#47 The secret view from Nanzoin Temple in Fukuoka

Transcript

Alright, today I'm going to the Nanzoin Temple. So before I get to this giant reclining Buddhist statue out in the countryside, why not start with a city gangbang? So I'm walking down, I don't know some kind of weird fucking bus-filled street. Next to the train tracks and I'm going under a double overpass highway. And despite all this shit going on, it's still the guy in the motorcycle who is hands down the loudest motherfucker. Behead this overpass is not only a big cool like whoa there's a big highway going over top of my head. But then there's another one on top of it. It's like what the fuck? If it even is that, maybe not. I might be seeing it wrong from down here, but it looks like it's a double. So if all goes well, I should be at a nice quiet countryside temple area before too long, so I won't record too much in the city. But basically, I didn't do quite enough research. I looked up the route of how to get to this temple. And I saw somebody say you can actually get off sooner than the temple stop and see this kind of old-timey town that's surrounding the temple. So I'm like sweet, that sounds like a plan. But I didn't realize that when you're transferring at Hakata station, you kind of got to do independent research just for Hakata station because it's fucking huge. It's like half a million people almost pass through there every day. It's the one that in a previous episode I bailed out because it was so crowded, it was making me uncomfortable. So I got the name of the train. There's a train near my Airbnb that goes to Hakata. And then I got the name of the train line I'm supposed to take, which is the Fuku Hoku Yutaka line. So I just thought like, ah, maybe they'll just be assigned somewhere that'll point me because I've done this route before. But again, it was one of these cases where I was with my friend Brad and he really led the way. So I internalized the erroneous idea that I had been to this place that I had made this journey before. But the truth was I was just following behind someone else like a little duckling. I don't know how the fuck to get there. So at Hakata, it's just very confusing and there's all kinds of different platforms and places you can go. And I didn't want a particularly experiment because that kind happened to me once on the main loop in Tokyo. I somehow got all confused and ended up back at the same station that I started from. It was when I very first got to Tokyo. And I just decided to bail out of the whole thing. I was like, I don't know what the heck's going on. I'm just going to get out of here and stick to this neighborhood. But because I exited from the same station I entered, but you know, 20, 25 minutes later or something, the machine didn't know how to charge me. So it just gave me an error and I had to go talk to the person running the booth and just explain like, sorry, I'm a moron. I didn't know what I was doing, you know, and they had to manually let me exit. So I didn't want to run into a situation like that where I go through a gate and realize I'm not at the right platform and try to exit back into the main area of a station and have to get out what an error and just as like, I don't know. I'm sure it's really not a big deal if you just know where the platform is. You're supposed to get on and you just go there, you know. I mean, it's big, but it's not that big.

I just had no fucking idea. So I was like, whatever, fuck this. Instead I figured let's just walk to the next station. I'm supposed to get on it. So it's Yoshi Zuka station and I don't know, it's less than three kilometers away. I'm having a nice little walk. Again, nice little city walk before I head out to the country. I used to do this sort of in Vancouver and Toronto, like if there's a bottle neck at a station or like a sports game or something and it's really fucking shit up or just it's a rush hour or whatever. Since I'm generally never in a hurry, sometimes I would just walk to the previous station, you know, wherever the station is before the stadium or wherever the station is before the big place where you gotta make transfers. And then you get on when it's all nice and calm and let everybody at the next stop worry about squeezing themselves in like sardines. 5:00 So this isn't quite the same thing because I'm not going to the stop before Hakata. I don't know if there is a stop before Hakata. This train line might start earlier or it might originate at Hakata. I don't know. But in this case, heading to the next station, I think, should still be pretty chill because I suspect that the train line that heads out to the Jain Buddha is not one of the hoppannus happiness train lines in Fukuoka. And it'll just be a nice single station. Just walking under the track right now. A nice single station where I can just get on the one train and there's nothing to figure out. See, I'm about halfway there. Beautiful sunny day. It's actually not even that loud now that I got past the double overpass. See, like I said, it's the Fuku Hoku Yutaka line to Sasa Guri station. Sasa Guri is the name of the town that this statue is in. You can go all the way to Kido Nenzo in my station, which is what I did last time. You pretty much step right out of the doors and you're there. You're right at the statue. But yeah, it looks like this Sasa Guri station is two stations before that. And yeah, it didn't do obviously great research. It's just cursory, but the cursory research I did said like, yes, it's cool. It's like an old city. It's like you really feel like you're in a whole different place and you can just have a nice little stroll through it. And it's only 1230. My plan, not that I got anything against the Buddha, he's okay. I'll go see him, but I've seen him before. There's a little, there's a short hike you can do around the environment of the Buddha. So that's kind of really what I want to do. But yeah, I don't think this is even that long of a ride. Once I get on this station, I think it's only like four stops. It's like 20 minutes or something.

