May 2013

May started off with "Golden Week" a week with so many holidays thata most people take off the whole week.  We took the opportunity to visit Hakone. 

The first stop we made at Hakone was to walk in the Ancient Cedar Forest.  These Cedar trees were planted in the early 1600’s to provide shelter along the road between Kyoto and Tokyo (old and new capitols).  They are amazing trees—large, tall, and straight. 

It is a beautiful place in the mountains with a lake. We took a "pirate ship" across the lake. 

Here are some of the people we met!

There is a ropeway and tram that take people over a mountain.

There also are a lot of hot springs because it is a volcanic area.In the hot springs they cook and hard boiled eggs, but the sulphur of the springs turns the eggs black.Of course, everyone who goes there has to have a hard-boiled egg! 

 

 

 

This man is moving the eggs around in the hot spring.

Yum, black hard-boiled eggs and a sulfur smell!

 

 

Here is a view of Mt. Fuji--with the top covered with clouds.

 Here are some of the people we met!

We took the tram and a train on over the mountain.  At the bottom of the other side of the mountain was a quaint town with a stream.

Back in Tokyo, this is a beautiful Buddhist temple with Azaleas in bloom.  Azaleas have been very beautiful in Tokyo!

More Azaleas!

 

 

Some Japanese friends we met in Europe last summer took us to Ukai Toriyama for dinner.  They have beautiful gardens and little traditional tea room type houses to eat in.  Above you will see little monuments to children.

Their little boy is playing some traditional games.  Like all little boys he likes to build and then knock things down.

They also have a 1-month old baby.

We ate traditional Japanese food, cooker at our table over a little cooker.  Here is a fish on a stick.

 

Some members of our Eikaiwa (English conversation) class came to a ward social.

We were delighted to spend a couple of days in training sessions with mission presidents and their wives throughout our area which includes Japan, Korea, Micronesia, and Guam.

From the Tokyo Tower (above) we had a nice view of the city (below).

There are 35 million people in Tokyo--and many skyscrapers.  If you look carefully you can see a bridge over the port and where the river meets the sea in the distance.

 

Eating donuts with the missionaries at "Krispy Creme"

Japanese are very enthusiastic about sumo wrestling, so we went to a match.  It was more interesting than I thought because people explained to us what was going to happen.  They were excited that we were interested in going.  Un fortunately the lighting did not allow good pictures.

Sumo is an ancient sport and has been around about 1500 years.  It has religious roots.  It had few rules until 1603 when the Shogunate was united and sumo groups were organized. 

One Saturday we visited "Nokogiriyama" which means something like "mountain of jagged teeth."  You can see the unusual and rock formations near the top (below).  The cliffs are perfectly straight and squared.

 

We rode a tram to the top.

 

 

The view of the ocean from the top was beautiful.  Also we enjoyed seeint the many shades of green on the mountains on the way up.

Nokogiriyama was built in the 700’s as a Buddhist temple.  There is a huge Buddha which was carved (along with over 1500 smaller Arhats—novices who had undergone spiritual awakening) by Jingoro Eirei Ono and his 27 apprentices who dedicated their lives to this.  It took about 20 years.  The large Buddha is 28 meters high and is carved out of the rock on the mountain.  There is another Buddha that is also very tall, but is only engraved on the surface of a flat rock surface.  We hiked around, passing many small shrine areas with other Arhat statues, each with a different face.  Some of the statues had been vandalized by anti-Buddhist people in the past.  It is hard to imagine how they carved not only the statues, but the straight and squared cliff walls. 

This area is dedicated to children who have died.  The little red things at the bottom are tiny budha statues that people buy and donate to this pile in memory of someone they loved. 

Nokogiriyama was truly an amazing place to see!