Travel Delights

Pinwheel Buddhas

One of the most addictive parts of travel, especially in a foreign country, is unexpected delights. I’m a pretty dedicated planner – a list maker, a ‘what if’ scenario solver, a top notch calendarer (basically a Virgo) - so in order to feed this particular habit, I have to really tamp down my control freak desire to predict the future and just let reality unfold. It scares me a bit, but that is also kind of habit forming. The more days I spend on the road, the more I crave the not knowing.

Our couple days in Ureshino, Japan illustrates this perfectly. Ureshino is where tea first came to Japan from China and it remains the country’s central tea-producing area. The region, in Saga prefecture, is also known for the accompanying pottery that no doubt grew up alongside tea production. The town itself is small – not much larger than Cold Spring, NY – and attracts visitors for onsen, tea and shopping.

We consulted the front desk about dinner options. A 30-minute exchange resulted in a fuzzy sense of a couple places that were within walking distance. We ventured out and wandered around looking at the characters on the Japanese map and comparing them with the signs (much harder than it sounds) and getting lost. Finally, driven by our hunger, I walked into what I assumed was a bar (they had alcohol advertisements plastered all over the entrance) to ask directions – but before I could even whip out my google translate, we were whisked to a table and given an ipad. Not a bar, but a charming and very friendly izakaya. Ipad menu put to action brought us edamame, grilled meat, accidentally ordered fried chicken, yam, Korean omelet. It came in minutes and we loved that place so much that we vowed to come back every night we were there (turns out, it is a popular place and was booked every other night we tried to get in).

Next day we wanted to take a long walk – our friend had directed us to a website (Olle) that charts walks throughout the Kyushu and they had an English page for one nearby, but not exactly detailed information. I consulted the folks at the front desk, they ordered us a cab and with us assuming they told the driver where we should go, we were off. I was thinking we were in for a sort of stroll through the ex-burbs of town – a chance to see how people live there, get some fresh air and movement.

Soon after the cab dropped us off, we came to a shrine and as we walked up the steps, we were greeted by dozens of buddhas each with a colorful pinwheel. It was so astoundingly charming – the effect was like an injection of joy. Like someone just slipped me a happiness pill. Who doesn’t want that again and again? And if I knew there were going to be pinwheel buddhas, I wouldn’t have been nearly as delighted - the pleasure is in the discovery.

We keep walking and find a trail that takes us off pavement and we start climbing, I mean really climbing, through a thickly wooded landscape. A bucket offers us bamboo poles and we are grateful for them. A little further down the trail, a tin can with a wooden staff asks us to bang it to scare away wild boars (sounds like an excellent idea), ropes appear to help us get up this mossy-rock incline and I’m like ‘where the hell are we?’ And just as I think maybe we should have looked up the hike a bit more, we come to a sort of grotto and once again, a group of Buddhas welcome us – this time, all wearing red shirts. They seem to be like: Oh, hi. We were hoping you would come, isn’t this place great? I was like yeah, it’s pretty great.

The greeters on top of a particularly steep climb

And on and on – this was not a stroll through towns – it was a real hike (9 miles) that meandered through tea fields and forests before depositing us back into town through a gorgeous city waterfall park where I ran the next day.

And just when I thought we reached our quota of unexpected gems, we came to a public square that had a hot spring-fed foot bath. That’s what I said. A hot spring-fed foot bath. In a city square. Turns out Ureshino has several and over the course of the next few days, I loved seeing folks gathered there, soaking their feet, chatting, reading the paper – just going about their business while partaking in the foot onsen. Amazing.

Mark enjoying the onsen footbath after our hike

Today we start a several day walk on a different island of Japan (Shikoku) – no doubt, there will be delights along the way. I’ll try and share a few as we go.

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Prairie Stuart-Wolff/Japan

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School Lunch, Japanese style