This is similar to last episode where you can go to these places that are just like, you know, central Fukuoka. It is like big time super city, big time Japan, crazy lights, giant stores, all the crazy shit. But around here, you really don't have to go far to get to a whole different type of place. It's pretty cool because I mean Tokyo has especially in Western Tokyo. There's all that stuff that I really enjoy because it's very old-timey, nature-y feeling. But I mean, it's a really long ride. It takes all afternoon to get to these places where Fukuoka really gives way. I mean, just even this, Jesus, I was like, oh, I better not talk too long. I better not talk too much while I'm in the city. It'll be all loud and annoying. Already, it's like, well, I guess it's not. It's already quiet. You know, literally just walking one station past Hakata. I'm like halfway there. And the bustle has ended. My biggest noise problem right now is a crow.

But yeah, this walk is a little awkward in the sense that there's really no sidewalks or anything. It's not really set up for pedestrians. Although there's a surprising amount of other pedestrians here, but I think turn off this recorder, pay attention to what I'm doing. Make sure I don't get run over by somebody. And we'll hop back in. Once I get on and then back off of this train. So at Nanza, when I saw this is the first, it was a portapoddy, but it's a squat toilet portapoddy. It's like, oh, oh, oh. And God, I don't need this fucking monster of a device. For some reason, in one of my first podcasts when I got to Japan, I really made a point of being like, I don't mind squat toilets. Everyone complains, but I'm fine with them. And I mean, it does. It is true. I'd rather have a squat toilet than nothing. But I still think it's a very good thing that that one day is the only day I had to use a squat toilet that I've avoided at this whole time. But maybe, I mean, in a portapoddy situation, I don't know. Maybe, I mean, you don't want to touch a portapoddy, right? You don't want to really sit on it. So maybe, I'm definitely reaching, but maybe that's a good thing about it.

So I made a little change of plans. I was going to get off at Sasa Guri station and walk to Nanzoan.

But as I approached, I don't know, this idea of it's like, oh, you're transported into an ancient town. That seemed very overstated. But to be fair, I only did like three minutes of Google research this morning. So I don't know. It looked like a very normal suburb to me. And I thought it was two stations. It looks like it's two stations before Nanzoan. But it's actually just the one 10:00 station before. And I watched a bit as we made this final. It's quite a ways between the two stations. And it's not even really clear how you would walk between them anyway. It seems tricky. But if I'm going to do that, I also realized I should do it on the way back, because it's still pretty early in the day. But I mean, it's 130. And it gets dark so early. It's December 4, as I record this, that it's much better to do that part later, because it doesn't really matter if that part gets dark. We're here at the temple. My plan is to go up into the woods, so it's way better. The quarter-four woods, it's not really woods, but up onto the mountain. So I'd rather do that. When there's no danger of darkness, and they had a little sign on the way in here of, oh, here's another one. What clothing is appropriate? No cleavage revealing tank tops, no short, short skirts, no short shorts. It's mainly focused on women, but there is a dude here where his shorts are still pretty short.

Yeah, it's as your shorts should come to your knees. And the normal t-shirt is okay, but not like a strappy top. Oh, no tattoos. They're one of the no tattoo places.

