In search of eternal life
Paradise can wait.
Looks like Fujijama is about to break out. The steam swells in fuzzy clouds from the top, it is hot and humid. And damn cozy by the way; It sits splendidly in the 42 degrees warm water between thick stones, bamboo stalks and gracefully trimmed mini-pines, overlooking the snow-capped peak of the loftiest mountain in Japan. I yawn relaxed, wiggle my toes and am here in the spa town of Hakone, one and a half hours drive from Tokyo, otherwise on the way to almost eternal life. Along with five Japanese women, who also sit in the onsen with a wet rag on their heads, one of about 14,000 hot mineral springs throughout the country. Statistically, the ladies with their 50 years in Nippon have just halftime. That must have reasons. However, they are not obvious - but maybe in the hot water.
In search of the (almost) eternal life
In the onsen one does not jump, one glides in. After you have soaped, scrubbed and carefully disposed of all soap leftovers. "Onsen are fountain of youth," says Asayo Ishimura. Her family has been living for 137 years, tapping into one of the 17 Hakone springs and channeling water underground through bamboo pipes into the indoor and outdoor pools of their Ryokan Senkyoro, home to entire company workforce over the weekend. "The onsen warms the middle of the body, works wonders in rheumatism and arthritis, even in fractures, there is hardly anything better," smiles the 59-year-old, while I wrap myself crimson in a light cotton kimono. "And because the skin is well supplied with blood, it does not age so quickly, most Japanese women swear the onsen gets it nice!" One of the five women sitting next to me in the hot water wants to know whether I've been a few miles further in the red wine onsen: "They have a sake basin there too," she giggles, "and one with green tea too." Not only for the external application, of course.
Rest on a chubby moss
The sun is still in the clouds when we walk along the shore of Ashinoko Lake the next morning. Japan's highest mountain greets as a twin, once up, once down in the mirror of the silent lake, where cheesy colorful junks chug through his snowcap and a couple of swan-clad pedal boats. The old Tokaido, four centuries ago the road between the imperial residence of Kyoto and the capital Edo, is a forgotten path along the lake side, up to 20 meters high cedars are their trellis. Huge guardians on mossy beds, with trunks smooth and green like slates. Rest, a little moment only, on chubby moss. Maybe the onsen will make you young and healthy. In any case, he makes you tired.
The Fujijama should bring luck - all those who have climbed the 3776 meters high mountain
Fast as the fast train glides to Osaka, from there rumbles the life behind the pulleys sluggish past. Bright orange kaki fruits dangle from bare branches, as if someone had hung them in as a decoration. Dense forests of bamboo sticks stick out stiffly from the earth, station sheds with two platforms stand deserted in the landscape, flanked by palm trees in the morning mist; The gently curved roofs of the houses tower into the sky above the rice fields. Children in blue uniforms stroll to school, despite autumn cool in knee socks to mini skirt or short pants. From Gokurakubashi, a cable car climbs the 860 vertical meters to the holy mountain Koya-san, south of Osaka. We glide up. Over the dense forests, through which the earthy pilgrim path winds for nearly one and a half millennia, lined with 180 stone pillars, each with a mandala written on it. The city of monks, soon we will be there. The place of the smile, a Japanese friend had promised me, and: "There you even come to rest, and that is part of the secret of our old age."
The mountain is not calm, it burns: In fire red, flame yellow, light orange the foliage of the trees shines. Ginkgos glowing in the autumn sun, ornamental maple branches carry multicolored leaves. In the middle of the color dance rises the massive Daimon, the entrance gate. Red bridges lead to the most powerful of over a hundred temples, in between a few Torii, Shinto shrine archways. Monks in blue work clothes and wooden sandals rush by. Dozens of shops for cowls, prayer beads, lucky charms, a university for Buddhist studies, even a school exist on the Koya-san. Women were not allowed to enter the area for a thousand years. Today they come for a weekend from Osaka, Kyoto and even Tokyo. Japan Temple - pause signs in a noisy, hectic everyday life, rest tanks in between.
