Mount Fuji

Here is the touchstone of Japanese culture. Mount Fuji. At over 12000 feet, it towers over central Japan. Everyone looks for it, and addresses it as their friend. "Can you see Fuji San today? Can you see it?" everyone asks. It is the iconic center of the nation.

Many a hiker try the pilgrimage to the top of this volcanic mountain, latest eruption in 1707. There are way stations to spend the night. Or you can do it in one day. We tried the climb and stayed in a climbing hostel for one night. The next day we continued the climb but were halted by strong winds and clouds that raced across our path. Rangers closed the approach. We turned and headed back down. The way up taxed my lungs. The altitude and exertion wore me down. We had bottles of oxygen to invigorate us in the climb. It was rough. But I was making it.

The way down like to have killed me. We slalomed down a track of volcanic ash. Quick work, but the toll it took on my knees! I dragged myself to the car, completely exhausted. Then I wobbled gingerly around the house for the next few days.

Fuji San. Here is this fire god, caught in the clouds with the shimmering evening light. Power, spirit, beauty.

Then a twisted contrast.

One day we dined in Yokasuka, part of an urban jungle of houses and buildings cheek to jowl that stretches down the coast from Tokyo. It is a maze of both narrow and wide roadways, busy with cars, motor bikes, bicycles, buses, trains, and pedestrians. Down one narrow ally, hardly room for two to pass, we turned into a little dive of a restaurant with only a countertop that sat a total of six customers. I had a great meal of hamburgoo, a rich hamburger dish without the bun, covered with gravy and juicy with egg, onion, and bread bits.

After eating we got in our car parked in back street lot. Pulling down a side street something caught my eye. A tree, or the remnant of a tree, small, lonely, stark and black, twisted and charred, but still reaching for the sky. Around it was a barricade of concrete blocks. What was this thing, set aside and protected. I asked our companions in the car. They said, "Eh?".

I learned that 500 years ago some young maidens were near the tree when a violent crack of lightning turned the tree to a haunting charred silhouette ..but the maidens, shocked and dusted with ash, survived. The tree gave its life for the young women. Ever since, it has been revered like a saint. Obscure, stuck in a back alley, but still telling its ghostly and beautiful tale.

It is so Japanese- the care for heritage, the fine eye for detail and beauty in all things, the preservation of the spirit (Kami) in nature.

From the grand to the small, anything that is poignant and beautiful, anything that fills you with awe has kami (spirit), so des ne (is it not so?).