The bulk of my day today was spent, lost, in Narita.
For those people who have looked at coming to Japan, Narita is a familiar word. It is, in fact, the town containing the airport with the most flights to and from Japan; the airport is also called Narita.
I went there this morning with two other people from the boarding house: a couple who came to Japan to teach together. We all had need of the internet, and they were familiarizing themselves with the area, as it’s where they’ll be posted after their observations are done. I finished with the internet first, and they sent me on to Narita’s tourist attraction.
It turns out that there is a temple in Narita. It is the second (or third; sources disagree) largest temple in Japan. It turns out that it is a very large temple indeed. More accurately, it is a temple complex. You enter the front gate and walk up a winding road, with carvings and stones with words on them flanking you on both sides. I’d say that it was a graveyard, but the spacing of the stones and the terrain they were on made that seem unlikely.
I’m going to number the next paragraphs, because this is the best way to describe my experience exploring the temple complex. After each paragraph, roll a normal, six-sided die. Then go to the paragraph of that number.
1. At the end of the road, you find a large, impressive temple building. You can go up the stairs, and look past barriers at the interior, which is impressive. Then, because that seemed a bit too quick, you walk around the temple to see it from all angles. From the back, there is a path.
2. At the end of the path, you find a courtyard, with shrines scattered throughout, some of which are burning smoky incense. In a far corner, a truck is crunching over the gravel and flagstones, carrying gardening equipment. There are many paths leading from here, some of which obviously go to temples.
3. You walk along the path, which plunges through deep and silent forests. The shade here is a wonderful relief, and the scenery is astounding. A stream chatters by, and you walk to its source: a waterfall. There are stepping stones across the stream. Past them, you find a secluded, open-topped room. It is formed of mortared stone, but it is built directly into the hillside. A small trickle of water drops from above; the little brother of the waterfall 20 feet to the side. It has no apparant purpose, and no explanation. You move back to the path, and continue on.
4. You walk down a steep, stone staircase. At the bottom is a beautiful fountain, which might well be gravity-fed. There is a small area around the fountain, apparantly just to watch it. Unfortunately, it is very hot at the viewing area in the direct sun, so you continue on.
5. The path passes by a number of small, ornate buildings. These look like smaller versions of the big impressive temples, but they are completely closed to the public. There are big signs in Japanese, and smaller ones in English which have obviously been translated by the lowest bidder, telling of the name and works of the saint interred in each one.
6. The path here is wide and modern. Discretely concealed behind some greenery, there is a small building with two doors, and the international icons for *MEN* and *WOMEN* beside each. Beside the building are four vending machines.
I suppose you can say that the entirety of Japan is a weird mixture of the modern and the traditional, but this temple really brought that home for me. In some respects, it’s incredibly templey: people speaking quietly and dressed respectfully, shaved monks in bright robes occasionally walking past, and an incredible ambiance. Everywhere, there were wonderful sights, smells, sounds. On the other hand, all the main temples were wheelchair-accessable. There were restrooms and vending machines, discretely concealed, everywhere. There was an active gardening staff, complete with trucks, leaf-blowers, and other power tools.
After wandering around in the temple bit for a few hours, I decided to take the train back to Yotsukaido, which is the town with the boarding house. This turned out to be a surprising challenge. From the train, to the internet cafe, to the temple was simple and direct. The way back, however, was not. I believe the problem was that instead of retracing my steps precisely on the way out of the temple, I just left the first exit I saw. The short of it is that I spent about an hour and a half of the hottest part of the day walking back and forth, occasionally accosting random passers-by and asking “Excuse me, where is the train? Densha wa doko desu ka?”
I did finally make my way back to the train station, but by the time I got there, school had apparantly just let out. There were any number of children in uniform wandering the streets, from the very young ones with round yellow hats to the older ones so often seen in anime.
As I passed one such group, which happened to be composed of four girls that I would estimate to be in high school, one of them called out: “Haro!” I said “Hello!” back, and the group of them broke into giggling at the audacity of whoever it was who attempted English on the gaijin.
It’s true that I stand out here, and that people take notice, but it’s much subtler than I would have expected from just reading guidebooks and accounts of people who’ve come here. It’s true that I’ll occasionally catch someone staring at me, but it’s actually pretty uncommon. I have not yet heard any child scream “gaijin!” and run of. The vast majority of people I’ve seen here, children or not, take no notice of me, just as you would expect were I traveling anywhere else.
It’s worth noting that I’ve basically given up trying to figure out what I eat, when I eat things here. Next time you’re in a grocery market, pretend that none of the writing made any sense at all to you. See how much you could figure out just from the packaging. Don’t forget to ignore all canned goods, as there aren’t any, and remember that fruit is grossly overpriced. It just isn’t worth the effort to plan things in advance. It works almost as well to just browse the isles, stop randomly when attractive packaging catches your eye, choose the nearest thing with the lowest approximate unit price, and move on.
Unfortunately, it seems that my tourest days are drawing to a close: I got an email today laying out my training schedule, and it eats the rest of this week. Furthermore, Saturday I’m meeting the teacher who I’ll be replacing, so that he can show me all the points of interest in the local area. It’s therefore unlikely that I’ll have much interesting to write about until next Sunday.
Until then,
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