Oh, but they have, okay, so you can cover your tattoos just with like a bandage. And they offer, if you are stuck with your booty shorts for some reason, they do have free sort of like skirt things. You can just kind of wrap around yourself. Yeah, I don't know, that's kind of interesting, because I know that is something I noticed when I first got to Tokyo. Only a couple of people, but like white women in yoga pants. And then I just haven't really brought it up since, because no one else dresses like that. Everyone dresses so much more modestly in Japan. This is as much as I have been to a million temples and a million shrines, and I keep talking about how they don't technically mean anything to me, but they don't really technically mean much to most Japanese people either. But you still can have like slight decorum.

That being said, I'm going to be a total hypocrite, because they also have said like no, hey, no YouTube being basically, no selfie sticks, no videos, definitely no drones. They don't say anything about recording a podcast, but I'm still going to tuck this recorder into my sleeve a little bit, so you can't really tell what I'm doing, because I will judge others while I continue to do whatever I want, because I'm North American and I'm a disgusting pig man. That's just how it is.

But actually, that being said, since my plan is to just do a quick round of the temple, but then head up into the mountain. I don't actually need to record while I'm here in the temple itself. I'll have plenty of time to yammer about whatever I saw here once I get out of here. So in fact, let's be respectful. Let's do the thing. Let's turn off all my shit while I'm here. It's the least I can do. And I got to admit, I mean, I give you a hard time slutty North Americans and recording obsessed tourists. But it honestly didn't even occur to me till I saw that sign that maybe I shouldn't pull out a fucking recorder and do a podcast. It didn't even cross my mind. So yeah, I'm just I'm just giving you a hard time. I'm just joshin. Yeah, I'm exactly like you. I'm just as shitty as you. You shitty person. I'm one of you. Okay, I'm gonna turn this thing off now.

Man, there's a series of little statues here. It's like six little statues. They're all in different poses. They all have little knit red caps, and they've got, you know, just random coins left here. But somebody left in front of only five of the six. It's these little 65 milliliter bottles of, I think, yet cool to the company. But it's like a little vitamin yogurt drink. That is really tiny, because you're just supposed to get a vitamin blast. And once again, I just find it hard to determine what differentiates this from garbage, these offerings. But it's also funny that it's only five of the six. It's like a Korok puzzle in Breath of the Wild, where you've got to leave an apple in front of all the statues. But the guy didn't have enough apples. He didn't bring enough yogurt drinks.

Or he did leave enough yogurt drinks, and somebody nabbed one and drank it. I don't know. But it's weird, either way. And yeah, I was going to say you can really hear traffic, but now I can see why. From this vantage point, I can see there is a road that goes right by here, right by the Buddha.

See, I was just at the reclining Buddha. I got lost a little on the way there. I didn't take the proper path. I don't think I found this little, these little steps built into the side of the hill that I'm on again now to escape. That took me most of the way there. But then I think I went in through the exit, but I would either way.

But yeah, there's a lot of those. Here's what you don't wear here, signs, even all the way to the Buddha, if you somehow made it all the way there. And lots of no photography signs on the way to the Buddha. Once you get there, it's fine. I did take one picture before I noticed of this really scary looking cool statue. And it was my sneaky stolen picture that I apparently wasn't supposed to take. But it's like, oh well, I already took that one. So whatever. But I wonder, this place, like no one brings it up. I don't even know how I heard about it in the first place. But just out of curiosity, I looked up a quick list last night of just stuff to do in the Fukuoka area, anything obvious that I'm missing. Not really. It seems like if I just wander around and do whatever, that'll be fine. But I had a top 20 list. And then someone else had a top 40 list. And this Nanzouan temple is not on either list. And I mean, the top 40, by the end, it was like, go see a concert. Like, that's not a fucking thing to do in Fukuoka. Get out of here. That's because you couldn't fill out 40 entries. So it's kind of weird that this never gets mentioned. And I wonder if it could be because there's such sticks in the mud.

