Golden week: Fukushima and Yamagata

Golden week has been and gone. The unseasonably warm weather provided ideal conditions for biking. We left the expressway at Fukushima and travelled through the lesser travelled roads of Fukushima and Yamagata.

Mt Bandai, Fukushima

Ura Bandai

Lake Hibara which is apparently a mesotrophic lake, formed when Bandai san errupted
in the late 1800s.

Lake Hibara

We took the the road around the back of Bandai san  to Yonezawa, Route 2, via Lake Hibara.
The road is a bikers paradise, snaking its way up and around and down Tohachiyama

Bandai National Park

Still snow in the mountains

Lake Hibara

The Bandai area borders Yamagata prefecture, and we rode up towards the flat farmland of 

Yonezawa, and north along route 287 before rejoining the expressway that goes to Futasui.

A late blooming sakura at a michi no eki south of  Ohe machi.

Yamagata farmland. This would have been covered in snow when I was up there in March.

Yonezawa north

North of Takahata

North of Takahata

Yamagata, the train to Shinjo

Oishida

Oishida

Obanazawa, Yamagata

Ticket prices from Shinjo to Akita

The crowded Ou line out of Akita city...it was like
being back in Tokyo. Though within 25 mins the train
had emptied out.

Yonezawa

I had an hour at Yonezawa. JR makes more money from the people who catch Shinkansen, so the train schedule is designed to maximize connections and convenience for the Shinkansen traveller. It's a pity it wasn't two hours in someway as Yonezawa seems like it has places of interest to sightseers.  

Yonezawa is mostly famous for its beef, but it also caught my attention when I read Isabelle Bird's  Unbeaten Tracks in Japan.

The plain of Yonezawa, with the prosperous town of Yonezawa in the south, and the frequented watering-place of Akayu in the north, is a perfect garden of Eden, "tilled with a pencil instead of a plough," growing in rich profusion rice, cotton, maize, tobacco, hemp, indigo, beans, egg-plants, walnuts, melons, cucumbers, persimmons, apricots, pomegranates; a smiling and plenteous land, an Asiatic Arcadia, prosperous and independent, all its bounteous acres belonging to those who cultivate them, who live under their vines, figs, and pomegranates, free from oppression—a remarkable spectacle under an Asiatic despotism. ..

It is an enchanting region of beauty, industry, and comfort, mountain girdled, and watered by the bright Matsuka. Everywhere there are prosperous and beautiful farming villages, with large houses with carved beams and ponderous tiled roofs, each standing in its own grounds, buried among persimmons and pomegranates, with flower-gardens under trellised vines, and privacy secured by high, closely-clipped screens of pomegranate and cryptomeria.

The snow was too high for me to read the sign
explaining the meaning of this statue outside 

JR Yonezawa

A statue of "A Young Man".
If there was more to the story than this,
it was covered by the snow.

A temple near the station

Not much ohaka maeri (grave visitation) possible here.

Ohigan - the spring equinox grave visiting season is in a couple of weeks.
There'll need to be some serious snow shoveling before then!

A rather forlorn looking doll.

Waist deep in snow

A sign telling the driver that the car has been parked
in a way that is bothersome to others.

Bego ya - a beef restaurant.
bego / beko is dialect for cow in parts of Tohoku

Decorative tiles on the footpath showing the local festivals

Just a reminder that Yonezawa is famed for beef!
A wagyu statue on the station platform.

Yamadera

Having come so far, when I got to Yamadera I was relieved that there was not much snow there and getting off was feasible.  I hadn't heard of Yamadera till recently,  I was looking at somewhere to stop off on the way back, and came up with it, though beyond being a temple mountain, as the name suggests, I had little idea of what was actually there.  It was well worth the stop.

Not all temples are created equal.... and actually in Japan although temples are omnipresent, they feel very closed.  Compared with a church or a Thai temple where everyone is welcome and can participate and where there is an active and defined avenue to learn more about what goes on there, I often get the feeling from Japanese temples that anyone is welcome - but only as an observer.   Yamadera was the same in this respect. There was no space inside a building set aside for people there to pray, as far as I could see there was little information about Buddhism as a religion (either in Japanese or English ), as though it was already self contained,  though there was historical information but in Japanese only. I did see a monk but he was absorbed in a book between selling entry tickets.  Yamadera seems to be a place for Buddhist ascetics, and there was an area higher up the mountain off limits to non ascetics.  There were some inaccessible little huts on the mountainside, that reminded me of the 'tree houses' at  the Santi Asok temple in Bangkok that were home to ascetic monks.   It's something I know very little about, and something I should ask Lily's friend Kazuo san; he is one of the few people I have met in Japan that has knowledge of Buddhism.

But as a historical, architectural site it was impressive. Particularly the view across the valley and up to the mountains.  For anyone with a wish to see off the beaten track Japan that is relatively accessible, this is it.

Yamadera

Yamadera: the steps up

A commemoration stone dedicated to someone who achieved a high rank in the armed forces during the Russo Japanese war

Kaimyo boards - when Japanese Buddhists die they typically are allocated a new name for the afterlife.

I'm struggling with the writing on this, but it fits with the ascetism of the temple.

Yamadera: Graffiti on the walls of the look out building...... multilingual graffiti

Yamadera

Yamadera: Beyond here is for ascetics only

Stunning scenery

Little huts are visible here, I imagine the caves also are used for ascetic practice.

Yamadera

Yamadera: Hiking courses nearby.... maybe in the summer...

http://www.yamagatakanko.com/english/sightseeing/yamadera.html

This is a useful site  of Yamagata sight seeing places for anyone interested in going there.

Sakata

The Uetsu line train from Murakami terminated at Sakata, Yamagata prefecture,  and there was a 90 min wait between trains - enough time to get out of the station and have a quick look around. What a lovely city.  Two short visits and I'd like to go back for a couple of days.  Sakata was an old port city, as I mentioned when I wrote about being here last October.  The strees are wide, the houses are well maintained, there is spit and polish to it.  Even the man holes on the ground had a fresh painted zing.  Many Japan seaside places, especially those away from the Shinkansen lines, have a worn, dilapidated feel. Not Sakata.  Even the empty shops by the station looked neat and clean, with no sense of urban decay.

The cheery zing of the painted manhole covers

My short wanderings took me by chance through a temple district that featured in the movie 'okuribito'  (Departures) which won the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2009.  (Buddhist)  Temples tend to signify urban life, literacy and education. Buddhism, which came to to Japan via China has many sutras and religious text that require at least some of the population to be literate. In contrast, Shinto, the indigenous religion has no written doctrine and shrines which are connected to nature and are found randomly on mountain paths, by waterfalls and in forest clearings.   (The lack of written  doctrine helps explain how Shinto could be manipulated so much in the lead up to world war II).

Kaian - A Zen temple with pagoda near the station  

A signboard showing where part of Okuribito was filmed

Itsukushima shrine

 Itsukushima shrine

Itsukushima shrine

A house of no particular significance that I could see.

Shops to rent near the station

Around Sakata

Sakata town map (the macro setting isn't quite right)

North of Sakata it was dark.  I took the train to Akita city and changed to an all stations to Odate, arriving at 9.54pm. 
Some time in the future I would like to go back to Sakata and follow the trainline up the coast to Aomori.