Last week I shared what I guess would be a bit of a teaser, although I never intended for that. Well, think of this as the first part of the teaser, Maizuru-Yama in Tendo City, the next mountain on my 100 Famous Mountains of Yamagata Project (#37?). Basically, I wanted to share a report of my climb up the mountain, but I found out the mountain was much, much, more than I had anticipated.

Not Maizuru, though.

Maizuru-yama is a mountain in the middle of Tendo City, Yamagata Prefecture.‘Mai’ means dance, and Zuru is the voiced tsuru, so technically it should be dzuru, for crane, but who has time for that. In other words, Maizuru-yama is ‘Dancing Crane Mountain’. A very descriptive and poetic name, but not very original. This isn’t the only instance of ‘Dancing Crane’ in Japan, far from it:

Notably, there is Maizuru City on the northern coast of Kyoto prefecture, named after a samurai castle and because the shape of the bay resembles two cranes in flight. ‘Maizuru’ also appears as a nickname for two different fortresses: Kōfu castle in Yamanashi, and Fukuoka castle in Kyushu, for example. In those cases, the dancing crane refers to the brilliant white walls of the castles. What makes Maizuru-yama in Tendo City so special is that it is named for the ridges of the mountains themselves, something completely natural for once.

No, today I’m interested in the origin of the word ‘Tendo’ written 天童, a real odd one.

Personally, I love the shape of these Kanji; I think they balance each other perfectly. But the truly interesting thing is the namesake.

Why?

天 ‘ten’ means heaven.

童 ‘dō’ (elongated ‘o’) means juvenile, or simply ‘child’.

Heavenly Juvenile?!

Or, I guess, ‘heavenly child or children’.

Like a child who does what they’re told? Where do I get one of those?

Tendo. Apparently.

Alas, the heavenly part of Tendo doesn’t have anything to do with children behaving well.

It is entirely about where they came from:

Heaven.

Where else?

Legend has it that around 1200 years ago (oddly specific), a Buddhist monk by the name of Gyoki (cool name) climbed all the way to the summit of Maizuru-yama to pray. Which, and I’ve been there, isn’t as tough as it sounds to reach.

As he was chanting Buddhist chants (what else? not the first time something happened simply because of chanting), some mysterious music started playing in the distance. Next minute, the sky appeared to tear apart in the centre, and two dancing celestial beings came down leaving behind a wake of purple haze, a la Jimi Hendrix.

Their names?

Goei Doji, and Makatsu Doji (notice the ‘do’?, it’s the same one). These two children then proclaimed to Gyoki:

“We are messengers of Jizaiten Buddha (AKA Kangiten). You, noble monk, are the Great Bodhisattva of this peak. You must build a sacred hall here, and pray for the salvation of all sentient beings”.

And as soon as they said that, they vanished (just like the perfect child). But not before the purple haze sank into the soil of the mountain, leaving it more sacred than it already was.

Not one to take fate lightly, Gyoki marked the exact spot at the summit where the two deities touched the earth by planting a Zelkova tree, oh, and I guess some cherry blossoms too. He then named the peak after the two deities: ‘Tendo-zan’ ‘Heavenly Children Mountain’. Not long after, one of Gyoki’s disciples, Kigen, built Tendo-Den (Tendo shrine) at the summit of the mountain to honour the heavenly children.

The community that grew around the base of the mountain over the following years took the same name. Soon the whole area, rather than the mountain alone, also took the name. Tendo mountain in Tendo city (or town, it became a city in 1958) was a bit tedious for the townspeople, so they gave the mountain the new (as we have already established, unoriginal) name Maizuru-Yama, after the way its ridges droop down resembling a dancing crane.

Technically, the mountain is still known as Tendo-zan. At the very least, it is now ‘Tendo Park’, and there is a Tendo Jinja at the base that preserves the exact spot of the legend. Except it doesn’t, because the exact spot of the legend was at the summit where the Zelkova and the original Tendo-den stood.

Because, what happened was,

Politics!

And War!

