Friday, June 29, 2012

Ancient Hot Spring Path

Ancient Hot Spring Path
I have nightmares, literally I do, where I am in Japan, but I can't get to the hot spring.  One of my big points of this trip was to enter the "perfect" hot spring.  The one I found almost perfectly fit my dreams.  It was absolutely hidden, among trees and moss.  The structures looked abandoned and disused.  Shrouded by mountains and without any signage.  But I was so hoping they just might be what I thought they could be that I ventured into them...

We had wandered off the highway because I was looking for an excuse to stop driving and I spotted an almost-hidden mountain shrine entrance. 

To Lukas' left are the baths.  The shrine entrance is in front of him.
Shrine entrance
(Airalia, if you're reading this:  there were gnome-homes there.  I've found them.  They're there and though I didn't actually see any gnomes, I could feel them watching us, giggling and jiggling and hiding and making cute little gnome-homes.)


The ancient roadhouse visible from the gnome homes  

We spoke with an elderly man, who claimed to be the oldest person in the hood.  (At eighty?  Come on!)  He said this place was a shrine sacred to travellers from who-knows-where to Kamakura, which you all remember was highlighted in a previous blog.  In addition to being in my blog, and encouraging homoerotic shrine-carrying, Kamakura was the capital of Japan for a couple hundred years.  So the road to Kamakura was well-worn and important.  As you'll see by the following photo of Lukas on the ancient path:
Andrea, these photos were taken for you.
I know many of you thought this was going to be a blog about birth in Japan... Well, we're getting there.  It's been "the lightest month they've ever had," at Saito Birth House.  In ten years.  But it turned out to be abso-smurfly perfect for Lukas and I.  For so many reasons... including having time to get to know the midwives and their practices and... (next blog)

2 comments:

  1. Birth or no birth, what a beautiful place to be!

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  2. incredibly gorgeous discovery...hoping i stumble upon a similar place in our journey there.

    ReplyDelete