Advertisement
Published: July 25th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Eiheiji Temple
perfection at its finest If someone were to ask me to name the top 10 places that I want to visit I could list them off in the space of one breath. They are always there, in the back of my mind, nagging me and quietly persuading me to go. I have thought so much about them that I have developed romanticized images and ideas about them. I feel like I somehow know them and know what they are like.
In contrast, if someone were to ask me to name the top 10 places that I wouldn't want to visit I could list them off as well but it would take me more time. After all, I don't particularly spend my time thinking of places where I don't want to go. What's the fun in that? However, if pressed for it, I would be able to make the list.
Over time I have developed these distinctive ideas in my mind about the places that I think I want to go and the places that I think I wouldn't want to go but the key word to all of this is the word think. In reality, I have no idea what I am talking
about. The only ideas I have are from photo shopped pictures and highly romanticized or degrading travel narratives or newspaper and magazine articles. These are the things that have shaped my opinions.
I realize that the majority of the knowledge that I have is majorly lacking. If you think of all the countries, cities, towns, and people there are in the world there is no way that you could possibly think that you could know them all. At best, I know almost nothing, and the places I do know are mainly the famous places that have been trodden upon by hundreds of thousands of other visitors. And not to say that these places aren't still special. They wouldn't be so well-known and well-visited unless they had something to offer and most of them do.
However, the most special experiences that I have had, and I guarantee a lot of other travelers would agree, are from the small, off the beaten track towns and villages that you may wander through on your travels. There is something different about these areas, something that distinguishes them from the rest. Most of the time you don't go to these places on purpose.
The Ferry Home
and a sunset to remember It may be somewhere you pass through to get somewhere else or some other unplanned fate that takes you to them. Fukui was one of these places for me.
I had never once thought about visiting this "ken" (prefecture) and knew next to nothing about it. It wasn't somewhere that was on my list of places to visit in Japan, in fact, it wasn't even on my radar. I had no reason to visit there. Then one weekend everything changed. I met Sarah.
For the next two months, I found myself spending my final moments in Japan making the long trip up north to visit her in this almost forgotten about "ken". And I couldn't have imagined spending that time in any other way. This previously unknown area had become somewhere very special to me. I will never forget the time that I spend there walking through lush green rice fields, stripping down and floating down the cold water in the rice field aqueducts, watching the sparrows and crows fly through bronze barley fields, following a wild boar and its baby on an old mountain road, resting in a quiet cedar forest and by cold mountain streams around
Eiheiji Temple, listening to hundreds of monks offering their afternoon prayers in the Eiheiji prayer hall, laying under the strangely shaped geometrical Tojinbo Cliffs, driving through cool little forgotten towns deep in the mountains, filling up on the areas special soba noodles and doing all of these things with Sarah. It's these things that now make up some of my best memories in Japan.
To take from a quote by Einstein that I have come to really like and that I have taught my classes under for the last two years: "The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. The more I realize I don't know, the more I want to learn". There is a lot of truth in this. Especially in regards to travel. A lifetime isn't even close to enough to see it all. All you can hope for is to have the chance to see a little and I know that I will always have this desire to learn and see more of all of these fascinating countries, cities, towns, villages and people that are found all over the world. They are endless. I am just happy for the chance to have discovered
Eiheiji Temple Grounds
one of the best temples I've been to after 2 years in Japan... and I've been to a lot Fukui and more importantly Sarah.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.246s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 18; qc: 88; dbt: 0.0936s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Islandboy
Chaz McSwaz
Noice
Nice shash`s yellowhead, very green. Glad to hear you got off ok from my successor, sorry I didint get a chance to speak to before I left. Was up mountains solid for a about 2 weeks and camping with no electric plugs. Was wicked though. Bakc in osaka now. gonna miss this city too. let me know how life back in the US is going mate. Dont forget me mother f****r! Nick Ps I have a handle bar moustache