When I awoke the next morning the hostel owner had made a traditional Japanese New Year’s Day breakfast. He explained to me that Japanese mothers don’t like cooking on New Year’s day, so they prepare the food the previous week and assemble and serve it on that morning. So as a result it is all very simple-looking. All the food is also rather sweet. It’s meant to be a treat for the children and a good start to the new year.
While I was eating the owner came into the common area to tell me that there was a lot of humidity the night before that had frozen into crystals on the leaves and branches of the plant life. He told me that this phenomenon only happens a few times every year and that I had to see it within the half hour before the sun melted the water crystals. It was stunning. There were these beautiful crystals on every surface!
I finished up my breakfast and headed out for my next day of solo-adventures.
I wasn't kidding about the fog.
I went to the main part of town about twenty minutes north where there is an old street full of traditional samurai houses.
You can see many of them, but the hostel owner recommended this one called Ishiguro house. The descendants of the samurai are still living in that house so it has some modest furnishings so you can get an idea of what living there was like.
When I arrived at Ishiguro house the owner and her son greeted me warmly and gave me a short tour. I understood a little of what she said, but most of it I understood from context.
She showed me the small rooms with the tatami mats.
This was the entrance way for the servants and family to use whereas the entrance that I came by was for visitors and the head of the house.
This room had wooden plaques that had designs cut into them. In this case the design was of turtles. The wood grain helps create the impression of a turtle swimming in water.
When you enter the room, the light from the ouside shines through and casts shadows of turtles on the walls. It was quite a unique feature and the owner of the samurai house was very proud of them.
There was also a section of the house that was laid out in a museum style with old artifacts from the house's history displayed.
One of the owners back in the day was dedicated to helping medical science, so he patroned healers and had a bunch of diagrams of the human body.
Here you can see the roof of the house is made in a traditional fashion made of straw.
After that I made my way back to my car and drove to the Dakigaeri Valley. It is a narrow valley with a river running through it. It is supposed to be gorgeous in the fall, but I was still going to check it out.
At the entrance to the trail there is a little shrine that had a lot of dragon motifs around. The ema even had painted dragons on them. I would have liked to buy one, they looked pretty cool, but nobody was working so there were none for sale.
I continued along the trail, and about three minutes away there was a big red bridge that spanned the valley. I walked out to the middle of the bridge and took some photos, but didn’t feel like going further. It was so cold! Plus my next destination was the one I was really looking forward to: Lake Tazawa!
I got back in my car and drove the rest of the way to the north side of Lake Tazawa. Along the north shore of the lake there is a Kannon-Sama statue,
And a nice little shrine with a big torii gate beside the water.
Because it was New Year’s Day, there were quite a lot of people at this shrine. Nobody spoke to me, but you could tell they were excited that I was there. This area of the country doesn’t see a whole lot of foreign tourists in comparison to other places.
It also has a little statue of Princess Tatsuko. I’ll tell you her story in a bit.
At this shine they sold the smallest ema I’ve seen to date with a picture of the lake on them.
Lake Tazawa is the deepest lake in all of Japan. It is over 400 meters deep! This lake also never freezes even though it does get cold enough to do so.
While I was driving around the lake and seeing the sights, there was a fog that varied in intensity. Sometimes it was so thick that you couldn’t see the other side, and other times you could see the other side. It was gorgeous! I especially thought the contrast of the snow next to the red torii gate was beautiful.
I continued my drive around the lake where I came to my final stop: a rather large golden statue of Princess Tatsuko with a nearby shine.
The shrine is a bright yellow, which is quite unusual, and is sitting out over the water. It has a little bridge that you can walk across to see pray at the shrine. Just off to the left is the statue of Tatsuko.
If you walk a few feet to the left of the shrine there is a staircase going down into the water of the lake. Here there is a little cement platform where you can go walk along the lake side at the level of the surface. The fog started rolling in again at his time and it felt so surreal!
 |
| This is a panoramic photo of both the statue and the shrine. |
The story goes that long ago there was a beautiful princess named Tatsuko. She was stunningly beautiful and everyone knew it. One day she started realizing that one day her beauty would fade. This thought scared her and she couldn’t bear the thought of growing old and ugly. She prayed to the Kannon-Sama, the goddess of mercy, at her shrine every day for 100 days, so that she might retain her youth. On the night of the 100th prayer Kannon-Sama appeared before Tatsuko and told her that if she drank from the waters of Lake Tazawa she would be beautiful forever.
Tatsuko went to Lake Tazawa and began to drink. She soon became to thirsty that the delicious water of the lake could not sate her. When she drank all she could she looked at her reflection in the water and realized she had been transformed into a dragon.
