Category: 旅

Kobe, Hyogo

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The City of Kobe is representative of port cities of Japan. Thanks to the enough depth, the bay has been developing as a natural harbor from many years ago and today it is being an international port which is lively with 35,000 ships a year coming and going.

In 1995, this city suffered severely from the Great Hanshin earthquake. However, it was reconstructed rapidly and in 2012, Kobe was elected as the most comfortable city in this country and also the fifth best city to live in in the world by Swiss-ECA international.

Ports are the wide gateway to relations with other cities and foreign nations. The people who get together, come and go, would cultivate the land, bring riches there and would be the motive power of revival as well.

Kyoto, Kyoto

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Fushimi Inari-Taisha Shrine is located at the base of Mt. Inari in Kyoto, an ancient capital, and still attracts many worshippers. The whole mountain that commands a view of Kyoto city and has many Japanese ciders and brooks is considered to be a sacred place.

There are 10,000 of torii gates in the precincts of this shrine, particularly the approach comprised of 1,000 toriis built-up close together is called “Senbon Torii” and is regarded as the passage to the world of the God.

The omnipresence of the world which is beyond our comprehension. Each time you pass through a torii, your mind might be passing through the spirit would.

Takashima, Shiga

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Lake Biwa is an important source of water supply that is called “ a water vessel of Kansai”. It is the largest lake in this country that has been the foundation of the life of people from old times.

Shirahige shrine which was built on the west coast of this lake has been keeping its eye on the lives of people for 2000 years together with the lake. People around here give thanks to the blessing and pray for the eternity of it.

Stood at the water’s edge and faced toward a torii. A gust of wind blew away the low-hanging clouds over the surface of the lake and an aquatic bird flew away from the top of the gate. Shortly after that, sunlight streamed through the clouds.

Kanazawa, Ishikawa

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There is “Higashi-Chayagai” on the east side of the Asano River. This district which means the east tea stalls street was part of the castle town and has a history of 200 years.

From early evening, the soft tones of Japanese flutes, drums, and banjo, called samisen, would reach your ears along with the murmur of the stream. For a long time, the people here have done regular practice in Noh chants and the whole area started being called ’a street where songs fall from the sky’. 

Training, mastery, and the initiation from person to person. The graceful melody still falls on the street nightly and adds a flavor to the area.

Wajima, Ishikawa

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For the evening calm, all the coast was quiet. A thousand mirrors of the still water reflected subtle gradation of the sunset glow and each of those glittered with different colors.

The cluster of small rice terrace was formed by the idea of making an effective use of a limited land. Level the hillside into many stepped spaces, surround each plot with ridges, plow and fill with water, then grow sprouts of rice. A mere vacant land develops into a fruitful farmland.

Bring the cosmos to chaos, the scattered energy that is supposed to disappear changes into fruition. Our wisdom and perspiration are capable of bringing naught significance which is filled with joy.

Shirakawa, Gifu

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The pastoral landscape which has been handed down from generation to generation. It is the primal scene that anyone yearns for irrespective of whether they have seen it or not. The traditional lifestyle that relies on rice growing and the benefit from nature.

Bending down on the soil, laboring with their hands, cooperating with each other, people are engaged in most steps of food producing process. In those days which people used to devote their lifetimes entirely to farming for their living even without leisure, their experiences were the exact pure phenomenon of life. 

When you put all your energies into your aim without any doubt or other options, your self-consciousness would fade away, a moment turns into eternity, and the reciprocal influence between the environment and yourself would be in perfect harmony.

Saku, Nagano

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In the early morning, a wide kind of flowers was waiting for the rising sun. All of those were breathing fresh air and glittering with dew softly. 

Forming connections with water, wind, and light, they come to purify air, distribute nectar and treat others to their fruits. Then, they would run to seed with the assistance of fur, feather, and insect. 

To give and to receive are inseparably related. Those are one and the same. One receives the life then supports others, and gets help then leave their posterity.

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Giving hues and scents which are loaded in the life of flowers. To celebrate joys and glories, or lamenting over partings.