Well, now I'm passing through a really small little opening that I had to duck down through into a little, a little shrine carved into the mountain. I probably shouldn't be recording in here either, but I'm like on the outskirts now. I'm heading out. I'm heading up the mountain.

And here's a bottle of rice wine and a bottle of Shochu, I think.

So these are all open, but they're not touched. Okay, and you have a wine in a glass and a little mochi candy. I mean, it's clearly deliberate. I'm just being a fucking foreign dickhead who's like, I don't understand your ways.

But yeah, I kind of understand. I guess I mean also just my upbringing because I also have the little basket for coins with some coins in it. And since I grew up Catholic, you know, you pass around the communion plate. It actually feels very much like that because there's candles in here. Earlier, there were a bunch of candles that you could light very much like Catholic.

But yeah, just seeing the opened booze and food or whatever, well the mochi's sealed. Yeah, it just scans this garbage to me. I just think that's a weird way to show your devotion. Like, wouldn't it be better just to say a prayer or do the bows or whatever? I just, I feel like you're just making the situation worse by leaving stuff.

Because you know damn well, there's no fucking nature spirits or anything that are going to come get this stuff. You know, maybe you thought that back in the day. Nowadays nobody thinks that's going to happen. Nowadays, you're just leaving garbage for someone to clear up. I just, I mean, I don't know. I guess it's the point of religion, right? Of course, I don't get it. I'm not supposed to get it.

But yeah, coming in here very much feels like a Dark Souls 2 level. I don't know why Dark Souls 2 specifically. That's just the one that comes to mind.

But yeah, cross from here, across from here becomes like an American video game. It becomes like uncharted. Because you go across a little bridge and then there's a tunnel carved through the rock and a steel chain you have to use. To climb up. And it feels like going on a swashbuckling adventure. Let's head over there now. Duck down through the little thing. Yeah, this is really cool. It's basically, it's pretty easy to find. It's right as you come into the shrine. After they hit you with the, here's what to not wear. Don't take pictures. The big scary demon looking Buddha with a sword that I accidentally took a picture of. And then there's like a whole bunch of little tiny statues. There's like statues everywhere. 20:00 Here, there's like a little waterfall and tons more statues. Like even though this place, like that's what I was going to say before. Could it be that maybe this place is rubbing people the wrong way as far as recommending it? Because they have a dress code and all the no pictures sign. So it's like, hey, if I'm a tourist, if I can't wear my fucking short shorts and take pictures for my Instagram, then why would I come here? What's the point? It could be, it could be that maybe that's just like a deal breaker. People don't want to recommend it. But it's just weird that it's never mentioned because it's very easy to get to. So easy on the train. It was like $4 to get here. It's not that many stops. From a catastation you can get here in like half an hour, if even.

And just purely for the number of statues, I'd say even like the reclining Buddha is sort of the big thing that it's known for. But all these little statues, they're really cool. It's worth it just to see them. Jeez, here's another one. This guy's scary as hell. Like what kind of side of Buddhism is this? Instead of just like the fat contented Buddha, it's like this scary dude surrounded by flames with a sword. And like fangs, one fang is down, one fang is up, scary eyebrows. And somebody left a monoka with sweet red beans from 7-Eleven and a little pouch of rice and some lighters as well as booze.

Only five yen in the collection.

But plenty of 7-Eleven snacks.

But yeah, it wasn't, it was kind of good not to record in the main place because all it would have been is the same. The same old song a dance I always do is like, well, that is a big cool Buddhist statue, but I don't quite know what I'm supposed to say about it or how I'm supposed to feel. Because I just, it's just a big statue to me.

I certainly didn't need to say that blasphemy in real time. But it is like, it's a really big statue, a big reclining Buddha, which I guess there's different versions of the Buddha. And the reclining Buddha is supposedly the Buddha just before passing away. The honest, this won't surprise you at all. I don't know much about Buddha. Way more coins in these other ones, I don't know why that other one only had five yet. But all right, going down under the rock. See, this is very much like that, that waterfall I missed, the Congo Falls in West Tokyo. I should have known, I should have thought back to this because yeah, you climb under the rock and then up this other rock. And yeah, here's the chain. I didn't actually need the chain, but the chain is here. I did remember the chain properly.

The chain doesn't go all the way down. Let me toss it down to the next person.

There you go.

And yeah, I remember I felt really cool when I found this last time because it's not extremely obvious that you can go under this rock and up through here. This is again the opposite of the falls where I completely missed the hole in the rock. Here I actually found it. I was like, wow, I found a secret way, a secret way to go. And this was mainly where I was intending to go, why I wanted to come back here.

Oh, that's disappointing.

There's an old lady walking down some steps to the side of me and we're like, oh those steps go down there and down to where I started. And they come right up and connect and there's some other people here. You absolutely do not need to climb under the rock and through the hole and climb up the chain. There's just steps that take you right to the same spot.

Man, I wonder how many statues there are because now here's another little, it's like a little shed. A sacred shed with another 15 or so. So there's like the big, cool statues and then there's all these little tiny ones and they're all unique, they're all individual, they're all different.

This place is definitely worth coming to, it is cool.

But yeah, the Buddha itself wouldn't have been enough to draw me back because yeah, just to finish being a big dunderhead on that front. Basically, what I know of this statue is it's like, I don't know, I guess it's because we're also in that world where you want to be the X of Y, right? Like the biggest this, the oldest that. 25:00 This Buddha statue I believe was made in 1994, so it's not especially old. It's not the biggest reclining Buddha. Apparently there's a bigger one somewhere in Japan.

It's not the biggest Buddha statue made of brass, but it is the biggest brass Buddha statue that is also reclining. So I mean, I don't know, it's sort of just a thing, but it is really big and it's kind of cool. It's just like, alright, there it is, cool. But since I'd already been here before, I already, you know, I soaked it in, I got to pretend that it meant something to me. So this time, I mean, I don't know, I stared at it for five minutes, but it's just like, yeah, it's just a statue. I don't know, I can't pretend. I can't pretend that it has any spiritual meaning to me. It's just a big statue. It's just kind of cool in that sense.

What does have spiritual meaning to me, what I, what I dig, what stuck in my mind, is where I am right now. So once you go up the hill a little ways, to the edge of where the statues are, all the little statues, there's a little path slightly hidden, but it keeps going up.

That's what I'm at now, and I'm going up the mountain and there's bamboo trees everywhere.

So I found this, and you know, even though the plan in 2019 was just to come see the Buddha and then head out. When I saw this path up into the mountains, I'm like, well, I just, I just can't stop. I have to see what's up there. You know, it is, it's like a very rough path. It looks like, it looks like there's been a storm, or it looks like the shoreline after, after a storm. It just looks like there's debris around, but it's all natural debris.

It's just the bark of bamboo trees and some rocks and dirt and stuff, but it is a distinct path with concrete parts and some steps.