Don’t worry, I won’t bore you like George Lucas in the prequels, I hope. During the warring states period, despite the sacred nature of Maizuru-yama, it was seen as the perfect location for a mountain castle.

Because of course it is. Those beautiful ridges aren’t just the wings of a crane, they’re also a self-defence masterpiece! (more on that next time)

Before it was Tendo city, it was the Tendo clan, and the Tendo clan had to defend themselves from, well, civil war! So they turned Maizuru-yama into a castle. And having a shrine at the summit of the mountain castle like that was seen as a security risk. So they did what they always do, moved it to the base of the mountain, the location of the current Tendo Jinja.

And so, the grand naming loop was complete: the heavenly children gave their name to the mountain, the mountain gave its name to the town, the town stole the name completely, and the locals looked up at the empty ridges, saw a crane taking flight, and named it Dancing Crane Mountain.

Where the heavenly children come from.

What happens if you chant Buddhist chants?

Sources (Japanese):

https://www.uraken.net/chimei/yamagata.html

http://www.ikechang.com/history/name0.htm

https://www.city.tendo.yamagata.jp/municipal/machidukuri/hayawakari.pdf

Daily Yamabushi Posts for June 5 to 11, 2026

Here are my Daily Yamabushi posts for the past week. Get more Daily Yamabushi posts at timbunting.com/daily-yamabushi. Discover more Japan essays and daily insights in the Kiwi Yamabushi Substack Archive, or follow my writing over on Medium.com.

1. On a Whim

2. Playful but Intellectual

3. The Foggy Path

4. Can’t Pin Me Down

5. Taking Up Bandwidth

6. The Highest Mountain

7. Your Best Work

I would have passed Maizuru-yama at least 50 or so times over the years. It just stands there, a mound of greenery in the middle of Tendo city, reminding me of Shinobu-yama in Fukushima City. As a castle mountain, it is also similar in story to Shiro-yama in neighbouring Yamagata City. Except, this mountain is responsible for Tendo city producing 95% (!) of the Shogi chess pieces in Japan. Can’t say that about many other mountains…

Anyway, here are some photos I took of the mountain, one from April, more from the weekend:

Daily Yamabushi Posts for May 29 to June 4, 2026

Here are my Daily Yamabushi posts for the past week. Get more Daily Yamabushi posts at timbunting.com/daily-yamabushi. Discover more Japan essays and daily insights in the Kiwi Yamabushi Substack Archive, or follow my writing over on Medium.com.

1. The Fall

2. It’s a Start

3. Feed The Machine First

4. Try Me

5. On The Horizon

6. Temporary Permanence

7. In and Out

Daily Yamabushi Posts for May 22 to 28, 2026

Here are my Daily Yamabushi posts for the past week. Get more Daily Yamabushi posts at timbunting.com/daily-yamabushi. Discover more Japan essays and daily insights in the Kiwi Yamabushi Substack Archive, or follow my writing over on Medium.com.

1. Don’t Forget Your Homework

2. The First Step

3. 90 Percent is Only Halfway

4. It’s All Discipline

5. The First Step Again

6. A Cost or a Price?

7. Over Generous is Not Generous

It started off very briefly.

I parked my car at the local Toichiya supermarket1, the one right next to northern Japan’s biggest Muji store.

And I was met with quite a shock:

A lizard person.

In the flesh.

Only, I didn’t know it at the time.

At first, naturally, I thought it was an invader on my Japan territory. As a 15-years-a-gaijin I have to protect my turf at all costs. I mean, a website I made was quoted on National Geographic. If that doesn’t scream ‘I own you’, I don’t know what would.

However, when I judgingly looked at their bag it read:

Walmart.

False alarm. He’s a harmless lizard person. He’s not a threat at all. He’s already failed Foreigner-Living-in-Japan 101: The bag has to be Muji or some other famous Japanese brand.

That, or a bag with weird English on it.

Like this one:

Then I watched the lizard person walk over to another, lizarder person. Probably the wife.

Now there are two of them!

But then it got worse.