The saying that ‘dumplings rather than flowers,’ (pudding before praise,) admonish us not to seek our immediate interests in disregard of elegance.

We, the human beings may be the only existence that can — even that must— give priority to the things which have no actual profits.

Nagatoro, Saitama

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While descending to the Kanto Plains, the stream which had a strong current calmed down and turned the color into deep green. Followed one stream and noticed the whole life which is blessed with the benefit of water.

The being that can never go beyond the transmigration of water even for a single moment. If we can not exist without it, water really is a part of the life phenomenon.

We appear to require the liquid of life, but, as a matter of fact, Water itself might be calling us.

Minakami, Gunma

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Turned off the coastline into the inland area. There was a river along the way which goes over mountains, and it was splashing around the slopes as if it was breathing hard.

Passing the cold winter together with plants, the circulation of snow water permeates through every heart of the mountains to the ends of the earth like a blood current of living things.

Floating faintly in the sky, beating on rocks hard in mountain streams, running calmly across planes. As if it were the endless vicissitudes of mind, the circulating water travels changing its form to make flowers open, and to quench us.

Nagaoka, Niigata

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As if they know the color of a blue sky, bright flowery waves occupy the earth. The air is so perfumed with the intoxicating fragrance that it is dyed yellow and then waft into our brains sharply like needles.

Knowing the joy to bloom in spring, to rustle in the breeze, to bear fruit, they are expressing it in the color, in the nectar, and in the fragrance. The color is a color of delight. 

At under our nose, there are each single flowers. When we look over the whole field, they are as one. Since whichever individuals accept themselves as they are, the whole flower field forms a unitary life.

Tsuruoka, Yamagata

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At the base of a huge overhanging rock toward the sea, there stands a shrine named “Yayoke” which means ”evade arrows”. “Tateiwa”, which means “standing rock” has the same pronunciation as “shield rock” in Japanese. It is said that in ancient times, people took cover from enemy’s arrows behind this rock in a civil war.

Shimenawa and Torii — a rope and a gate specific to Shinto — are the symbols of the border between the earth and the great beyond. It is said that Gods exist in nature from old times. People have believed that especially magnificent spots would be sacred places, and many mythologies have been handed down for generations.

Our hearts, which are also beyond human knowledge, catch the wonders of nature and its Creation, divide off from our world and interpret those to be beyond human knowledge. It is not analysis but intuition, not wishes but prayers, not demand but belief.

Sakata, Yamagata

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Sought the seashore for the westering sun. The white sand overflowed into a back alley. On the wide beach were a few people to see the daylight off mutely. Waves rolled in on the sands.

Air dyed blue and scarlet together touched cheeks and breezed away. The whole sky was setting down over the sea, the whole sea was rising up to the sky gradually. The ceaseless sound of waves had already faded away from the awareness before knew it.

Or rather the consciousness unified into the sound itself. Melting into it, heartstrings would not hear the sound anymore. All we can do was to recognize the everlasting moment of dusk.

Akita, Akita

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Fly, swim, hunt, and sleep. At times sing, At times sob. Living without any school, office, lodging, nor grocery. Neither any nursery to leave children, any organ to depend on, nor any property to put in a bank.

Even though lost its one leg, standing on the water, standing on the air, it would be living as long as the Nature permits. It continues to practice the existence. From coasts to coasts, ages to ages, moments to moments. Riding the tide, sailing on air currents, with the lapse of time.

Learn, work, settle, and consume. What will we finally get when we have sold the whole ourselves out short, being buried under the material possessions. Not only one of the legs. What can we give to the world if we could devote ourselves, heart and soul.

Fukaura, Aomori

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At the water’s edge, whether the sounds abated or the heart became calm. Behind the clouds, whether the sun sinks below the horizon or the ocean covers up the sun. Toward evening, whether time is passing away or consciousness perceive transitions.

There would be no hearing when sounds do not exist, there would not be “here” when there is not “there”, there would be no time when there is no consciousness.

Time can be experienced only by consciousness. Neither time nor space does not exist without consciousness. All the things out there that we believe those presences are just experienced by consciousness in here, which involves the whole possibility.