So I just had to know where this thing went. And I didn't actually know at the time. God bless my friend Bradford putting up with me on this day, because I didn't actually know at the time how much he dislikes this type of thing, where I just love to just like, oh, there's a thing. I have to know what's up there. I got to go. He absolutely doesn't need to go. He doesn't give a fuck. So it's very nice of him to come along with me, because I was like, I have to. I have to see. Otherwise, it'll just be stuck in my brain, and it'll drive me nuts, not knowing what was up there. So spoiler alert for what's up here. As you go up, you go up through this mountain, and it's all beautiful and pretty. And then you get to a road, just like a mountain road, because even though this area is pretty nice, I mean, I can still hear traffic from here. It is still also very, I think just maybe because there's like a huge mountain on either side here. So this is the only place where traffic can pass through is down in that valley near where the temple is. So there's like a highway. It's just busy. And then even this way, as you go up the mountain, it doesn't take long to get to a road. It's a very quiet road. But yeah, this place is still, it's kind of, it's certainly not like a nature reserve type thing. It is just a country place where country people live with their fucking cars, you know. So at the road, you could go left or right. And right seemed to be trending down a little bit. So I chose right, because that's also my thinking was, and it was true, is, you know, we went up a hill. As long as we make our way basically back down the hill, what can go you know, eventually we'll get to the bottom of this mountain again and the road is right there and we can follow the road back to the train. And that's exactly what happened. It's no big deal. There was one point where the road kind of zigzagged down through the mountain that was a little awkward, because there wasn't really a lot of room to walk. But then at the bottom, I found a little cartoon map. And the map revealed that this was not some renegade maverick thing that I just discovered. This is a path. It's a predetermined hiking path you're supposed to go on. And in fact, that part with the zigzag road, there were steps that we missed somehow that'll just cut you down through the middle of it. So you only have to cross the road once in a while. You don't have to walk on the road the whole time. But I was like, oh, that's cool. All right, so that was a thing. That was an adventure one is meant to have in these parts. But the other thing that was on 30:00 that cartoon was that instead of going to the right, you could also go to the left. And there was another predetermined basically, you know, it's going to be a little rough, but there's basically a predetermined trail to the left as well. So that planted that in my brain and that's been there for four years. You know, I was always like, all right, when I get to go back to Japan, I'm going to go to Fukuoka. I'm going to go back to the reclining Buddha. I'm going to go up the mountain and I'm going to go left and I'm going to see what happens. And finally, I'm doing it. That's what I'm doing today. So that's why, you know, maybe it seems like I'm pooping the the Buddha a little much. The Buddha's fine. The Buddha's kind of cool, but the Buddha's not why I'm here. I wouldn't have come back to see the Buddha. I'm back here to go to the left. I'm here to go the other way on the trail up through the mountains, which I should get a little higher up before I start recording again. I'm getting out of breath, but man, I'm above where the bamboo starts, but I'm not above the top of the bamboo yet. I'm just in the midst of the bamboo. So all around me is bamboo. I was like, this is fucking cool, man.

You know, one of Trent Reznor's early bands. He did not name them this, but they were called Slam Bamboo. That is a shitty name for a band, and they were a shitty band.

Nine-inch nails, that's a name that stands up to the test of time. That's a name with a cool abbreviation. That's a name that doesn't really mean anything, but just sounds cool. Slam Bamboo. That name fucking sucks. Do you ever hear that? It's like a test for your band name. Just imagine you're playing Wembley Stadium and it's a giant crowd, and your band gets introduced. Ladies and gentlemen, the number one selling act in all of the world. You know them. You love them. Slam Bamboo. Can you imagine anyone saying that? Or like, toad the wet sprocket? I know it's a fucking money python reference, but that's a fucking terrible name for a band. Or there's this British bands. They're kind of good, but they're called Eskimo Joe. That's not a good name. Or Radiohead. Radiohead's early name was on a Sunday, because they apparently used to meet up to do practice on a Sunday. It's like, fuck, that's a shitty name. Radiohead, I believe, is a talking heads reference, but Radiohead's a sweet name. And that's fine. Yeah, just take a reference from someone else. Take someone else's lyrics. Make them your band name. That's fine. Just make sure it's a good name.

But that's apropos of nothing. Well, not nothing. I guess it's apropos of Bamboo.

What in fact was I, what was I just saying? How did that even make sense? I'm above the point where the Bamboo starts growing? What does that mean? The Bamboo starts growing from the ground. I am constantly at the exact point where the Bamboo begins. It's just as I look down the mountain. Obviously that Bamboo started below me. So it feels like I'm floating in a sea of Bamboo. But then I turn around and the Bamboo ahead of me is above me. Like that didn't even make sense.

You know, I got some melon bread from Lawson's tucked away in my pocket. Maybe this is the sign. Maybe I need to eat some melon bread, fuel me up the mountain and turn my brain on. Because I don't even know what the fuck I'm talking about.

