keshiki
today i climbed a mountain to visit a temple with a breathtaking view.
heres some breathtaking view / mountain climbing music:
why would you do this
so, climbing a mountain is pretty far outside the wheelhouse of “things i would be expected to ever do ever”.
this sort of final 25% or so of the trip is firmly in the “no plans whatsoever” territory. i have not looked up anything about any of the cities i am visiting for the remainder of the trip, and am just deciding kinda on the spot when i arrive in each city what i will be doing. for sendai, i got to the hotel and googled “things to do in sendai”. the first result was matsushima bay, and the second result was going to yamagata and climbing 1,100 steps up to the summit of mt. hoju to visit risshaku-ji (more often called yamadera). both of these things are said to be among the most beautiful sights in all of japan. having done both now, they are right. i am far from an expert on everything japan, but i have seen a pretty good chunk of this country. yamadera is without question the most beautiful thing i have ever seen. i think everyone who comes to japan should go see it. it is 1,100 stairs. but if i can do it, anyone can.
getting there
the train to yamagata runs only once an hour. i wanted to get there early, to try to beat the heat and any potential crowds. so i got on the 7:14 am train. it takes about 90 minutes to get there. it is rude to take photos on trains, so i didn’t get any pictures out the train windows. but riding a train through the japanese countryside is a great experience.
once i got there, i could see the my destination immediately from the train platform.
there it was, taunting me from up high.
the climb
one of the things this temple is most famous for is that it was visited by matsuo bashō, perhaps the most well known japanese poet of all time, during his famous “Oku no Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North)” jorney in 1689. he wrote a well-known haiku about this temple after visiting it:
“閑けさや 岩にしみいる 蝉の声
shizukesa ya / iwa ni shimiiru / semi no koe
ah, the quiet, but piercing the rocks — the cry of the cicada”
one of the statues in the above images is bashō. the seated man with the hat on. the other statue, the bald man, is his traveling companion kawai sora.
i kept going and saw an interesting sign:
i wish i had seen some monkeys, but there were none out today. i would have even let them attack me!
honestly, the climb up was not as bad as i was expecting it to be. being outdoors and early morning made it much more manageable. i am not calling it easy, i took quite a few breaks and was wiped out completely by the time i was back in sendai. but i went into this thinking i may give up and turn around. it wasn’t that bad.
and it was a really beautiful climb. there are tons of statues and carvings on the way up.
breathtaking view
they said at the entrance that it takes most people 45 minutes to get up. it took me 90, because i stopped for photos or to take a break a few times. but i finally reached the top and was immediately rewarded
bonus climb
there’s actually a bit of an extra climb to reach the top / temple grounds after this. on the way there is a little stand to get a goshuin stamp, too. this is definitely my most prized stamp. i have quite a few of them in my little book now.
a hundred or two stairs later, and i reached the temple grounds.
on the way back down the mountain, a school trip was arriving. and i am pretty sure it was multiple schools at once. there were 2 or 3 hundred kids on their way up. if i had to guess, they were like 8 or 9 years old. and their teachers must have told them to say konnichiwa (hello) to every single person they walked by. i heard hundreds of hellos. some of the kids said hello instead, but i said konnichiwa back anyway. some of them were completely mind blown that a non japanese person knows the word for hello, and i found that extremely entertaining.
i took very few photos on the way down, since its the exact same route i took up.
this was a super worthwhile day. i took a train back to sendai, and was incredibly exhausted. edited some photos and made some blog posts and went to bed very early. the step count feels unfair here, because its not that high. but it was all stairs so its more than it seems like, i guess.