Japan is a fountain of youth because people do not always fight back
"Some even stay forever," says Junko Sakata, director of the Niso-Gakuin Nativity School, while we sit in her office with green tea. "As a nun." The 69-year-old Junko, when Temple City founder Kobo Daishi, who according to legend became the Buddha 1200 years ago, remained silent and cured the terminally ill mother. At that time, Junko cut off her black hair and entered the nun's school with a bald head. "It felt normal to change my life," she says. "Do not cling to what's happening, change is a part of life, and not always defending against it may also keep you a bit young."
With closed eyes we let the thoughts come.
The silence lies before the heavy doors of the nun's school. And in the meantime also the darkness. In front of the temples glowing iron lanterns swing in the wind. Koya-san's main temple, the Kongobuji, shines in bright red in the spotlight. Okuno-in, Japan's oldest cemetery, lies under a mop cloth behind centuries-old cedars, over 200,000 stone lanterns and memorial stones grow among pagodas from the mossy soil, which is a soft bed for a millennium of history filled with samurai, princes and priests. Buddha images guard the eternity and battalions of little Jizos, stone figures with red bibs under the baby faces, the patron saints of unborn, dead children. Gambling balls and sweets have been unfolded by unknown moms in front of them and even some of them have been crocheted.
Do not fall asleep
Wake at six-thirty in the morning. A monk knocks on the wooden sliding door to our room. As we shuffle on the house slippers through the cold of the morning in the prayer room, sit the monks in their shining yellow silk robes singing in the candlelight. Voices, united as if in a single dark tone, syllables rolling out of the mouth, the names of the gods. The head of the temple, Habukawa Shodo, stages the Hooma, an ancient Buddhist fire ceremony. Golden metal lanterns dangle from the ceiling, in the niches are boxes with the ashes of the deceased. With half-closed eyes, we let the thoughts come and try to rush them out again. Some have barbs, they have to be ruled out by force. I do not adhere to anything. I can not get rid of one thought: my futon. Do not fall asleep. Not before enlightenment.
It is square, has a hole in the middle, and perhaps explains why even the old on the holy mountain radiates so youthful. Monk Genso snips a circle out of a sheet of paper and holds his bow in front of my eyes as he holds the cut piece two inches beyond it: "If you just look at the circle, you do not see real life," explains Genso. "It's the same with your wishes and annoyances: they're there, but if you do not even look at them, they'll pass by, and you'll see what lies behind, what counts and stays." Through the hole I look at the temple garden, the pond where koi carp swim, pine trees, the green of the bamboo grass, the ball bushes. Actually saving energy, only to pay attention to what is really there, it relaxes the facial features immensely. But where do I leave all my thoughts? I decide, in the name of youthfulness, to practice letting go. I fold my enlightenment, put it in my pocket and look at the bamboo bending in the wind.
A mental training, an inner cleansing
"Bamboo is always green, always upright and incredibly flexible," explains Chizu Kiriki, 62, as she stands in front of a shell in her Okiya, an old Geisha house in the middle of Kyoto's old town, forcing a branch of quince and a few grasses on pegs and in shape bends. "The wind can bend it, but never break it." That, we understand, was now a life lesson. Devoutly, we sit on our knees and watch her, as she creates a small feat of the tamed flowers. Chizu was a geiko - a geisha from Kyoto. A star in the teahouses Gion. "I've learned how to dance at the age of eight," she says, pouring hot water on poisonous macha tea powder into each cup and beating it to a thick porridge with a bamboo brush.
"When I was 16, I became Maiko, living with other geiko students in an okiya like this one, learning a lot," she says. Ikebana, the flowers, about - and the complicated choreography of the hands at the tea ceremony. "The foreigners often think that the flowers should only beautify the room, that the tea only tastes good," smiles Chizu. "It's both a kind of meditation, a way of focusing on a matter of concentration and calming down, a mental workout, an inner cleansing." Chizu slips on her knees and puts a bowl of green foam in front of us. Chado - the way of tea to rest. A dance of the fingers. And yet the focus on the essentials. Carefully I am sipping the broth. He tastes slightly bitter.I try to cup my cup with a round, graceful sweep, twisting it slightly and guiding it to the mouth, according to all the rules of tea-making. The secret of eternal life - perhaps it is also in the ancient rituals. In movements that force the soul to pause. In small rest units that give new strength.