She realized she could never return home in this state and sank into the waters of the lake to live.
Tatsuko had been gone a long time and her mother started to get worried. Her mother lit a torch and went to check on her daughter at the lake. When she got there Tatsuko emerged from the water and told her mother what had happened. Her mother was so distraught that she threw her torch into the water where it turned into a school of fish. Tatsuko caught one of the fish and gave it to her mother saying that she was now the guardian of the lake and that she was sorry she could never return. But, she said that she would always keep the lake bountiful of fish so that her mother, and by extension the town, would never go hungry.
This story ends here, but there are other stories that involve the lake and add to the story. For example, there is the story of a prince from a neighboring village that went fishing on Lake Tazawa where he caught some fish. Eating the fish made him really thirsty, but when he started drinking the water of Lake Tazawa he was also struck with an unquenchable thirst. He drank the water for 33 days and when he was done he too realized that he had turned into a dragon. He couldn’t return home in his state so he decided to live in the lake, which you know was now the home of Tatsuko. They met and lived happily ever after. The heat from their passion for each other is why the lake never freezes. I think it’s a cute little story.
After the statue there’s not much else to see on the lake this time of year. During the summer the east side of the lake is a popular swimming location with a little beach. There is also a restaurant on the south side that serves a unique and traditional soup with a fried mochi in it (or something, that’s what I heard.) As a result I decided to drive over to Akita city and see the Kubota Castle ruins, Senshu Park and the castle grounds.
Here is a manhole cover!
When I arrived there was a huge line of people waiting to pray at a big Buddhist temple. I wasn’t able to get close, and I certainly wasn’t going to wait in line, so I snapped a few photographs and walked on.
I climbed a staircase up to the top of the hill where I saw a large statue of one of the old samurai or daimyo of the area.
Next to the statue, there was a large garden area with many trees and moss covering the ground. It was lovely.
I walked a short distance to the left of the statue and saw a couple small Shinto shrines.
I bought an ema that was two pieces of wood connected by a small wooden joint that allowed the two planks of wood to be slid past each other. The front ema piece had the design and words on the front and the second ema piece had a space to write your wish.
There was an old woman who passed me and smiled. I greeted her in Japanese and she was so surprised that she started talking to me. After I bid her farewell I ran into a group of seven high school boys who thought I was cool and wanted to take a photograph with me. We talked about English in their school, and I told them I was an ALT in Fukushima. They were shocked and thought it was amazing. It was pretty fun.
People in Tohoku are so nice and excited to talk to foreigners. They don’t see as many, and I expect their experiences with foreigners are very different. All they want to do is talk to you and show you things they are proud of. They want to show you their city or eat this dish they made. They love that you have taken an interest in their corner of the world and are excited by it. I really enjoy talking to Japanese people in Tohoku and less populated areas. I tend to not like people from Tokyo or Osaka very much. They tend to be more prejudiced against foreigners and don’t treat us well up front. It is pretty disheartening when it happens to you. I have had plenty of bad experiences with Japanese people, most all of them from people living in the bigger cities. I could tell you, but I’d rather focus on the good times and the good people I’ve encountered on my adventures.
After the shrines I walked over to a building that looked like a Japanese castle. It was only the lookout and warehouse of the castle and it was used for storing weapons, and other materials. The main castle burned down long ago, like most all Japanese castles. They have not rebuilt Kubota Castle, so the majority of its hill space is just a park.
I walked in and looked around the small museum space inside the lookout. Nothing was in English, so it was hard to understand, but I got the gist of it all and went to the top.
It was a windy, rainy day when I was there, so I was the only person inside the museum and the lookout point. I took a few photographs of the surrounding area. It was beautiful!
There is also a cute little pond on the castle ruin grounds.
One thing that I was super impressed about with Akita was how clean and beautiful everything is. Japan as a whole has little problem with litter. But Akita city was super impressive. Few buildings looked run down or dirty, and I don’t remember seeing any litter. In other cities you get dirty buildings, or houses that look like a hoarder lies there, but in Akita I didn’t see that and I got the general impression that it was the cleanest major city I had seen in Japan by that point. It definitely rivals, if not surpasses my memories of Hiroshima City.
After that I got in the car and headed back to Daisen area to my hostel. The owner told me about a small firework show, and he had plans on visiting an onsen afterwards. The local firework show lasted just over ten minutes, it was short and sweet. The onsen had light green water and felt smooth and lotion-y. The owner told me that the water had a pH of 8.8 which gave the water its smooth, lotion-y feel. It was so nice and relaxing!
When we returned to the hostel I was so sleepy and relaxed that I went straight to bed. It was only like 9 p.m., but I still had one more day of adventures left and I needed my beauty sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment