Adventures with Tye!: Day 5. Tochigi, Saitama and Tokyo

5/3/2017

The day started bright and early, we got ready and hit the road. Our first destination was the capitol city of Tochigi prefecture, Utsunomiya. We decided to go to a section of the city that was historically a famous quarry. Everywhere you looked there were stonemasons, old graveyards and Buddha statues. I felt like I was surrounded, there were definitely more than your average Japanese city. The stone cliffs in the area are made of tuff stone.

We went first to Oya-ji. It is a Buddhist temple that was built around some stone carvings of Kannon-sama and some Buddhas cared directly into the cliff wall. The monks told us that we could take pictures of the outside of the temple, but pictures inside were forbidden.

The temple built right into the side of the cave face. The carvings are inside the building on the sides of the caves.

There were dozens of stone Buddhas lining the cliffs and cared into the cliffs around the temple courtyard.

After taking in our fill of the outside of the temple we went inside. These cliff carvings are in much better condition than the ones in Minamisoma. The building is also in much better condition and very well-lit. It doesn’t scare me like the ones in Minamisoma do.  I could have stayed there all day looking at the amazing reliefs. We were not able to take any photographs inside, here are some pictures I found on the internet.

This shows the first altar and relief carving of Kannon when you enter the temple.

Detail of that first Kannon carving.

This is the image they give you on a postcard when you visit and buy your tickets.

The open layout, maintained walkway, and big windows that let in a lot of light made this a much better experience than the cannon and Buddha reliefs in the Fukushima relief carvings.

Details to some of the Buddha and Kannon carvings.

Next we walked next to a little museum next to the temple. It is full of archaeological artifacts that were discovered on the temple grounds and immediate area that date back to the Jomon period. It includes bones from various animals, like boar and deer, as well as arrowheads, and pieces of broken pottery.

But the main attraction of the museum was this skeleton. It is the skeleton of a man found on the temple grounds. It dates back to the Jomon Period. The skeleton is over 11,000 years old!

An artistic recreation of what they think this person looked like.

After the museum we walked around the temple gardens. There were beautiful flowers, and statues. There were a couple of ponds with koi fish in them. There was also a small Buddhist shrine on a small island on one end of the pond. You had to cross a bridge to get over to the shrine. There were also two statues of white snakes on the ground on each side of the shrine. I don’t know what their meaning is, but they were pretty cool.

Gorgeous flowers that were all over the temple grounds!

There was also a monk graveyard and a strange looking torii gate with many statues placed on top of it. There were kitsune, tanuki, komainu and dragons as well as the two gods who stand in the gate alcoves at Buddhist temples.

There was also a small Buddhist Monk cemetery behind that strange torii gate and bridge.

There was a hiking trail that lead up into the hill behind the temple. A map showed that it ended in a lookout-point above the temple. We were short on time, however, so we were not able to go up the hill.

As we left the temple grounds, I turned around to take a look at the entrance to the temple. It was old and looked really cool.

Across the street from the temple is a massive statue of Kannon-sama carved into the quarry cliffs. It stands over 88 feet (27 meters) tall!  It too is carved from tuff stone. There is a staircase that you can ascend that goes behind the head of the Daikannon, but we didn’t go up. The Kannon statue was finished in 1954 after WWII. It was built in remembrance of those who died in WWII and as a hope to world peace.

The pathway between the Temple (to the left) and the Great Kannon (behind the viewer.)

After that we had to head out to the town of Higashimatsuyama in Saitama Prefecture to pick up my friend Courtney from the train station. From here we went to nearby Yoshimi to see the 100 caves of Yoshimi.

On the road again.

We first stopped at a nearby temple called Iwamuro Kannon-do.

It is a two story temple built in between the opening of a crevice of the cliff side. The first floor is quite wide-open and you can pass directly to the cliff crevice behind the temple.

It also has a small room and a short passage that have been carved into the cliff side and houses dozens of stone statues of Buddha. These Buddhas have strips of paper with writing taped and glued to them. When the wind blows through the passageway, it rustles the paper. It is said that when the paper rustles it is the Buddhas whispering to each other. It is called the Hall of Whispers.

There are two staircases you can climb to reach the second floor. On the second floor there are some pictures hung up around the roof and you can see many cross beams that crisscross up until the roof ends. They look really cool!

There is also a shrine that is behind a wooden cage. From here there is a beautiful lookout over the valley.

We went down the stairs and out the back of the temple where there were steps carved into the rock up the steep cliffs. One lead up to a hole in the rock that was shaped like a heart. It is called “The Womb.”

There was this Buddha statue at the top of some metal stairs.

There was another set of stepped in the stone but it was quite steep. I looked up towards the direction that the steps lead and saw a ledge cared into the rock above. I knew there were more Buddha statues up there, and I wanted to check them out. I started climbing the steep steps and I realized that I was completely capable of scaling the cliff side, I was soon after hit with the realization that I would never be able to get back down. So I quit while I still had all my limbs in once piece and we headed back out of the temple.

After the temple we went to see the 100 caves of Yoshimi. There are actually 219 caves, and not 100, but I didn’t name the place. It is a burial site from the Kofun period of Japan (250-540 A.D.) The Kofun period is the earliest period of recorded history in Japan.

The caves are dotted in and around a large hill. The caves are small tombs that have a narrow entrance and open up to a larger interior. Many caves are blocked off by bars and you cannot enter. The areas blocked off inside the hill are because it is dangerous to venture further. Fortunately there are many caves that they do allow you to crawl into. They are way cool!

First we went into the passageways inside the hill. It was dark and a little creepy, but it was well lit enough and big enough that I wasn’t scared at all. These passageways used to be a lot smaller and used to have individual tombs as well, but during WWII the Japanese army came through and thought the tombs would be a great place to store weapons and hide… stuff. So they destroyed many of the tombs and passageways inside the hill to house the stuff.

As a result the passageways are large and you can see the outlines of tombs that were previously there.

After we were done walking around the inside if the hill, we went to explore the tombs on the outside of the hill. There was a staircase and path leading all the way to the top.

The caves have places that look like beds. Some caves have more than one, so there used to be multiple bodies entombed within.

Many of the caves also have kanji and other writings and drawings carved into the insides of the tombs. Fascinating!

Overgrown cave. This one was pretty small. Too small that I didn't feel comfortable going in.

Zoom in!

It was pretty dark inside, so its a little blurry, but you can still see the markings pretty well.

Body spot and wall carvings.

Two bed spots for two bodies.

In some of the caves you can see a green moss glowing in the darkness. The moss is called Shistostega, or Goblin Gold. The caves with the moss are blocked off so you can’t go inside and step on the moss. It glows neon green! It looks like someone splashed a broken glow stick around the inside of the cave! It’s pretty cool. We later found out that the moss isn’t bio-luminescent and doesn’t glow itself, but it merely reflects light that shines on it. It still looks amazing! Here is what the moss looked like the day we were there, and a picture from inside the tiny museum next to the caves.

Here is the view from the top of the hill of the Yoshimi caves.

At the top there was a lot of empty space as well as more hills, but they were cordoned off with a fence. There was also a house at the top, we speculated that it was used for storage of items to help with upkeep, or possibly the house of a caretaker.

When we finished looking at the caves we went to a gift shop near the entrance where there was a small museum in the back of the shop. It was here that the shop owner came over and started talking to us about the caves. He showed us pictures from the turn of the 20th century of the Yoshimi hills with people dressed in old-timey clothes walking around. It was so cool!  He said that the caves used to house bodies from the Kofun period, but when they were rediscovered many centuries ago, the bodies were missing and only grave goods were inside the tombs. There were things like beads and pottery, but no bones. We asked the man where the bones are or where they went, it was here that he got really excited and told us “That’s what I thought, too! I also wondered where the bones went, but we don’t know! How interesting is that?!” The man’s enthusiasm was contagious and we were all wrapped up in the mystery of these caves for a bit.