Alright, I made it to the top. Not that far of a walk. It's not actually that high up to you. Get to the road. There's another little, this is where again, I think I've just confused myself where, you know, I was trying to internalize the idea that it's a shinto shrine and a Buddhist temple. But this is just like a small little room. Kind of like that one I found near my old Airbnb, but this one's bigger with more stuff in it. And it's got different Buddha statues and stuff hanging up on the walls and pictures. And of course a lot of writing that I cannot read. But you wouldn't call this a temple, right? It's like very small. Wouldn't this be a shrine as well? Like just purely due to the size? A Buddhist shrine? Surely that's correct, right? Like temples are like a temple. They're big.

I think it can be a shrine even if it's with Buddha. I don't know. Again, my attempts to understand 35:00 are so pathetic. I just can't seem to internalize this stuff at all. But it's a very cool little place.

And today's offering is a green tea. That is not open. See, that's the thing I'm also in my endless inability to understand. Isn't it better not to open these things? Like I don't know as far as like a big place like the Nanzo inn that's full of staff and stuff. I don't know how it would work. But up here, this like here's just like a nice little house. It's a few little houses up here. Definitely people live up here. So if somebody's looking after this shrine, I mean at least then, you know, okay, so you know, they've got to take custody. What's the word? They're the shepherds of these offerings. So it's like, oh, okay, well a green tea, you know? Even if it's like a little strange, if the original intent was for the offerings to a piece, spirits and stuff, although I feel like that's more of a shinto thing. I don't know how it relates to Buddhism. But if the current thing is, so you got locals that are looking after this particular shrine. So they get to have stuff. They get to have a green tea. Look, why not? So isn't it better to not open it? If you open it, it's just like ruined. I don't know. I understand nothing. I definitely can see though why when I got up here last time with Brad, why we went to the right? Because yeah, it's like this mountain, country mountain road with a, with a guardrail because there were some parts that are pretty steep as you go down it. But the actual road itself, pretty gradual. Not a big deal. I remember there was like a cool like an auto parts. I don't know something like a garage almost, but it was semi abandoned and it wasn't like modern. It was old and there was like a weird owl statue. I remember that being a pretty nice walk, but yeah, it very clearly goes downward though. So that's why I can see like, oh yeah, okay, let's go, let's go to the right. It's heading down. It inevitably will probably reconnect to the road that heads back to the station. And that is what it does. So you can't go wrong heading to the right. But today's adventure, four years in the making, head to the left. I don't think I would have done this just out of pure, you know, hard headed desire to know what's to the left. It's just because the little map that I saw definitely had an alternate route to the left. So at some point, it's funny that it's a sad map was at the end of the trail. It's not up here anywhere, you know. It's like once you get to the end of it, I guess you could start from the bottom as an alternate way to get to Nanzo and like you would start down there and head upward and then back down to the reclining Buddha. But I feel like this path I took is the more likely one. You're probably going to get off at the train and up at the Buddha, find this path, head up, and uh, but then again, I mean, sure, you're kind of cast a drift, but it's just not that big a deal. It's just a road, a little ways up in the woods, a little ways up in the mountain. You don't really have other options. Once you're on this road, you just follow the road till you get to the bottom. At least that's what happens when you go to the right. I presume that's what happens when you go to the left here too. But yeah, seeing that map and having a little, what is the word? Like I was given extra confidence. That's not the word, but that'll do. Given a little extra assurance that there is something here and that this is not just a random thing to do. This is an okay thing to do. This is a thing it is semi-expected a person could do. There will be some kind of a route back down for me at some point. And actually, I just realized too, because when you head to the right, it kind of takes you further on a little ways past the station and we had to sort of circle back and walk back to the station a little. But this one is taking me in the direction of the previous station, Sasaguri station. So yeah, whenever I eventually get down off this mountain, get down off the dang mountain. Once I get down off this mountain, maybe I'll be halfway between Kitto Nanzo and my station, which is the one right by the temple and Sasaguri. So if I'm in between the two, I can do that other plan of just walking to Sasaguri station and seeing what I can see, seeing if there is anything to see. Yeah, this is very 40:00 much the same this way where there's guardrails and quite steep down the side, but it's very much like the forestry road that I walk down to get down off Mount Apariyama except this one has way more evident power lines and you know, I just left some houses. People actually live up here.