My fixation on that Walmart bag had completely blinded me to my surroundings.

There weren’t just two of them.

There were hundreds!

And then it hit me:

Today was a cruise ship day.

The lizard people had arrived in Sakata en masse in a massive multi-million dollar ship (they get angry if you call it a boat).

We can feel immune to the inbound tourism in Sakata all we want, until the lizard people start their invasion, in more ways than one.

Despite record numbers of foreign visitors to these shores I was yet to be inconvenienced, not even in the slightest. We are relatively sheltered up here in lonely old Sakata, leat alone Tohoku. We hardly see any non-Japanese people. And the stats back that up too. Us 1.6%ers2 have to maintain our reputation somehow.

This in spite of one of the shortest flights from Haneda, which I’m gathering most tourists to Japan don’t even think about. In other words, it’s still pretty hard to get here from a place like Tokyo. You’re looking at at least 5 hours by train, or a boat ride (ship ride?) on the Sea of Japan, for example.

Hardly welcoming.

That, and the fact that we don’t register on anyone’s radar, well, besides National Geographic, I guess, has meant that I have felt immune to all those stories of tourists acting up, and the Japanese response.

Until yesterday.

There I was, about to line up at the aforementioned Muji trying to purchase a 590-yen bottle of decaf coffee mixer, yes we coffee-addicted yamabushi also have our vices.

I thought to myself, ’it’s just one item, I’ll be out in a jiffy’.

How wrong I was.

I headed to the checkouts and noticed a small line, nothing too bad. The attendant asked the person in front of me something, and they pointed to the line to say ’I’m lining up here’. I had only ever bought anything from this Muji once or twice and had forgotten that the view of the self-service checkouts was completely blocked off by a giant pillar. So I patiently joined the line awaiting instructions from the staff, like any kami-fearing person would.

The person in front of me said something to the person in front of them in Mandarin3. ‘Must be Chinese. Or, statistically speaking, Taiwanese’ I thought to myself as I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

All the while checking my watch and trying to look past the pillar to see if anyone had left the self-service checkouts.

Nope. Not yet. Must be some big purchases.

Until, probably 2-3 minutes later, a Japanese couple lined up behind me.

The attendant turned to them and said ‘are you wanting to purchase things duty free?’

‘Excuse me?’ Said the man.

‘You know, duty free. Without tax.’

‘I don’t even know what that means.’

‘Oh, I see. Then you can go ahead to the self-service checkouts’.

To which I promptly butted in, in my flawless Japanese4: ‘I’m not buying anything duty free.’

‘Oh, I see. My apologies. Go right ahead.’

Your apologies indeed!!!

That was the exact moment I realised there was a self-service checkout a mere metre away just behind a small wall in front of the pillar. And let me tell you, that self-service checkout got a real workout. I pushed those buttons so fast you could see smoke.

The thing is though, people travel thousands of kilometres by ship, one of the slowest forms of transport, just to buy the exact same minimalist cardboard boxes they can get in Tokyo, London, or New York. All the while they pass by the home of Japan’s once richest family, their guest villa, Japan’s best ramen, and also Peter Coffee, arguably Sakata’s best brew.

The lizard brain at work. It knows no bounds.

I just wish it wouldn’t infect the staff at north Japan’s biggest Muji too.

My thoughts on this are that it just comes with the territory. It’s shoganai, and I just have to uketamo.5

It could certainly be much worse than waiting for a few minutes unnecessarily, and things like this are only going to increase (like the people at the conbinis who treat me like I’m five).

By coming in with a stance of uketamo, I feel I’ve already solved half the issue anyway.

But still.

Shibas gotta sheeb.

Tourists gotta tourist.

Cogs gotta cog.

Daily Yamabushi Posts for May 15 to 21, 2026

Here are my Daily Yamabushi posts for the past week. Get more Daily Yamabushi posts at timbunting.com/daily-yamabushi. Discover more Japan essays and daily insights in the Kiwi Yamabushi Substack Archive, or follow my writing over on Medium.com.

