Last Days in Japan

Sorry for the delay in posting all. The last couple days have been hectic as we did some traveling to meet relatives, as well as run some errands closer to home for parents and Baby. We did not go to Tochigi Prefecture as stated before, but instead visited some other relatives within my wife’s home Prefecture of Kanagawa, right next to Tokyo, which is it’s own district like Washington D.C. in the US. Instead of using the kanji ken (県), they use the kanji to (都) instead, as in tōkyōto (東京都).

Anyways, some of my wife’s relatives live in a more remote part of Kanagawa prefecture, close to the mountains. My father-in-laws childhood home is still occupied by one of his relatives and they once told me a wild boar had attacked the dog in the backyard one time. So it’s a bit rustic. There are lots of famous inns and hot springs here too, and we’ve had lunch there in the past in one such place.

This time around, we visited our relatives to pay respects to the ancestors* since my wife and daughter hadn’t been back in a while, so we stopped at a city called Ebina (海老名) along the way, where my wife’s aunt was buried. The temple where she is buried is a Shingon temple called Kokubuji (国分寺), and they seem to know my wife’s family and invited us in. My father in law mentioned my interest in Buddhism, so the priest took us up to the main altar above.

The altar was amazing. It was a typical Japanese Shingon Buddhist altar room, with the middle area containing a special platform, ritual instruments, and the two Mandalas on the back wall: the Diamond Realm Mandala on the left (kongōkai) and the Womb Realm on the right (taizōkai) on the right. The central image was a statue of Yakushi Nyorai (薬師如来) the Medicine Buddha. The statue looked in many ways like a statue of Amida Buddha shown here from my old temple, but the left hand was holding a jar of medicine, as is typical of the Medicine Buddha. The Medicine Buddha is thought to be a representation of the Buddha as a doctor, curing the ills of the world. I actually thought it was Amida Buddha at first until the priest explain who it was.

Flanked on the left and right were the twelve warrior generals (juni shinshō 十に神将) who protect the Medicine Buddha, but the two attendant bodhisattvas, Nikkō (日光, or “sunlight”) and Gakkō (月光, or “moonlight”) were not there. The priest told us behind the main statue of the Medicine Buddha was a chamber containing another statue of the Medicine Buddha and the two Bodhisattvas they only opened once every 12 years for the public.

I told the priest that interest in Shingon Buddhism was growing in the west, so he ran off and came back with a journal of Shingon studies published by Koyasan University back in 1990. It’s in English (whoever wrote it was a native speaker I think), and was a special edition of the journal. Since the priest doesn’t speak English, I presume that he might have had this lying around for a while, but in any case, the articles have been very interesting, and when I get back to Ireland, I’ll try to summarize some of this stuff. Shingon Buddhism is not well understood in the West, so anything I can disseminate may help.

Yesterday was the 7th of January, and in Japan they call this day nanakusa (七草), or “seven grasses”. It’s not a holiday, but they have this tradition to eat a certain dish for breakfast, like a rice porridge, with seven traditional leafy vegetables in there. I watched a TV show on it yesterday for kids, with Baby of course, and the seven grasses are various leaves from native plants. The porridge was pretty light and earthy tasting; quite good. I hope to find out more about it.

Today is my last whole day in Japan, so I will either go visit the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, or maybe see Sensoji temple in Asakusa. We haven’t decided yet. In any case, this is my last post in Japan, so thanks for reading, and please bear with me until I get back to Ireland.

Thanks!

Namuamidabu

* – By this I mean that Japanese visit the places their ancestors are buried, tidy up the gravesite, pour a little water over it, light incense and bow in respect.