Snowy Mountain Shrine: Part Two
Exploring the most sacred parts of Japan in the middle of winter
Kia ora Koutou, Tim Bunting, Kiwi Yamabushi here on the Japan you never knew you wanted to know.
Japan only started using the Gregorian calendar in 1873, a few years into the Meiji Restoration. Before that, they used the Lunisolar calendar, which you may know from the Chinese calendar.
Well, on Saturday, my good old yamabushi friend Shida-san of Gassan Tsutaya Ryokan (who I interview in the following video) was back to his old tricks and hosted a Lunisolar New Year pilgrimage to Yudono-san, Mt. Yudono, as they used to do before the Meiji Restoration.
This time around I was joined by four friends;
Matt Alt, who has an amazing substack and equally amazing book Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World,
his wife Hiroko Yoda, herself an accomplished author and expert on Japan, who together with Matt wrote what I consider to be the Yokai bible: Yokai Attack,
my good friend Kristin Osani who is currently working on something massive, more on that later,
and my also good friend and husband to Kristin Osani, Jeff Wilson (who is not, unfortunately, the ex-All Black I used to idolise when I was growing up), who is doing amazing work in the localisation scene.
Anyone interested in Japanese gaming, culture and the like ought to be following these four!
Snowy Mountain Shrine: Part Two
In case you missed the memo, I live in snow country. Mt. Yudono is a mountain in snow country. In other words, it is snowy.
Very snowy.
But nowhere near as snowy as it was when I did the hike two years ago (and filmed it! See above).
What was at one point a 5m high wall had whittled down to a piddly 2 or so metres. What was once a bridge completely inundated with snow alongside a river you wouldn’t know was there unless you knew what the place was like in summer had become the only way to cross said river albeit on an extremely narrow path of snow where one false move could indeed prove fatal.
Not so snowy. In other words.
More snow than the average person would be used to, perhaps, but not so much that the average person living in snow country would balk at.
In fact the opposite.
But there was still plenty of snow for us to snowshoe hike on.
And snowshoe hike on we did!
Until we reached Yudono-san’s object of worship. The yamabushi who was with us did the rites, and then we returned to the Torii (shrine gates) for some lunch, just like last time.
The whole affair took about 5 or so hours, and the whole time we were in awe at the view.
The view!
Which I should probably show you:
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Ka kite ano.
Tim.