Welcoming Spring

Friends from California were just here for six days of intense tourism. Timing was perfect as this area comes alive in spring—too early still for lush foliage, but the plum trees are blossoming and the city is celebrating.

One day, after we had already toured the temple grounds at Ginkakuji, walked the Path of Philosophy, shopped for kimono and been instructed in tea ceremony, we strolled downtown through dusk and a light rain into the opening evening of a Lighting and Flower Arrangement festival. In Maruyama Park, one thousand bamboo lanterns marched down the creek bed. Throughout Higashiyama district, ikebana displays fronted temple gates. Floodlit pagodas sprang up above the darkened tree tops. Lanterns lined walking paths. Children dressed in red costumes paraded, beating drums and clanging gongs. Unfortunately, we didn’t know about this festival when we set out in the morning or I’d have taken a tri-pod with me. The few photos on the accompanying post may convey some of the excitement.

The next day, we took a train to Nara, Japan’s first “permanent” capital established in year 710. The temple Tôdai-ji is the largest wooden building in the world and also houses Japan’s largest statue of Buddha. The festival we attended here, Omizutori, has taken place every year since 752 without break. Crowds gather beneath the high veranda at Nigatsu-do (worship hall at the top of the hill) where, beginning just after dark, monks carry huge pine basket torches—eleven of them, one at a time—up a stairway through the crowd, then further up steps onto the veranda. The monk then runs from one end of the veranda to the other, swinging and twisting the torch to release as many sparks as possible. The visitors ooh and aah and try to position themselves so that some of the thousands of sparks land on them, thus bringing good fortune for the coming year.

And that covers two of the six days. The others were equally full and magical, but that’s another story (or several).