あIsu is mountainous peninsula

southwest of Tokyo, near the provincial town of Mishima. We set off early on Saturday am, thus avoiding the weekend rush. Takashi - who is a fine driver - had rented a nice little Toyota sedan with a very high-tech dashboard, including a geisha-toned GPS Adviser. We made our way through the streets of Tokyo and Yokohama to Kamakura, where sits the Daibutsu (big buddha).

Note thurible in foreground, scale of the image by man with head obscured behind ut ti the right.

This is the famous, iconic colossus cast in bronze about the time the French were building the cathedrals in the 13th C. CE. As my earliest childhood image of Japan, this was a bid deal for me. The statue depicts not Gotama but Amitabha Buddha. This master is most attractive in his serenity and compassion. According to tradition, he was a monk (or possibly a king) named Dharmakara, who acquired so much merit over the course of countless lives that it is actually infinite. He can apply it to everyone else. (Remind you of anything?) He dwells in a paradise called the Pure Land, outside time and space, which is not Nirvana, but rather like the heaven of many peoples’ imagination, where he is still alive as a bodhisattva. Into this state of blessedness, he now welcomes all who say his name ten times during their life. They will see him as they die and he will escort them thither, where he will teach them Dharma until they are themselves perfect bodhisattvas, who can then return and help others. (This is sounding increasingly familiar.)

Takashi and Bill

Amitabha can be translated Infinite Light. A beautiful, hopeful serenity of Pure Land Buddhism is expressed in this remarkable image. Not unlike the great gothic cathedrals. (What was it about the 13th Century?)
Entering the temple precincts through a gate containing fierce guardian demons, one comes upon a holy well. As before entering a mosque or a church, one takes a ritual ablution (holy water). All three universal religions observe this tradition. There is something obviously natural about it: one purifies oneself, as best one can, before entering the Presence

There is also the donation chest for spare change, and a stationary thurible. This is an ornate, hollow, bronze sphere inside of which are placed burning sheaves of aromatic wood. (I acquired some merit this way.) It is also possible to go inside the statue, which is interesting mostly from an engineering point of view. As with the Ka’aba, the exterior is the point.



After an outdoor lunch (somewhat rare in Japan) overlooking some poor surfers trying to make something out of very underwhelming surf, we continued on through the Hankone prefecture, over Appalachian-like mountains. Takashi tells me that most of Japan is forested: second only to Finland in the percentage of forest land. So there is plenty of lumbering and saw-mills. And they need more. There are “too many trees and it’s bad for the mountains”. (I didn’t get that.)

We arrived at our destination in time for a nice soak in the hot-tub. This is a traditional Japanese Inn, in which dinner and breakfast are included and served in the room (and on the floor). After which the little, low table is set aside, and the futons rolled out. But I am ahead of the story.

This inn had two extras, the bath and the food. For here the bath is a natural hot-spring, very hard and salty, in an outdoor pool of mossy rocks, looking up into the lacey branches of all those damned trees. Then to the room in time for one of the most memorable dinners of my memory: this inn catches its own fish! The husband (who, I must say, looked just a little bit frazzled), goes out in a boat every morning to get it.

There was sashimi of eight varieties, of which I recognized tuna, halibut, and salmon. This was garnished by the whole body of one fish, whose head and tail poked merrily up through mounds of the raw slices of its body. On to the cooked daikon (which as I have learned, means big root), a kind of teepee made out of deep-fried grunion (just like smelt), little greens with peanut sauce, whole boiled prawns, a medley of vegetables in hot broth – not what we think of as vegetable soup, exactly, just consommé with few whole vegetables (cabbage leaves, julienne carrots, enoki



mushrooms, bamboo shoots, &c –), rice, and a horrible shellfish that looked like a huge snail or small conch, which you pull out of its shell, decapitate, and devour all the way from its ugly head to its slimy, black, corkscrew tail.

I ate this wretched delicacy with a smile, but then returned quickly to the shashimi boat (it was displayed on beds of shredded veggies in a model wooden boat) for some nice, sweet maguro with an extra smear of wasabi to get the disgusting taste out of my mouth, and completed the cleansing with some nice, cold, cooked bean sprouts in sesame oil.
Finally, at the end of the table opposite the sashimi lay a beautiful, whole, steamed snapper (or something like that, fairly flat and red), sauced in one of their sweet/soy creations. Desert was a little cup of mandarin oranges in yogurt.

Believe it or not, I actually left some shashimi on the boat.

The next day, there was a nice breakfast of kippers (again) and baloney (maybe they thought I was Dutch), veggies, rice, and tea. Then we set off on the return trip to Tokyo.

We drove around the curves of a road that reminded me in every respect of CA Route 1 eound Big Sur: high above the sea. overlooking forested islands and gigantic rocks and crashin waves. The difference is that here the spectacular cone of Fuji-san floats on the horizon aheadm with a range of lower, snow-covered peaks in attendance to the west. What a beautiful place.　
Nice of the cherries to blossom just for me, eh?


Wepassed several fishing villages, with dying nets and fish. Here:s a puicture of a device that whirls the mackerel (or whatever)around pretty fast to dry them quickly.

Suddenly, Takashi stopped the car, exclaimed something, and asked my permission to visit a little museum. It turned out to be a Buddhist temple, whose priest was a great 19th C. artist, a national treasure. He began as a plasterer in the village, but soon got so good that he developed his own style, in which actual three-dimensional figures alternate with trompe l'oeil effects, after a bit you don’t know what ias real anymore. Just right for a Buddhist temple. He decorated the whole thing, when he became a monk, and then chief priest. Every spot of the wooden building was carved and/or painted.

Most remarkable is the dragon fresco on the central ceiling. Like a tapestry I saw in the Dordogne, his eyes followed the viewer everywhere, but not only does this god stare at one wherever one stands, his expression also changes with each different viewpoint: fierce, melancholy, laughing, or serene. The docent also explained how the master painted so as to take advantage of the changing light throughout the day, which also causes the images to change.

Do you suppose there could be a lesson in all of this?

Up in the mountains again, we stopped at a big spa for more mineral bathing, and then to Chinese lunch (dim sum) before getting on the extremely-expensive tollway back to T-yo. There was about a half-hour of stop-and-go, but not that bad for a Sunday night. In bed by 10:00 after a couple of relaxing Poirot mysteries that I had not yet seen.

Since then, I have been working pretty steadily. Due to connectivity problems, I have to use Paul’s computer, which is a Mac with a Japanese keyboard, with many of the keys illegible anyway, so it’s slow going.