1. It’s a Privilege to Serve You

2. What’s in Front of You

3. A Walk Through The Park

4. Can’t? Or won’t?

5. No Initiative. Just Desire.

6. What Would Master Hoshino do?

7. What Needs Doing

However, it is well and truly not anymore.

Because now the building looks like this:

At least they had the decency to clean it up. Many places don’t. Although that has clearly been changing. I guess that’s the Japanese 6x Tax loophole for residential properties coming to an end. In the past, properties with a structure still on them received a massive tax break. Knocking the house down meant the plot was reclassified as “empty”, and that came with a tax bill sometimes 6x higher than when a building was on it… ouch.

Or not.

Until now, that is.

does a deep dive on this, highly recommend reading it, but the lowdown is this (from Gemini):

• If a house has broken windows, cracked walls, or completely overgrown jungle-like weeds, it gets flagged.

• If the owner ignores the local government’s warnings to clean it up, they lose their residential tax break immediately.

The Penalty: An Overnight 4x to 6x Tax Hike

Once a property is officially hit with a “recommendation” for poor management, the tax discount vanishes. The owner’s property tax jumps by roughly 4 to 6 times the following year—even though the house is still standing.

In more depth:

Real Gaijin

Japan’s Vacant Home Crackdown: How New Inheritance Laws Are Forcing a Reckoning

Read more

2 months ago · 21 likes · 14 comments · Mark Kennedy

This plot was commercial, I assume, so it’s a bit different, but still! That view!

I’ve noticed a huge uptick in the number of buildings being taken down. I’m in two minds about it because many of the buildings are really cool looking. But then again, they’re also abandoned. They much be a real hassle to live next to for starters. I guess I need to get my fix of abandoned building porn while I can. Get my camera out and get a few photos, in other words.

Anyway…

This photo was taken in the same spot :)

What a good boy!

Related:

Daily Yamabushi Posts for May 8 to 14, 2026

Daily Yamabushi posts for May 8 to 14, 2026.

More Daily Yamabushi at timbunting.com/daily-yamabushi. See all Japan Deep Dives here.

1. Something to Cringe At

2. The People Behind It

3. More Important Things

4. Find The Rhythm

5. Better? Or Just Different?

6. Maybe You’re Trying Too Hard?

7. The Sun Will Still Rise

Well, I’m thrilled to let you know that were there was once an empty plot of gravel, there is now a police box. Then just down the road where there was once a police box, there is now an empty plot of gravel (I wish I could make this stuff up). And, what was once a whisky bar covered in ivy, is now just a whisky bar. Which looks quite cool, to be honest, see below for more.

Sakata’s Strip

Further (Required) Reading:

I have since read the book mentioned in this post, and admittedly I cried a few times. I’m working on a write-up now, but it’s not quite ready yet. Something for you to look forward to.

Daily Yamabushi Posts for May 1 to 7, 2026

Daily Yamabushi posts for May 1 to 7, 2026.

More Daily Yamabushi at timbunting.com/daily-yamabushi. See all Japan Deep Dives here.

1. Gratitude Comes First

2. By the Book, by the Balls.

3. As Permanent as a Mountain

4. When the Going Gets Tough

5. All Out Attack

6. Think it Only Temporary

7. Show Your Work. Do Your Work.

I mean, how could you not?

It’s like, a fake castle office building thing? Who knows? Amarume never really had that much clout. It was stuck between the actual castles of Tsuruoka, Matsuyama, Sakata (Kamegasaki), and one in southern Karikawa.

Anyway, even now I don’t know what that part of the building was for, but the part with the triangular windows to the right there was an indoor swimming pool I frequented, because of course it was, and on the ground floor (1st floor in Japan), there was a bank and a supermarket,

because of course there was.

Well, the building has been empty for at least a few years now, apparently it wasn’t earthquake safe, and it appears they are finally taking it apart:

Amarume will never be the same again.

Further (Required) Reading:

Daily Yamabushi Posts for April 24 to 30, 2026

Daily Yamabushi posts for April 24 to 30, 2026.