After we explored the caves and surrounding grounds to our heart’s content, we headed out to Hachioji city in Tokyo Prefecture. We were a bit early to arrive at our Airbnb, so we drove around the city for a little bit. One side of town has a popular onsen, so we went there to kill some time, but unfortunately they segregated the sexes so we didn’t end up staying.

We drove around and saw may big and extravagant buildings, there was definitely money in this city. I don’t know why this city is so popular, but there is definitely something bringing the tourists to this area. I’ll update this page if I ever find out.

From here we went to our Airbnb stay. It turned out to be what we all described as a Hippy Commune in the mountains of Hachioji City in Tokyo Prefecture.  There were seven adults and three children in the main area of the house all rushing around and getting things done. The lady of the house was named Chie and one of the children was named Subaru. I am pretty bad with names, however, and I sadly don’t remember the others. They were all so excited to talk to us. Most of them spoke English, but they were super excited to find out that both Courtney and I spoke Japanese and would switch back and forth between the two languages. Because Tye could not speak Japanese they did their best to speak English around him. They were all super nice!

Chie is in the blue shirt.

This child fell asleep this way.

One of the families that was there that night did not lie in the house, but were friends of the other two families that lived there. They were staying the night in one of the guest rooms like we were.
The house itself was a traditional Japanese house, and it is over 300 years old! It was such a cool experience! It had been remodeled in parts to accommodate modern living, like electricity, plumbing and gas.

They told us what they did for a living. It turns out that they travel all around Japan and to different parts of the world, namely America and Canada, but probably other places as well, to teach workshops on how to make your own types of food, grow things organically, grow their own bacteria cultures for food, and how to live in a natural, Hippy lifestyle. Earlier, before we arrived, the entire group of people had spent the day making their own miso soup and doing food prep for the meal they were going to cook us. They told us that they grow their own cultures of good bacteria and they use it in many things they cook, including the miso soup.

Our first course of food was a mixed bean dish with carrots and lemons mixed in. They also served us some wine to drink with dinner. The lemons were cooked in a way I had never experienced before, it tasted strange, but it did compliment the beans and carrots. I didn’t like it when I had a large chunk of the lemon in my mouth by itself, though. They had a barbecue sauce and a yogurt sauce to drizzle over the beans for extra flavor.

Our next round of food was rice and some chicken that they had made. It was covered in a sauce and some nuts, peanuts maybe. This chicken was so moist and delicious! I loved it! It was here that I was getting full, and I was having a difficult time finishing my chicken, even though it was so delicious. But there were more courses to come, so I unbuttoned my pants and got ready to stuff myself more.
After that they pulled out a sample plate of the miso they had made earlier, along with some amesake to share. They had made three different kinds of miso, there was one that was black and it was my favorite, the flavor was so strong. The other two were a lighter brown color, and they were good, but I could taste the fermentation stronger in those ones than I could the black one.  How I wish I could have bought some of the black miso soup off of them!

After this they served their homemade miso soup. It was really good. Miso is traditionally the last food to be served in a dinner, so I was pleased to see it arrive. I was so full!

It was about this time that the little girl of the family was getting fussy and needed to go to bed. But she was not angry enough to not blow us all kisses on her way out.

After that they brought out the amazake that they had made. It is a sweet, non-alcoholic sake that is traditional drink in Japan. It was smooth and creamy. He served us two kinds, one that was plain and one that had been flavored with figs. I liked the one with figs better, but the normal flavor was also fantastic! Next time they come to America I may want to go to their workshop and see if I can’t learn how to make some of these wonderful dishes myself!

Fig amezake on the left, normal amezake in the middle and some mugicha tea on the right.

I was in love with this little cup!

After this we got ready for bed. We slept on futons on the tatami floors. I personally love sleeping on the floor, I find it comfortable. Tye, however, hates it.