The rest of Sapporo & Tendai Buddhists

In case you guys haven't seen the NHK world TV series yet click HERE! Part 3 of the video covers our peace tour (I appear briefly twice in the segment. once wearing a pink hat folding cranes next to Hiroko and John- in my peace family as you may have read in a previous post, and once with my back turned wearing a purple shirt). Also look at part 1 and 2 if you are interested in learning more about the bombings and this years events.



I spent the rest of my time in Sapporo enjoying the cool weather and looking around town. Places I visited include the "sapporo factory", "clock tower", city hall, and the Odori park. In the winter, ice sculptures are featured in the giant Odori park, which is about a dozen blocks long and cuts through the city leading up to the Sapporo TV tower. However, in the summer time, this space is used for several public beer gardens (in case you didn't know, that is what Sapporo is famous for).





"Irasshaimase" (heard many times in the above clip) is an honorific expression used to welcome people, usually into a place of business. I then returned via night train back to Honshu (the main island of Japan), and then took a couple shinkansen (bullet trains) to Kyoto. Here I met up with some buddhist priests, who are indebted to my father for repatriating a Kesa (piece of ceremonial clothing). Today, I travelled with them by cable car up to the place of the grave of the Kesa owner for a short ceremony, as he died this day many years ago.






I then had a lunch of Shojin Ryori with them (traditionally for priests - no meat or fish)




Tsuzumi, the head of the society for the person whose tomb we visited, has been taking care of me. We also visited the Tendai head office and met the president of Hieizan Enryakuji Temple. Unfortunately, he could not accept the Kesa, which will for now be kept in another temple. All of the people I travelled with are super old, but seem still to have a sense of humor (perhaps they aren't as boring as I thought!). One of them, Yamashita, is the leader of the "Nippon Origami Association in Kyoto". They were also interested to hear about my peace studies.

Now is the obon season, where many people return to their hometown to honor/worship the departed spirits of ancestors in Japan (I realized the implications of this as I tried to book travel to who knows where for this week). It's a buddhist tradition and national holiday and so it's customary for people to get time off work. One belief is that every year, the spirits of the dead return to their tombs to meet the people. I was listening to one of the buddhist monks talk about the tomb we visited (which is located in the middle of the forest and has a giant structure, shown below) and how nice it is:

He commented that anyone's dream would be to after death rest in a place as nice as this and it made me think about what hope there is in their thinking. Is having a final resting place such as this really the greatest thing we can hope for?

Until next time!