Remember, you can read a whole month’s worth of Daily Yamabushi at timbunting.com/daily-yamabushi. See all Japan Deep Dives here.

1. Stop Doing Stuff. Start Doing Stuff Instead.

2. Pause. Disengage. Calm Down.

3. Nothing But Roadblocks.

4. Ice Cream.

5. A Place of Practice

6. Some Things Change

7. Something To Do

Ten years ago my Dad died. It was completely out of the blue, the doctor was surprised,

and so were we.

Then, a friend sent me a podcast episode with Brene Brown on it. It was the Tim Ferriss podcast. To be honest, I don’t remember much about the episode at all, just that it was about grief.

It’s weird how easy we dismiss things given to you by people who haven’t experienced them, because listening back that episode is full of gems for people in my situation, but the best thing about my friend sending me that podcast was that it sent me on a bit of a Tim Ferriss podcast frenzy.

Which is cool and all,

and that eventually led me to a man by the name of Seth Godin. I was so enamoured by Seth that I stopped what I was doing, and bought all of his books.

I’d never done that before,

not even for Master Hoshino (despite the fact he only had one when I met him).

I love the way Seth is able to so eloquently express his ideas, ideas that are very good, by the way.

Seth says the key to his success has been his daily blog.

I wouldn’t put it past him.

That was all the inspiration I needed to start my own daily blog, way back in January of 2019.

Well,

I’m still at it.

I wouldn’t say it’s any good, although I do think I have improved. Both in the ideas, and the way I express them.

Then in late 2022, I decided to send these Daily Yamabushi posts (as I now call them) in a weekly newsletter. I first used Ghost.org, but now I use Substack. If you were there from the start, which a few of you were (I was collecting your emails on my website), you would know that things were quite a bit different.

Here is my first Substack post:

Ok, not that different,

but different nonetheless.

To be honest though, I had zero intention of writing articles like the ones you get. I just wanted to share the Daily Yamabushi posts.

But I realised that people like reading these things, that they are what Substack1 is built for, even though the articles range from ancient mountain wisdom to… umm…

Why Axolotls are called ‘Wooper Looper’ in Japanese.

I experimented with a few formats, and eventually stuck with what you have now.

So thanks,

I guess,

Dad.

Daily Yamabushi Posts for April 17 to 23, 2026

Daily Yamabushi posts for April 17 to 23, 2026.

Remember, you can read a whole month’s worth of Daily Yamabushi at timbunting.com/daily-yamabushi. See all Japan Deep Dives here.

1. Surprise Me

2. Think and Act. Or Just Act.

3. Night Vision.

4. Can’t Compete? Don’t.

5. Have Fun With It

6. Not ‘Just’ a Start

7. Presence is Power

In 2005, Martha Stewart, yes that Martha Stewart, organised a meeting of the Martha Stewarts of the world. She wanted the Guinness world record for the most people of the same name in the same room.

And you know what?

She got it!

164 Martha Stewarts got together in the same room and set a new Guinness World Record.

Not to be outdone, in 2022, an association of Tanaka Hirokazus called the Tanaka Hirokazu Association organised a gathering in Shibuya, Tokyo, where they officially broke the record with 178 Tanaka Hirokazus in the same room.

Omedeto!

However, in February 2023, disaster struck for The Tanaka Hirokazu Association. The record was yet again broken by 256 women named Milica Jovanović in Belgrade, Serbia,

as it currently stands.

The Tanaka Hirokazu Association attempted again in 2025, but were sadly outplayed.

But that’s probably because they are Tanaka Hirokazu.

It shouldn’t be Tanaka Hirokazu trying to break the record.

It should be Sato Taro.

There’s way more Satos in this world, 1.8-1.9 million, number one in Japan, versus a mere 1.3 million Tanakas that can only scrounge fourth place.

Oh, and anecdotally, Satos rule the roost too.

A few years back I was working at a junior high school and I came across the oddest thing: in a class of 30-odd students, ten were named Sato.

That’s a Sato Ratio of like, 33%!

