Summer travels.

Between regular classes, extra classes, extracurriculars, sports, and other events, Luther is open most of the year, but there are a couple of occasions when it closes completely. Obon, the annual late-summer Buddhist commemoration of the dead, is one of those times. During Obon, most Japanese people return to their hometowns to clean their family gravesite and pay respects to their ancestors, whose spirits are said to revisit the household altar every year. Many Obon customs are rooted in guiding spirits back home. Obon is also peak travel season, but Caroline and I decided to brave the crowds and make our way back to Tokyo for a few days and then up to northern Honshu to visit some less frequented parts of Japan (and beat the brutal Kumamoto heat). Armed with a special train ticket that allowed us cheap travel on local trains around the country, we stuffed all our supplies into our smallest carry-on suitcases and flew into Tokyo on a budget flight on August 7 to start our journey.

Erik and Tauna, the missionary couple in Tokyo that came to Japan at the same time we did, graciously hosted us as we reunited with old friends from Hongo Student Center and our respective Tokyo churches that we have been missing dearly. It was good to see everyone again, enjoy delicious meals, and hear what's new in that crazy old metropolis. We also had the chance to check off a couple tourist activities we didn't get to when we lived in Tokyo last year:

Number one was a rickshaw ride through Asakusa. (Tokyo Skytree in the background.)

Number two was Tokyo DisneySea, the neighboring Disney park to Tokyo Disneyland.

Then it was on to the north. After ten hours on and off local trains, we arrived in the rural city of Yamagata. After a good night's sleep we woke up the next morning and took a scenic train journey to the temple complex of Yamadera, built into a mountainside.

Bashō and Sora. Photo by Caroline.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, we were (sort of) following part of the path the famous Japanese haiku poet Matsuo Bashō took as documented in his 1689 travel journal The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a book I read (and greatly enjoyed) years ago for a college class. I didn't realize it until we passed commemorative statues of him and his traveling companion Kawai Sora on our way up the mountain. We sweated and climbed up and down countless stairs, and I had to stop and drink water after every flight, but the views were breathtaking.

Bashō wrote of Yamadera almost 450 years ago, but little has changed since then:

Boulders piled on boulders had created this mountain, and the pines and cedars on its slopes were old... Circling around the cliffs and crawling over the rocks, we reached the main temple building. In the splendor of the scene and the silence I felt a wonderful peace penetrate my heart.
Matsuo Bashō, trans. Donald Keene, The Narrow Road to Oku (Kodansha, 1996) 99.

Then we headed up to Matsushima, a bay dotted with hundreds of little pine-covered islands, renowned for being one of the "Three Views of Japan." We took an hour-long "Bashō Cruise." Once again, Bashō is much better at describing things than I am:

There are countless islands. Some rise up and point to the sky; the low-lying ones crawl into the waves. There are island piled double or even stacked three high... Some look as if they carried little islands on their backs, others as if they held the islands in their arms, evoking a mother's love of her children. The green of the pines is of a wonderful darkness, and their branches are constantly bent by winds from the sea, so that their crookedness seems to belong to the nature of the trees... What man could capture in a painting or a poem the wonder of this masterpiece of nature?
Matsuo Bashō, trans. Donald Keene, The Narrow Road to Oku (Kodansha, 1996) 79.

After Matsushima we deviated from Bashō's path and journeyed to the historical samurai town of Aizu-Wakamatsu, our last stop on our trip. Unfortunately, we missed our train, so the journey took a lot longer than we expected, and by the time we stumbled into our ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn, I was suffering from heat exhaustion pretty badly. Thankfully the very hospitable staff let us check in early so I could rest in the room while Caroline went out and explored the town. I gotta say, if you have to have heat exhaustion, a ryokan's not a half-bad place to recover from it.

Exterior of the ryokan. (Photo by Caroline.)

Our room. On the table are the remains of the next morning's breakfast.

Sitting area in our room, facing the garden.

Yukata at a festival--a Japanese summer tradition.

After a bath and delicious local-specialty dinner of fish (both cooked and raw), vegetables, pickles, rice, soup, and tomato jelly for dessert, I felt much better and Caroline and I ventured out in our ryokan-issued yukata (light summer kimono) to see the Bon odori, or Obon dance, going on right in front of the river. A singer and instrumentalists stood on a platform over the river while a procession of people young and old, yukata- and Western-clad, Japanese and foreigner, slowly made their way around the platform, crossing bridges over the river and moving their arms in time with the beat.

Performers on the platform over the river.
(The banner says the festival is sponsored by the local newspaper.)

Here's a short video I took of the dance procession:

When we got back inside, our futon beds were already laid out on the tatami-mat floor for us. So we settled in for our last vacation night, happy but exhausted. It was a great ten days, though we both learned quite a few hard lessons about traveling. (Plan a rest day! Always plan a rest day! Also, count the number of clean pairs of underwear in your suitcase before you hop in the shower.) It was a wonderful opportunity to experience some other parts of Japan, but it also was nice to return to Kumamoto and get back into the swing of things at church and school. An Obon well-spent, I think.

The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.
Psalm 121:8 (NIV)