The rice keeps us young.
Round movements, even on the bike. In Soja at Okayama, we ascended and pedal on the 15-kilometer Kibi Trail, through a patch of land filled with terrifying legends. The Prince Kibitsuhiko fought the monster Ura here, drove an arrow into his eyes, whereupon Ura became a fat carp and swam in a sea of blood. Rice fields are harvested and tired in the sun. The farmer's wife Motoko Yasui, 42, sits on a stool in front of her house and throws black ink on elegant characters on a sack of rice grown on her fields. "You Europeans eat too little of it," she laughs. "It's the rice that keeps us Japanese so young, and the fish that's lucky enough to go with rice, and if you dare try it with Natto." - "Fermented soybeans?", I ask and make a face, because I remember my first cup with this sticky brown mass. - "That draws threads, does not it?" But the threads sprain everything bad in the stomach, we always say, even the age! " She smiles mischievously.
Below me, the shrine gate shines
The red gate of Itsukushima shrine in front of Miyajima Island rises from the sea. As a landmark between our world and the world of Kami, the Shinto Gods. Holy Island, so little of this world, that the women were once brought to the mainland to be sent to Hiroshima. And the sick people. To go out of life and divorce was equally impure. The dead still bring them to the other side of the water, but the pregnant women are allowed to stay in the village. Deer roam through the place, become tame by stroking, feeding hands. Above the loading lane with the souvenir shops hang awnings; Children nibble Momiji-Manju, pastry cakes stuffed with sweet bean curd, a couple of old ladies examine the packs of pickled vegetables and dried fish, a restaurant with barely more than four tables praises its oysters, an island specialty. A little further on, the streets become emptier and quieter, then the path leads into the forest, a rock monkey from the mountain Misen scurries across the street.
Below me in the water is the red Torii, the shrine gate, as if it were in a land that knew nothing of suburban subways, the crowds of black-clad Salary-Men, those clerks bustling into the cities in the morning, high-tech robots and armies of silent vending machines that spit out soups, coffee, briefs or even a set of new fingernails for a few coins.
The question of eternal life
Over there, in the woods, the trees are waiting for brighter colors, the fan maple is already richly red. "The koyo, the fall color, is beautiful, is not it?" Says an old woman who suddenly stands next to me. "There are two types of trees at this time of the year: those who lose their leaves in the fall and feel a little defenseless - and the others who wear their most beautiful dress in autumn, who look proud and dignified."
The age - matter of opinion, quite obviously. I pull the piece of paper out of the temple out of my purse and look through the hole: at the proud maple, the blue water, the bright red gate.
Not eternal life, but perhaps the eternal life. And the feeling that some moments should last forever.
Fountain of Youth Japan: Travel Info
Getting there By airline All Nippon Airways, ANA, from Frankfurt to Tokyo from 690 Euro (www.ana.co.jp).
Getting Around Best in Germany to get the Japan Rail Pass, with which one drives seven days from about 212 euros on almost all routes. Single lines on site are much more expensive! (Japanese travel agency JTB, white women's street 12-16, 60311 Frankfurt, Tel. 069/29 98 78-23).
find accommodation Very nice lives in country inns, called Ryokans; to book through www.japaneseguest houses.com.
temple accommodation via www.shukubo.jp/eng/.
extra tip A glimpse of tea ceremony, Ikebana, geisha culture is offered at the Gion Corner Cultural Center in Kyoto. Good info page: "Kyoto prefectural Government Tourism and Convention office", www.pref.kyoto.jp/visitkyoto/en/theme.
flat-rate Japanese Japantour from Tokyo over Hiroshima and Kyoto from 1999 Euro, incl. Flight, hotel / breakfast, German speaking tour guide (Dertour about travel agencies or www.dertour.de).
Read Detailed, informative and with many addresses: the Lonely Planet guide "Japan" in German (28.50 Euro).
information desk Japanese Tourist Information Center, Kaiserstraße 11, 60311 Frankfurt am Main, Tel. 069/203 53, Fax 28 42 81, www.jnto.go.jp/