First I thought it was an anomaly, a pure coincidence. I mean,why so many Satos in such a small place?

Then I was at the local hospital and I noticed something I hadn’t before, a sign that read:

More than 50 Sato Keikos, in a rural Japanese hospital!

Their Sato Ratio must off the charts!

Come to think of it, I have a friend called Sato who married a Sato.

How’s that for convenience?

They subsequently divorced too.

How’s that for convenience?1

Then at my university’s commencement ceremony recently I decided to find the Sato Ratio for this year. Of 210 students, 19 of them were Sato, a Sato Ratio of around 9%. Right on par.

And that’s when it hit me.

What if it isn’t just us foreigners secretly plotting to take over Japan,

what if it’s the Satos?

I mean, Japan is the only country in the world where by law if two Japanese nationals get married, they MUST have the same last name. It’s the only country in the world where if you get married, one of you MUST change your last name.

By law!

(There is a very distinct loophole though. Notice I said Japanese nationals. If one isn’t a Japanese national, well, you can choose like the rest of the world. Like my wife did. The other thing is you could just choose to not get married…)

So what does this have to do with things?

In practice, 95% of the time it’s the woman who changes their name (Japan is the only G7 nation not to allow same-sex marriage, yet).

This makes it much easier for rare names to completely die out. If you don’t have a son, well, you can all but say goodbye to your family name.

Think about it though. What logical reason is there for forcing married people to keep the same last name?

I can’t think of any.

Except, perhaps, trying to dominate a country?

You see, despite her gender, current Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae is a stern supporter of the policy. Her and other conservatives spout something about having the same family name being good for the ‘family unit’, tradition, or something or other. However, they fail to realise that surnames didn’t even exist for commoners in Japan until the late 19th century. And what’s more, the law demanding the same family name only came about in 1898.

That’s younger than Nintendo!

The other excuse they give is that the Koseki family registry system used in Japan works best with single surnames that keep the database clean and predictable. Put simply, having multiple names in the database would be a real bitch to update.

Or in other words,

Mendokuse

A country of bureaucrats not wanting to bureaucrat?

I’m not buying it.

No. Something else must be up.

So I looked into it. Specifically that law from 1898, the Meiji Civil Code. Also, I checked specifically if there was a Sato there when it was enacted.

And you know what?

Turns out there was!

Sato Nobuhiro (佐藤 信寛) (1816-1900) (not to be confused with 1769-1850 Sato Nobuhiro佐藤 信淵, different Kanji).

And… and… and.. and you know what?

(This first) Sato Nobuhiro just so happened to be the ancestor of none other than Kishi Nobusuke (né2 Sato, obviously. One of the rare cases where the male takes the female name) and Sato Eisaku, two brothers who both became Prime Minister of Japan, one of which just so happened to be the grandfather to none other than the late Shinzo Abe, a person the current Prime Minister publicly admitted to admiring. Hiring Takaichi Sanae was a masterstroke by the Satos. She is a stern supporter of the law, and a stern supporter of its instigator, Sato-san.

The perfect protector of policy, and the perfect ploy.

The Satos have the bloodline, the law, and the Prime Minister on their side. Now all they have to do is, well, wait.

Seriously. Someone actually did the math on this:

Professor Yoshida Hiroshi at Tohoku University found out exactly when the Satos of Japan would take over:

2531.

By 2446 half of Japan will be Sato-san. We have just over 500 years to stop the Sato-pocalypse. If the law stays the same for the next 500 years, every. single. person. in. Japan. will be named Sato. Sure, the math also says by then there will only be 280,000 people left here, and by 3300 there won’t be any.

But still.

By then the Satos would have achieved their Magnum Opus:

A Guinness world record of an entire country with everyone of the same name.

Daily Yamabushi Posts for April 10 to 16, 2026

Daily Yamabushi posts for April 10 to 16, 2026.

Remember, you can read a whole month’s worth of Daily Yamabushi at timbunting.com/daily-yamabushi. See all Japan Deep Dives here.

