Day 356

JAPAN - NARITA CITY (DAY 1)

During the last week of July my school had a vacation, so I went to Japan!  It was a chaotic but wonderful trip, and I learned a lot.  I dove with whale sharks, ate cheap sushi, and drove on the left side of the road.  I navigated without a GPS, through English-less carpark traps and winding highways, and only veered into oncoming traffic twice.  I was helped by scores of incredibly kind Japanese people, and--big bonus--I got to speak TONS of Japanese!

Why is that a big bonus?  Because I studied Japanese for several years, and I never get to use it.  Mostly these days I only use Korean, and when I speak Korean I feel like a chubby 7-year-old with a speech impediment.  But when I speak Japanese, I feel ADORABLE.  I love it.

Due to a mistake on my part--pro tip: always double-check the dates before booking a non-refundable flight--I ended up with about 12 hours in mainland Japan.  I flew into the Tokyo Narita airport, which is actually more than an hour away from Tokyo.  I decided to stay in nearby Narita City, which was one subway stop away from the airport and had a cheap hostel.  I got in pretty late, but I woke up early the next morning to check out the only sight in Narita: the Narita-san Temple!

Sadly, it was raining when I woke up.  I hate the rain.  But I put on my raincoat and grabbed an umbrella, because nothing was going to stop me from seeing literally the only thing to see in Narita. Just to make sure I had enough time, I left at 8am.

These guys are making bread, I think?

Just like in Korea, all these structures have names... and just like in Korea, I can't be bothered to remember them.

The main gate.

Uhhh, maybe for water?

Semi-useless mini-gate.

Water!  I love these things.  It's like a less sanitary version of a drinking fountain because the cups are shared, but the water is also straight from a mountain (supposedly) so hopefully the two cancel each other out.

Yessssss waaaaaaaaateeeeeeeer.

This water is cold and delicious.  If you are one of those people who say that all water tastes the same, all I can say to you is...  本当にバカじゃないの?!?!

(If you can't read Japanese, it says "Honto ni BAKA ja nai no?!?!"  You can probably guess, but it means "Are you an idiot?!?!")

I'm digging the wooden cups, they look very classy.  In Korea they usually use large plastic bowls with handles, which hold a lot of water but also look out-of-place at a fancy old temple.

Super-sweet dragon, awww yeah.  Protecting that water.

Another view of the gate, from inside the temple.

Looks like somebody reaaaally liked chess?

I'm not even going to pretend I have any idea what this is.

Inside is a pretty pond area with turtle and koi, and lots of special rocks everywhere.

At the top of the stairs are more temple structures!  The big one in the back is the main temple, I think, and there was a service going on.  I went inside and sat for a while.  Buddhist ceremonies and chanting are extremely relaxing.

The whole interior of the main hall is gold.  There are just long chains of gold falling from the ceiling.  It's very beautiful, but you'll just have to come see it for yourself because it's difficult to explain and I have no photos.

You're not supposed to take photos inside the temples, and while I might not be a follower, I can respect the holy house of somebody else's religion.  Seriously, it really makes me mad when people take photos in places they're not supposed to (I'm looking at you, Chinese tourists), and it makes me really REALLY mad when it's a religious place.  If you take photos in a clearly-marked "no photo" temple, you are a great big bag of dicks and I hope your photos turn out awful and underexposed.


Anyway, here's an incense-burning station:

Still going strong.

Here's a three-story pagoda that definitely was the highlight of Narita-san's buildings.  Unfortunately the lighting was bad, but I've done my best to color-adjust the photos to the most realistic setting.  (If you think I've over-corrected, I really have to disagree; they repaint these things all the time, the colors really are extremely bright.)

With some surrounding buildings.

All alone.  What is up with that blue thing?  Totally doesn't fit the color scheme.

The main hall is right next to the pagoda.

A different view.  I really like this thing.

There's the stuff behind it.

There's also stuff inside the stuff behind the pagoda.
No, those aren't Nazi marks.  It's the opposite direction of the Nazi swastika, and it's the symbol of Buddhism.

I'm not totally clear on the differences between Shinto (the 'religion' of Japan, although most Japanese claim to be non-religious) and Buddhism, but there's the Buddhist symbol (the swastika) on some things here.  Wikpedia tells me that this temple is "Shingon Buddhist," so... not Shinto, I guess?

Okay I know you might be getting bored of these but from this angle
you can see the undersides of each story of the pagoda! 

Check out the detailed wood carvings on either side of the door.

Above the door.

The main doors of the main hall are open!

Corner detail.

More corner multi-story detail.  

Alright, that was the last one.  I promise.  Here's a rock (one of many) with a fancy etching:

Here's a structure that was built really recently--it's hard to tell how old things are because they're painted so often, but I think it's about as old as my sister.  Not even old enough to drive in Japan.

Here's a map of the temple complex:

All in Japanese, of course.  Not a whole lot of helpful English signage in this country.

Behind the main hall is a steep hill covered in rocks and statues.  Look closely and you'll see them. 

The statues are evenly placed and have turned a blue-ish color.

Closer up.

Next to the main hall is another hall.  You can't go inside this one, but you can look in from the outside.

Incense burner in the front.

View from the front of the temple.  Fortunately this was all covered, so it was a nice rain shelter.

Some of the buildings had water collection systems, including this one.  It was raining all morning, so I got to see them in action.  This water comes from the roof and is channeled into very big buckets.

Bucket.

This building had lots of 3D wood carvings!  They're all protected by wire, but they are very impressive and I hope you can make them out through the wire.

It's 3D!

