NEWS OF TRAVEL JAPAN

Nakayama-dera Temple is famous for being the place of praying for a safe birth in the Kansai area. It is one of a few temples which have elevators and escalators for visitors, and its buildings are magnificent and not old, so it looks glorious. Despite of the early morning and the rainy day there were many couples and families with pregnant women or babies, and it made a happy mood. Praying for a safe birth A pregnant woman wants a safe birth of her baby, it must be a common wish for pregnant women around the world. In Japan the wish made the common custom of praying for a safe birth. This custom was made by some Japanese fundamental thoughts during ancient times and some Japanese spells. So I want you to know the Japanese thoughts and spells. Firstly, a fetus in its mother’s womb gets its spirit approximately 9 weeks after the pregnancy and the fetus’s mother gets her morning sickness, it is Japanese spiritual thoughts. And five months after pregnancy the spirit of the fetus ...

Once upon a time, a female deity, Orihime, lived on the west side of Amanogawa (the Milky Way). She had been very good at weaving since her childhood. The clothes she wove in the celestial world became fresh mist and clouds, and covered mountains and fields. When Orihime became marrying age, her father brought, as her fiancé, the deity of a cowherd, Hikoboshi, from the east side of Amanogawa. They quickly fell in love and no longer worked as before. So, people said, “It’s not normal weather. Recently, the mist and clouds don’t come out at all.” Orihime’s father was very upset at this situation and decided to separate his daughter from Hikoboshi. Still, Orihime’s father suggested one condition to the couple – If you work hard, I will allow you to meet up once a year on the night of July 7th”. Since then, Orihime worked harder than before and looked forward to meeting Hikoboshi on July 7th. (From a leaflet of Katano City) It is a very popular story in Japan and there are a lot o...

“Let’s protect ourselves against the invisible coronavirus by the invisible power of copying out Heart Sutra.” Yohnin Koike, the vice-chief priest of Suma-dera Temple, called on everyone via YouTube. Copy out Heart Sutra He said that the Emperor Saga had eagerly copied out Heart Sutra praying for the recovery from an epidemic in Japan in ancient times and the epidemic had faded out. “Coping out Heart Sutra gives you a mysterious power, thus let’s try to copy out Heart Sutra even if you have no experience of not only copying it out but also reading it”, he added. Every person in the world can do it and participate in the circle of something mysterious. It is said that Heart Sutra has its mysterious power in its each individual word, thus even if you don’t know its kanji or Japanese language, you can be initiated into something mysterious by copying out Heart Sutra. Incidentally, a man in ancient times made an emoji sutra, illuminated sutra, for people who had no knowledge o...

So far a lot of travelers visit Todai-ji Temple continually. They enjoy seeing the large historical statue of Buddhism and giving food to deer in Nara Park near the temple. It looks like a peaceful scene. However, COVID-19 is altering the world extremely. Several thousand people in the world are dying due to it everyday. Many of the people on the earth are forced to stay home. Now few people visit there. Meanwhile, the core desire of this Buddha since the beginning is to cherish people and to guard people from epidemic. If you knew the episode of building the temple, you would become more interested in the temple. The chronicle of establishing the temple The most important key person of the temple was Emperor Shomu. He was born in 701, when the first significant law “Taiho-ritsuryo” in Japan, which was learned from the law in China, was regulated by Emperor Tembu. And Shomu was the great grand-child of Tembu. Ultimately, we can say that Shomu was raised in the atmosphere of ...

Present-days cherry trees that we normally see in towns are a breed called “Someiyosino”, which was bred in the middle of the Edo period of the eighteenth century. Someiyoshino blooms rapidly in spring and the aspects of the full blooming are beautiful, and people can enjoy holding parties beneath cherry blossoms of Someiyoshino. Furthermore, immediate falling petals of blossoms is emotional with reluctance. Japanese people have loved such aspects, so it might have been the reason that someiyoshino spread to every corner of Japan. Someiyoshino isn’t a normal tree and all the genes of someiyoshino in every place are the same, yes those are clones. By the way, the origins of the cherry trees are mountain-cherry trees in the mountains. Probably those might not have been very different from other mountainous trees with blossoms. Nonetheless, some characteristics of mountain-cherry blossoms might have influenced the old Japanese people. This time I will write about mountain-cherry tre...

In a disaster we had better face the disaster. It is the words of Buddhism, but actually, my mind is outside of the words. On holidays my wife and I have stayed home as much as possible since the middle of February. It is due to coronavirus. Contrarily, to restrict our activities strongly leads to our mind being steeped in somber and such somber mind decreases the energy of immunity. And our spending during a short outing may help the economy even though it might be a small step. Besides, the war against COVID-19 is continuing and the end cannot be seen. In the end, we determined we had better shift our last stage of restraining during holidays to the next stage of striking a balance between not to be infected and to make adequate activity to keep the force of our immunity. So then, we decided to go to the Arima-spring-town, Kobe. The Origin of Arima-Springs Firstly, we visited Arima Hot-Spring Shrine. The shrine is on the middle of a hill and the long stone-stairs were in front ...

What a fun picture it is! Looking at the moon they were asking each other how old the moon was. The big man answered thirteen years old and the other answered seven. It is childish, but it is the last mental state where the Zen priest who painted it had arrived after many Zen practices and enlightenments. I showed it to my daughter who is a kindergarten teacher and asked her how she felt. She immediately answered cute, “kawaii”. Sengai The painter is Sengai who was a great Zen priest at the time of 70 years after Hakuin in the Edo period , but Sengai never met Hakuin. Hakuin who painted many amusing pictures for people, but he was a consistent Zen priest. Contrarily, Sengai was the most eager Zen priest likewise amid the then Zen priests, but his last mind state was away from Zen by Zen practices. Look at the picture above. It was painted by young Sengai. He was a good painter and a good Zen practitioner with hope. So it concludes the taste of Zen. Sengai hoped that he wo...