Some personal news: I finally got my first nihongo jouzu. My advice to others planning to visit Japan is to learn just enough of the language that people in bars will think you’re an amusing novelty and buy you drinks.
Fed up with the lousy weather, I decided it was time to ask for some divine intervention. Up in the mountains around Nagano, about an hour by bus, are the Five Shrines of Togakushi, a series of Shinto jinja connected by a hiking trail. The whole route takes 2-3 hours. If I’m being honest with myself, I wasn’t all that enthused about seeing Tokyo. I’m not a city slicker. This hike has been my favorite experience of the trip so far. For one, I finally got to see some changing autumn leaves that I chose this time of year for.
I wasn’t clear on if the pilgrimage was meant to start low and hike up or start at the top and descend. I chose the latter, as I’m guessing most others did based on the decreasing number of foreigners as I worked my way down. But the top shrine is the most grandiose, with a 20-minute hike just from the massive torii gate to the shrine itself, so I recommend those coming after me to start at Houkousha Shrine. But I began at Okusha Shrine, where I bought a luck pendant.
In preparation for my rapidly approaching midlife crisis I’ve become something of an amateur religious scholar. One brain-bending paradox you encounter early is that, much like how linguistics does not define “language,” religious studies has no satisfying definition of “religion.” Japanese Shinto/Buddhism is the (literal) textbook example of how Christian-oriented conceptions of religion as primarily faith-based are insufficient. Even the Japanese word for religion, 宗教(shuukyou), is a relatively recent neologism. The central principle of Shinto is that every object houses a spirit, and I sure watched a lot of people bow respectfully to a lot of inanimate objects today. I wondered if they really believed that what seems to be a mass-produced amulet could grant them luck, or if the shrine housed a god that would be happy if they said thank you on the way out. Then I wondered if, were I to ask them, would they even understand the question. It’s just what you do.
Well, it stopped raining, so my luck pendant must have worked. No one’s worth less for living in tract housing.