This one had hundreds of faces, it was about 8 feet long.  Each face is a little different.

A depiction of Buddhists, not of hell.

A side view.  Are these cool or what?

Every single one is different!  And I can barely draw a stick figure.

Apparently the wood carvings were done by a famous wood-carver, and he spent about 10 years doing all the wood carvings on this building.  Wow.

Side view of the temple with the carvings.  There's a wood carving on the right.

Interior of the building with wood carvings.  As far as I can tell, it's okay to take photos from outside the temple, but once you're inside, no cameras allowed.

Pretty!

Nice big space for sitting.

I really like how colorful everything is.

More chess-piece-looking things.

That's the main hall on the right, and a staircase to another part of the complex on the left.

No idea.  A grave?  A meditation spot?

This is a 'secret temple,' which apparently means that it only gets used like once a year on a special day.

Secret temple!

On either side of the Secret Temple were a large number of tiles featuring what appear to be some kind of twin root vegetable.

Mutant carrots, perhaps?

Another shot of the main hall:

At this point I had spent as much time as possible in the main area, and people on tours were starting to come.  By now it was around 9am, and the place was still pretty empty due to the rain.

The next part of the temple complex was very, very cool.  Have you ever seen a Miyazaki film?  Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, etc?  Okay, basically imagine walking through the forest of a Miyazaki film, and you've got the walking paths of the Narita-san temple complex.

I was completely alone, it was very peaceful.

It was surprisingly rainforesty.  It also reminds me of the Myst video games, for anyone who played those.

There's a paved path if you're boring.  (Or in a wheelchair, I guess.)

Wet and hot, but happy to be in the forest.

Look at this little baby Buddha!  Somebody dressed him up!

On the way to the calligraphy museum (which is apparently closed on Mondays) there's a trio of beautiful little ponds to walk around.

A map.  The building on the right is the calligraphy museum, and the one on the left is another temple.

Pretty!  It was still raining a little, but I was all alone here.

On to the other big temple.  It doesn't look very big in the photo, but it's actually pretty big.  I think that door at the bottom is throwing off the scale--it's not a regular size door.

On the bottom level is a museum of sorts, and on the second floor is a rather incredible Buddhist temple area.  Again, no photos are allowed on the inside, but you can take photos from the outside.

I tried lightening the photo to see the main guy, but he's still pretty dark.

You have to take your shoes off inside, and the carpet is super soft.  I was the only one in the temple.  It's incredibly peaceful to explore the small details of a beautiful temple like this all alone.

Everything else is easy to see though!

In this room, you enter from the back.  The front is a window opening to a nice view; that's where I'm taking the photos from.  There's this main guy in the front on his fire throne:

Scary!

And around him are four people with multiple faces, and you can't see it, but they're all standing on people.  The people don't appear to be injured though?  And one might be pregnant?  I'm not quite tall enough to see them well.  Each blue-guy is carrying weapons, and one is riding an animal that resembles a cow.

You can just see the human he's standing on.

Here's the little ceremonial area.  They burn things here, but there doesn't seem to be a ventilation system... is that safe?

Not a chess set, nor a drinking set, but it looks like both.

Pretty gold chandelier.

A very colorful ceiling.

There are two different patterns on the ceiling.

 There are paintings on all the walls.

I could only see two from the outside, but inside there are many more.

I've said it once, and I'll say it again: I LOVE the colorful temples, I think they're beautiful.  They're also very peaceful.

If you keep walking past this temple, you'll get back to the main temple complex.

If you walk around a back street, you end up in a little neighborhood with a good view.

This is the building with all the wood carvings, and the Secret Temple is on the left.  There's another water
trough in the bottom right.

Adorable young monk!

At the top of the hill there's a small temple dedicated to foxes.  It took me a while to figure out which animal they were.

There were many small shrines like this one, and each one had foxes that looked nothing like foxes.

You can walk back down to front gate on the back street.  I tried to go into the big building on the left, but they wouldn't let me inside and didn't bother trying to communicate with me.  They were actually a bit rude about it, or maybe I was accidentally doing something rude by going inside?  I will never know, because they immediately booted me.  Hrmph.

Back to the front gate.

There was a policeman walking around.  He's wearing a waterproof suit, and his hat is covered in a shower cap.  Adorable!

Look at his hat!  Awww!

Last view as I left Narita-san.

I spent about three hours at the temple, but you could easily knock this out in half that time.  Less than an hour, if you don't go around to the Miyazaki forest.  It was around 11am when I finished, so I walked around the main street looking for souvenirs.  I was looking primarily for a replacement Hello Kitty phone charm, since my SCUBA Diver Hello Kitty charm is falling apart.  But to my great disappointment, there weren't many options, and they weren't very good!  So sad.  There wasn't much in the way of good souvenirs, so I finally went back to the hostel, packed up, and headed to the airport for my flight to Okinawa.

Pro tip: if you are taking a domestic (or even international) flight with Air Asia, the Ryanair (super-low cost carrier) of Asia, you don't need to arrive two hours early like the ticket says.  It also takes roughly three minutes to go through security.  Much like Spirit Airlines has its own horrible unfinished terminal at the Detroit Airport, Air Asia has its own too.  There's no shopping, no drinking fountain, and you have to take buses out to your plane.  My flight was late, so I spent about three hours in that tiny terminal.  Ayyye.

On the plus side, there was an entire row of empty seats next to me, so about 30 minutes into the flight I moved over there and slept comfortably the whole way.  Why didn't anyone else move?!  I gave everyone else plenty of time.  Oh well.

Coming soon: photos from Okinawa!

Cheers,
Ashton