1. That’s on Them

2. Plan Accordingly

3. Slow Cars, Fast Cars

4. Now to do

5. Uketamo: The Ultimate Power Move

6. The Light of Day

7. Who wins?

Daily Yamabushi Posts for April 3 to 9, 2026

Daily Yamabushi posts for April 3 to 9, 2026.

Remember, you can read a whole month’s worth of Daily Yamabushi at timbunting.com/daily-yamabushi. See all Japan Deep Dives here.

1. Tie the Loose Ends

2. Someday or One Day?

3. Playing it by Ear

4. Bad People Make you Look Good

5. Create The Wave

6. Spinning Around

7. Don’t Judge. Just Experience.

This wouldn’t have been possible without the support of my paid subscribers! You know who you are, so thank you!

If you feel you gain from any of my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, you can help do things like this, and keep my work available for free.

Subscribe now

I’ve been quietly building a new timbunting.com, and I finally launched it, even though it’s not 100%. I found that I was toiling with things that have very little bearing on, well, anything, and to top things off, my old site was bugging like crazy1, so I pulled the plug and brought in the new website.

Ready enough is as ready as I’ll ever be, I felt.

So, what’s new?

• The whole site should be much faster, and from my testing it has been.

• The homepage is completely new.

• I changed the ‘blog’ to a dedicated Daily Yamabushi page, where you can now read a whole month’s worth of posts without clicking away.

• I added a dedicated page for the articles that appear in this newsletter and called it Japan Deep Dives (page still needs work, but it’s getting there!).

• I’m going to go through and split my mountains articles into Mountains Stories and Hiking Guides, for those who want the narrative, and those who just want the hike!

• An updated /yamabushi page.

There are a few other places I still need to fix, but it’s mainly stuff like feature images on the Japan Deep Dives, and then fixing the hub pages to make the content more accessible. With over 2,500 Daily Yamabushi posts, 100 or so Yamagata Mountains (to be split in two), and also around 100 Japan Deep Dives, it’s not exactly easy to navigate, but I try to make it as easy as possible.

For those interested, I switched to wordpress.com (from wordpress.org), and have my domain on Cloudflare now. I’m also using a paid Astra theme that I bought years ago. I was using a page builder on the old site that became too css-heavy. That and the constant plugin and php etc. updates that I got sick of led me to wordpress.com. If you’re thinking of doing something like me, wordpress.com is a good place to start if you want customisability. Otherwise, Substack is pretty good (tell them I sent you).

If you find something isn’t quite right with the new website, please let me know! Also, let me know what you like, what you’d like more of, and what you hate I guess…

Thanks,

Tim.

Daily Yamabushi Posts for March 27 to April 2, 2026

Daily Yamabushi posts for March 20 to 26, 2026.

Read a whole month’s worth of Daily Yamabushi at timbunting.com/daily-yamabushi (this is new!). See all Japan Deep Dives here.

1. No Choice but to Choose

2. You Can Choose How You React

3. Moving Parts

4. In or Out

5. It’s Only Temporary

6. The Small Things

7. The New Normal

At Komeda’s

I’m at Komeda’s Coffee. This place is awesome. It’s Showa-era decor, a lot of wood, bricks, and bright red upholstery. Komeda’s feels like it has been part of the furniture for forever, even though in Sakata it’s only been part of the furniture for two or three years by now.

I’m here because I’m a bit desperate. In an effort to prioritise sleep, earlier this year I made a rule not to have caffeine after 12pm, if I can avoid it. This coupled with my other rule of no more than two coffees a day, so I don’t develop a tolerance, means that decaf is about all I want to drink in the afternoons. Even then it’s pushing it because decaf isn’t 100% caffeine-free, but you get what I mean, but I’m willing to make an exception.

That all but limits me to the chain stores, hence Komeda.

The best time to be in Komeda is the morning. They have a ‘morning set’ until 11am daily where you can choose a drink and get some free bread, including butter and red bean paste (if that’s your thing) to go along with it. So, I kind of screwed up there. But hey, I was feeling in a funk, I had two lost in translations things happen to me this morning, so here we are.

