taking leave during the holidays can have their fudge and eat it too.

Seasoned runners load up on carbohydrates before a marathon, so it makes sense mothers need to store up energy before the holidays by waffle loading. To test my newest theory, Jen O and the extremely pregnant (and remarkably loquacious) Monika have now been officially introduced to the waffle restaurant in Kamakura. Jen's command of Japanese never fails to heighten a restaurant experience - "We would like to try everything on your menu, please, and with ice cream when that's an option" - and Monika's talkativeness gave me a chance to eat way more than my fair share of the waffles. When it dawns on her that I nabbed most of her portion perhaps she'll remember that I also introduced her to that nifty parking lot with the helpful attendants.

I got back from Kamakura in time to stick a ham in the oven and whip up a couple of potato casseroles before the Knitwits and their families arrived to trim our tree. Whoever invented the expression "infectious enthusiasm" must have had people like our Japanese guests of honor in mind; you could not be within 10 feet of these people without grinning from ear to ear. This was the first time we've thrown a party where the house looked better when the guests were leaving than when they arrived. For my next trick, I think I'll invent a "Let's Take the Decorations Down and Put Them Away" party.

Tuesday the Oakleaf Explorers (all two of us) dragged our new friend Mary Beth to Tokyo to view maples. We followed the directions in my trusty guidebook to the Gotoh Museum garden but the gate was locked and the gardener made an X with his arms so Sherlock here deduced we would not be viewing maples in the Gotoh Museum garden. We wandered through the Kaminoge neighborhood instead, exploring a park and two cemeteries and a charming garden shop with a rooftop restaurant.

I took a lot of cemetery pictures because (a) that's what I do in cemeteries, and (b) my companions were both serious photographers, the sort who contort themselves to find the best angle, so I had time on my hands while they were snapping the only maple tree we saw all day. I'll post those pictures separately because (a) you might enjoy them, and (b) I can't imagine ever having another opportunity to use the headline "Killing Time in a Cemetery".

Tomorrow is the Seventh Fleet Spouse Association holiday party (not to be confused with the Seventh Fleet holiday party Mike and I will attend next week) and Friday is the Japanese and American Wives (JAW) holiday party (not to be confused with next week's JAW Conversation Group holiday party). Many of the same people will attend these events. This is why I am frantically inventing a Holiday Sweater Rotation Chart when I ought to be making fudge, mailing packages, and stabbing rubber dolls.