Minamisoma Adventures

4/9/2017

The next day we woke up fairly early so we could get a good start on the day of adventures ahead.
Our first stop was to some 1000 year old statues of Buddhas and Kannon-sama that are carved into the sides of some mountain cliffs in Odaka, the southernmost town in Minamisoma.

I had been there once before and the place really gives me the creeps. So I thought it would be better to go with somebody, which it was. I don’t believe in the supernatural, but I am not sure why this place creeps me out. I found one reason it might Infrasound, which is a sound that you can’t consciously hear, because the frequency is too low, but your ears can detect it anyways. This freaks your brain out and people report feeling scared, and anxious when they are exposed to it. You can often detect it in places near the ocean, in places frequented by earthquakes and sometimes when the wind hits mountains and hills in certain ways it can make that sound (lee waves, they are called.) I can’t prove that this is the reason (as frequency measuring devices are not within my budget. Those things are pricey!) but I am content with this explanation for the meantime.

We parked the car and walked up the steps to the temple. To the left is a great Japanese cedar tree (I think). It has a holy straw rope tied around it, which means that it is believed to be the home of some nature spirits.

A temple has been built around the carvings of the Buddhas. The carvings are heavily eroded, so the temple was built to mitigate the damage and preserve the ancient carvings.

A mold of one of the Buddhas at the Kannon relief statue (upcoming.)

A face that has eroded and fallen off one of the Buddha relief statues.

Off to the right of the shrine is a long path wrapping along the side of the hill for a short distance. The path is lined with small Buddha statues.

If you follow it along to the other side you see another shrine built around a bend in the cliff side. This shrine is a bit run down and has broken parts. It has a “window” looking at a blank spot of rock face. Something may have been there previously, but has since completely eroded, because I can’t see anything now. It just looks like an empty shrine.

In front of the shrine is a skinny stone staircase that leads down to the parking lot. Nearby is this stone lantern with two dragons carved into it.

Across the road from the Buddha temple is a display area for a local legend regarding dragons. There is a glass display case which has two cloth dragons inside. Because the area was evacuated, there was nobody to take care of it, so the windows of the display case were so dirty you could barely see through them. You had to put your face right up close before you could see inside. I did this at first and when I was finally able to make something out it was a dragon eye and teeth mere inches from my face! It gave me such a start!  (Update: about two weeks later I went back to the Buddha caves and the dragon display case and one of the dragons was missing. I didn't know why, but that weekend a local samurai festival was taking place and my friend snapped a couple pictures of this cloth dragon being paraded through the festival. It was the same one from the case, so you can see what it looks like.)

Next to the dragon display case is a mural that shows two dragons, a man playing a biwa, a beautiful woman and a warrior. There is a section telling part of the story (I am assuming) but I couldn’t read it and google translate doesn’t do a very good job either. So I don’t know the story right now.
I have asked a few local people if they know the story of the dragons in Odaka, but I have not been able to find anyone who knows the story yet. I did ask another ALT, and she asked one of her coworkers. The coworker pointed me to a manga that may be the story I am looking for. I have been given a link to the comic, but have been unable to translate it yet. I’ll post an update telling the story once I translate the comic or find someone who knows.

Across a tiny bridge near the dragon display case there is a little, tiny statue of a dragon at the base of the hill. Once you climb the hill there is a little monument or grave. It has something to do with the dragon story, so I’m sure I will figure that out later.

There is one more shrine on the hill and a viewing platform, but when I went to hike up the hill and find them the wooden staircase that climbs the mountain at one point was collapsed and had not been repaired, so at this time you cannot go see the top of the hill (this was a few days before Cormac arrived, I checked out the temple to see if it was worth showing him.) It is probably a good thing, too, the radiation levels in the hills and mountains are higher because the topsoil has not been removed. So I probably dodged a bullet.

We got back in my car and drove one minute to the north where there is a large Kannon-sama carved into the cliff face as well. It also dates to around 1000 years ago. It is on a small gravel road behind some houses, so you would never know it was there. This one also has a temple built around it to slow erosion, but this one is not blocked by glass. This one is also more eroded than the Buddhas. You can’t see the body of Kannon-sama, but you can see the top of the head, and the 1000 arms stretched out around her. You can also see many small Buddhas floating around her at the top.

