Sunday found me rising early after little sleep in the pursuit of some authentic Japanese culture. As much as I love APU, being stuck up here on the mountain most days makes for a decidedly sterile experience if one is searching for a deep exposure to the innate currents of Japanese life.

Choki-san had invited me the week before to spend this Sunday visiting a Buddhist temple with her in order to observe the Fall foliage. I can confidently say that Japanese people, as a rule, are the most appreciative and devoted culture in the world when it comes to honoring the shifting of the seasons. To quote a relevant passage from an often ridiculed movie, “The perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one, and it would not be a wasted life.”

In any case, Sunday was the day and at 10:10am I promptly hopped into Choki-san’s waiting car out front of AP House 2 and off we went. Also present in the car were two new acquaintances, a Thai undergraduate sophomore by the name of Tarta(“Tah-Tah”) and her host mother / friend and English student of Choki-san, Hitomi-san. All through the night and continuing into the morning it had been raining, and while Choki-san lamented our fate, I politely pointed out that from the mountain top the drifting mists would make for an unusually beautiful sight.

We stopped for brunch at a nice seaside restaurant on the way, and while we were waiting for our food to be prepared we took a walk down to the beach. This beach, like virtually every beach in Japan, is fortified with breakers a short distance off shore. This led, interestingly enough, to a short coastal geology lesson on the relative merits and hazards of such policy. Japanese, refreshingly enough, are seemingly always interested in the way other countries do things. Once that conversation had run its course, Hitomi-san took a snapshot of Choki-san, Tarta, and I and we headed back to the restaurant.

Lunch was the usual delicious Japanese fare. This time I had tempura and sashimi, along with rice, miso soup, etc. That’s all the details you get though, I’m eager to move on to the temple…

On the way to the temple we stopped to stretch our legs at this scenic impoundment up in the mountains.

The geology in the area was absolutely stunning, just look at those gnarled cliffs in the background!

Just as we arrived at Futagoji, the rains ceased as if on command, it was going to be an excellent day. Your first sight upon entry is this massive accessory building.

You can see Tarta in the foreground and some mist-shrouded autumn foliage in the background. I call it the accessory building because it’s only observable purpose was to sell tourists Buddhist trinkets. Even so, the architecture is appreciable. Directly to the right of that is the main event, the image hall.

Contained therein is enough gold to satisfy Indiana Jones, no pictures though, these things be sacred!

This picture sucks, but it gives you a look at Hitomi-san.

Does she look 50 years old to you? She is… After a number of such surprises here at APU, I’m convinced Asian women in general age much more pleasantly than their Western counterparts. Granted there are exceptions to every rule, but by and large I think most American ladies would sell their first born child to have the number of wrinkles most Chinese or Japanese women have at 35 – which is to say, none.

The Temple itself has an unusual layout. Those two buildings are all you see initially upon entry, but tucked way in the back after numerous pathways up and through the woods, are a host of other smaller but just as ornate structures. Additionally, scattered all over the grounds are monuments and icons of various sizes and themes.

Could this be where Walt Disney found his inspiration for the 7(8) dwarves?

As we strolled the grounds we also came across statues of monks…

…and even the big bopper himself, Siddhartha Gautama.

In between, we simply swam through the sea of brilliant autumn colors.

I hope to at some point post a journal specifically addressing Japanese “natural” gardening efforts. I know I’ve mentioned it once before when I was talking about Beppu Park. So far though, out of all the places I’ve visited, this man-made footbridge just blows the rest away.

As we proceeded up the mountain side, winding our way through the misty forest, we eventually came to the beginning of the innermost reaches of the temple grounds.

Stand before yon gate and be humbled, for if thou taketh those stairs, thou walketh in the steps of monks and nuns from centuries before. Here’s a closer look, I especially like the timid little plant atop the gateway eeking out an existence astride the holy entrance.

Once we reached the top of that long, stone stairway, we found ourselves walking close along a rock wall on our left, for to the right was a full out abyss.

Our next path was remarkable in its understated magnificence. We found ourselves staring at a staircase that had quite literally been carved out of a steep rock slope by *feet* over the centuries.

These steps weren’t the work of tools, believe me, I looked. They had simply been ever so slowly worn into the rockface by thousands upon thousands of patient steps by the monastery’s inhabitants. Amazing. Unfortunately, this was the end of the road for Choki-san and she agreed to meet us back at the entrance. The spry and lithe 50 year old Hitomi-san navigated the slippery steps with all the grace of a deer, however!

Having climbed that spot, we then walked upwards ever more through another thick forest of water-logged pines into a sort of pilgrimage area for the monks and nuns. Japan, as you may or may not know, has virtually uniform volcanic lithography. For the laymen among you, that means the rock in Japan was formed by volcanoes. This particular area had been inundated in a pyroclastic flow, and the material has been eroded into the most breath-taking craggy spires.

Not only that, the monks over the centuries had seen fit to inlay small iconography into the rockfaces all over the site.

The day was not without incident however, it was so humid up in the forests that my Samsung camera decided to take a nice fog bath – crap.

Choki-san and Hitomi-san assured me that had I bought a nice Sony camera, instead of my silly South Korean Samsung model, no such calamity would have befallen me. Thankfully, Tarta had also brought a camera (Sony!), and so some of the previous pictures you’ve seen were hers.

Lastly, I’d just like to share with you this picture of a forest crab.

These lil’ dudes were hoppin’ and skitterin’ all over the damn place while we were there. I tend to only associate crabs with salt-water environs, so that was pretty neat!

All in all it was a great day. The mists made for a beautiful, serene atmosphere and it felt good to get outside of Beppu for an afternoon. I find Buddhism fascinating in many respects, and this will not be my last visit to a temple. I can assure you of that!