Either way, here are some recent shots:

Which Octopus?

Daily Yamabushi Posts for March 7 to 19, 2026

Daily Yamabushi posts for March 20 to 26, 2026.

Read Daily Yamabushi at timbunting.com/blog. Most popular articles here.

1. Spur of the Moment

2. This is me

3. Leave it There

4. Act as if the Decision’s Been Made

5. You Weren’t to Know

6. The Greatest Chance

7. Running in Circles

I can still clearly remember the phrase I used to learn relative pronouns in Japanese way back in high school:

相撲をする猿

sumo wo suru saru

The sumo-wrestling monkey.

There are tons of ways to learn vocabulary in a second language, but one of my favourites is with silly sentences just like this.

When I was learning Chinese I came up with another:

你的脸很糟糕

Nǐ de liǎn hěn zāogāo

’It’s a shame about your face’.

The thing is though,

it kind of backfired.

Right now, it truly is a shame about my face. If you met me or watched any of my videos from last year you would have seen a red spot just above my right eye. It turns out that spot was a pre-cancerous Solar Keratosis, a spot formed from too much UV.

Having the complexion of a glass of milk and growing up under the harsh NZ sun would do that.

So I got it removed.

And I currently have 21 stitches (yes, I counted them) and a huge bandage on my forehead.

All up, the procedure took about 90 minutes and I was conscious the whole time. Lying there at the whim of the surgeons reminded me vividly of waterfall meditation, when you’re at the whim of nature. You all but have no choice to go with the flow. Logically, I treated it as such and do what I always do in waterfall meditation, I recited the heart sutra.

So there’s that.

But also, the concept of death and rebirth is extremely relevant.

Physically, I will never be the same. It was my first time ever going under the knife. Mentally too, I can’t go back. I just accept the scar as a visual reminder of Mujo, impermanence.

But more importantly, I now know what it feels like to be a sumo-wrestling monkey.

Daily Yamabushi Posts for March 7 to 19, 2026

Daily Yamabushi posts for March 7 to 19, 2026.

Read Daily Yamabushi at timbunting.com/blog. Most popular articles here.

1. What if it Goes Bad?

2. Just Accept

3. Not Even Trying

4. Bad News is Just a Matter of Perspective

5. Only for a Minute

6. Roll With the Corners

7. Do it and Forget About it

8. The Film is Rolling

9. Good Timing

10. At Your Earliest Convenience

11. Let the Gravity do the Work

12. Through the Wringer

13. A Wise Man Does

14. The Perfect Storm

I’m visiting Te Awa Kairangi and Pukeatua with my family and yesterday we had a rather auspicious encounter. We were out near Te Papa, the national museum of Aotearoa, and I saw a Māori elder in passing. They had one hand wrapped firmly over the top of a light-coloured wooden cane, and the other clasping something rather peculiar:

A pūtātara.

A conch.

But …

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To be honest, I’m constantly reminded of their beauty. I mean, I see them every day…

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Bunkobon.

Say it with me.

‘Bun’

‘Ko’

‘Bon’.

Forget matcha lattes. Forget ‘dirty’ matcha. Forget matcha tiramisu kakigori.

Forget anything made out of powdered green tea.

Bunkobon is the next Japanese sensation we need in the west.

Bunkobon.

I’m big on Japanese concepts. My most popular post last year was this one on Japanese concepts I just made up

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Last week I shared an interview I had with my fellow master yamabushi and oftentimes mentor Takeharu. I shared that the hill I grew up on, the place I hung out pretty much every day, was named Pukeatua, ‘hill of the Gods’.

Well, pointed out some…

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I’m going to do something I never do, thanks to my fellow Yamabushi Master Takeharu Kato AKA Tak.

Tak convinced me to have a chat with him, about yamabushi life, what’s changed since becoming a yamabushi, what’s changed since becoming a yamabushi master, and my advice for those looking for advice from the mountains.

I’ll link to a video of the recording b…

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Anywho, I hope you enjoy these photo…

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