From here we decided to drive around the next town to the south, Namie. Namie was evacuated during the 2011 Great Tohoku Earthquake. Radiation levels were era high in the area so it continues to be abandoned. I have heard that they are going to open up the northernmost part of Namie real soon, if they haven’t already. (Update: They opened Namie on March 31st, so we drove around Namie within the first week of it being opened up again.)

The farther south you go the more area is restricted. You start running into roadblocks and workers guarding the gates. We decided to go driving around Namie until we hit some roadblocks and had to return.

Namie manhole cover.

I was surprised that you can drive all over Namie without running into road blocks (because it opened March 31st.) You don’t start seeing those until you go farther south to Fuataba and Okuma. Those places are sealed up tight and you cannot enter unless you have a special license to be there, either as a worker or if you get special permission with the prefecture.

Traditional Japanese hearse in a parking lot with many other abandoned cars.

Some sakura trees were blooming and the scenery and the outer limits of the town were quite pretty. It wasn’t until you got into Namie city proper that you started seeing just how damaged the town is. Every building was abandoned (again, I am unsure at this point if you the town has been opened for habitation) and most had piles of trash and debris piled high in the buildings. Because so many people are probably not going to move back when it is opened, and because so many of the buildings are badly damaged, people are opting to just demolish the buildings and be done with it. Many of the buildings have entire walls missing on the ground floor.

We drove around for a short while before deciding to head back north to see other things. One the way out we drove past this shrine that was badly damaged. It was slanting at an angle and an entire wall was missing. The radiation in this area was relatively high, so I only stayed long enough to shoot a couple of photos and skedaddle.

I really liked the decorations above the bell. It shows the dragon story that I mentioned earlier and it has this turtle.

From here we drove back up to Haramachi where I showed him a local shrine that has a horse statue and horse iconography all over. You can read more about it at my previous post (Misc. Minamisoma.)

From here we drove north to Soma. It is about a half hour away by car. We went to see a giant stone Buddha carbed into another cliff face. This one is much more modern, but its sized is quite impressive.

There was a shrine to the left that held a bunch of small figures of Japanese things, like monks, daruma and Buddha statues on a shelf.

It also had a great big incense burner. It came up to my rib cage and was full of ashes and dirt. It had a large opening where you put you lit incense and prayed. They have incense and lighters for you to use, and they ask that you donate 100 yen to do so. There was a small box in which you drop in your money. Nobody was around to make sure you did it either. I love how Japan works on the honor system.

There was also a small shrine that had a Jizo-sama standing surrounded by paper cranes and decorations.

I saw a spot to buy Omikuji (fortunes) and I got the highest level of luck, the “Great Blessing.”

From her we drove a short distance to Soma beach. There is a relatively tall viewing tower with a clock on the side.

After that we walked along the beach for a bit, I picked up a bumpy purple and white shell I liked. There was a spot on the beach where the sand had eroded one area of the beach like a river. It didn’t have a lot of water in it, just a puddle about an inch deep along the bottom. It was just wide enough that you could jump across it with effort and luck.

Mac backed up a ways and got a running start and juuuuuuust barely made it to the other side with a small splash. I was feeling overconfident and only backed up a little and gave a half assed jump. I splashed in the puddle a few inches from the other side and got my pants all wet! We laughed and continued on.

I saw a bridge a short distance away and wanted to know where it went. We found a plank of wood that we used to span the sand gorge and walked across it instead of jumping again.

We got back to the car and drove over the bridge. It ended in an intersection. Two ways had roadblocks, and one way was to a parking lot and docking area for boats. Down one of the blocked roads you could see a light house and tunnel, but sadly we were not able to check it out.

The sun was starting to get low in the sky, so we knew we had just enough time for one more destination: Mano Dam.

Mano Dam is a damn high up in the mountains on the west side of Minamisoma. It is quite close to the border separating Minamisoma from Itate. It is quite beautiful. The dam has many pictures of horses and samurai decorating the walking path and the various small buildings of the dam.

You could walk on top of the dam to the other side. There was a small park where you could look out over the exiting side of the dam, as well as a road going up the mountain on the other side of the reservoir. We walked around the tiny park for a minute and then returned to the car.

The sun was nearly set, so we didn’t stay too long. But the view of the sunlight reflecting off the reservoir was pleasant.

From here we drove back to Haramachi where Cormac had to catch a bus back to Fukushima City.
After he left I played some video games until bedtime. It was a really nice weekend.