But still dead quiet. I think when we went the other way, if I remember right, I think only one car passed us. It was really quiet until we got to the slalom part where it goes back and forth. A different mountain road connected in and then it was then it was full on traffic.

But yeah, up here must just be whoever lives in these particular houses. There is nothing.

And the only thing, and this is fucking gorgeous, this is great. The only thing is I can still hear that traffic down there, but once I put away this recorder, I'm just gonna pop my little headphones in and listen to it a very quiet volume to make sure I hear any cars that are coming. The man, there's this Lincoln Park cover band called Hybrid Theory, they're really fucking good. They just put up like a 90 minute full concert that they did.

In front of a huge crowd, like a giant stadium show, and they put it on YouTube, so I just converted it to MP3 and I've been listening to it. And man, they're just really good. It just like, it truly does feel like a tribute. A tribute to Lincoln Park.

Way back when Lincoln Park first started as like, Pfft, Lincoln Park, whatever. And then as the years went by, I just liked it more and more and more.

So I'm gonna listen to that as I walk through this beautiful mountain road. This one's really going down at a very, very gradual pace. This actually might be an easier walk than a... than the other way. That is one thing I've definitely been noticing is it's pretty much undeniable that whenever my knees start to hurt my one bad knee, it's always from coming down from places. You know, you'd really think it would be going up. And again, going up probably does contribute a little. But I guess just because I go up kind of slowly and mindfully and like, it's not a big problem. Going down just feels like you can really just hoof her on down. And it's just surprising how much stress and strain you put on your body when you go down.

But it's another one of those things, you know? It's hard to go slow. It's hard to pace yourself. It's hard to modulate yourself in many ways in life.

And that's one of them. It seems so easy to walk down a hill. It's like there's nothing to it. But you really gotta be mindful not to go too fast. Not to rattle your fucking skeleton too much.

I was thinking too. I think that's why I kind of have a little trouble with places like that temple and with the big reclining Buddha and stuff. It's because I just don't like stopping. I just don't like it. I like to be going. I like to be moving. I mean, even though this is sort of nothing. It's just the mountain road, although it's become bamboo again. Man, this is cool just to see this much bamboo. Bamboo is like a little bit rare in Japan. You don't really see it all that often. This is the most I've ever seen for sure. There's tons of bamboo here.

But yeah, I like this better even though it's visually just a mountain road and some power lines and some bamboo and that's it. But I like it better because I'm walking through it. I'm moving through it.

So like that temple, I mean, it was cool to pass through. It's cool to see the Buddha and walk by. It's cool to see all the little statues and keep going. But I guess maybe that's why those places don't sink in as much in my mind is because I don't want to stop. I don't want to stop and contemplate. I want to be moving. I want to keep on moving. Walking meditation.

And as such, I just pass by so quickly. Whereas when you walk through a forest or up a mountain or just down a path or wherever, even just through a city, then it can really sink in because you can walk and walk and walk and walk. I got to be moving. I got to keep moving. I just don't like stopping. I don't want to stop. I'll stop and I'm fucking dead.

Here's some steps leading up and a house. 45:00 Should I go up the steps? I mean, I got to go up a little bit, right? See what's up there. What is this? Oh, maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's just another little temple.

But all right, let's go up and just see. Let's see what offerings have been left here.

Oh, you know what this could be?

Apparently, there are these pilgrimages because Norahiko from Chiba said he did one that spanned four different islands like Okinawa and three other islands. And I think he said it was 88 temples. But I saw when I was doing my quick three minutes of research that there's one of those here as well that I think is also 88. I don't know if that's a common thing because here I did see a sign pointing back the way I came.