Tag Archives: Hidden gems

Once Upon a Timeline

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Today, I’m in Yoro, a town in Gifu Prefecture.
I’m here to change my destiny.

First, I decide to take a thirty-minute stroll along the edge of a cliff to visit a famous waterfall. This waterfall is said to be made entirely of flowing alcohol, specifically Japanese sake.

The story goes that there was once a poor lumberjack with a very old, ill father. On his deathbed, the father requested his favourite Japanese sake, but the lumberjack couldn’t afford it on his meagre income. One day, the son walked the treacherous path near the waterfall.

Some say he was out looking for wood for a fire, but he was a woodcutter, so any tree would have sufficed. Others say he was simply thirsty. Regardless, he fell in the woods and definitely made a sound, and after falling and lying on the dirty ground, the poor lumberjack could smell the sweet scent of sake.

It was here that he discovered the water from the waterfall was not water at all.

He returned home with a gourd full of sake, and his father drank it. The transformation was instant, and he miraculously became younger and healthier.

News of this reached the ancient capital of Nara, and Empress Gensho visited the waterfall herself. She was so impressed by the beauty of the area and the magical water that she declared it a sacred site and renamed the area Yoro, meaning elderly care.

It takes me about an hour to reach the waterfall despite it being advertised as a thirty-minute stroll. It’s a tough hike too, up a mountain. It’s humid; it feels like 40 degrees. I’ve probably sweated more water than I’ve seen flow down the falls. I can only imagine how hard it must have been for the lumberjack, carrying that gourd and heavy axe to the top.

Next to the waterfall, a faded poem engraved on stone in Japanese reads:

“Listening to the flow of Yoro Falls,
One’s heart is healed and refreshed,
Like the pure sake that rejuvenated the old man,
Flowing eternally, blessing those who visit.”

I stand looking at the waterfall for a time, enveloped in tranquillity. I think about water flowing down a river, following a predestined path. It cascades over the falls, flows further south, and meets a tributary, where its path diverges and its destination shifts, a choice not made but followed.

Somewhere, after leaving Yoro Falls, a butterfly shivers against the wind. At the bottom of the waterfall, the tranquillity ends and is swamped by the sound of a man with a grass strimmer.

I stumble upon a small souvenir shop selling bottles of carbonated cider made with the magical sake water. The cider tastes delicious. Unlike in England, cider in Japan is a soft drink, so despite the falls apparently being made of alcohol, this drink somehow contains none.

I leave with a healed heart, feeling blessed. Eternally refreshed. Next to the small shop is the Yoro Gourd Museum. I look at a few gourds made into artwork and lamps before moving on.

My final stop today is within Yoro Park, a place known as the Site of Reversible Destiny. A massive outdoor interactive art park dreamed up by Shusaku Arakawa.

It’s quite bizarre, funny, and downright unusual. There’s a house that is a road and a road that is a house. There’s a nostalgia generator, a few mazes, and some piles of things that I don’t even understand.

I pass Not To Disappear Street, the Gate of Non-Dying, and an area known as Geographic Ghost. I climb over the Zone of Clearest Confusion, leave through the Trajectory Membrane Gate, before getting lost in the multicolour of Destiny House.

Shusaku Arakawa was obsessed with the idea of death and destiny. He built this site with his wife, Madeline Gins, as a challenge to mortality itself. That’s the point of the Site of Reversible Destiny: to confuse your soul and reroute your path. When Arakawa died in 2010, his wife said, “This mortality thing is bad news.”

With fate as mutable as the weather, or the seeds of a dandelion, you blow away, only to take root in unexpected soil. My destiny begins to unravel. The sun still rises in the morning and sets in the west, but the days no longer feel the same. Each moment becomes a whispered echo of a choice that altered everything, carried on a timeless breeze.

The concept of a multiverse unfolds like a kaleidoscope of infinite reflections, where certainty and uncertainty intertwine like vines in an ancient forest, tangling into something that resembles fate.

Yet, if every possible outcome and path exists, there must also be a universe where the notion of such multiverses is impossible. It is here that we find ourselves staring into the paradoxical abyss.

Sweeping aside the contradiction of parallel worlds, it is on the train that I ponder the existence of a universe where I do not exist. As the train changes track to a branching line, the landscape blurs past, indifferent to my absence. My reflection in the window shimmers, quantum-thin.

For a moment, I am here and not here, observed and unobserved, a wave function waiting to collapse. I step off the train. I step into the world. And the world, impossibly, steps into me.

Quivering Heights

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I’ve come to Mount Hoju in Yamagata Prefecture to experience one of the best views in Japan. At the base of the mountain is the usual buzzing of tourist-targeted shops selling shaved ice, overpriced noodles, and fish-shaped waffles. Beyond that is the oldest beech wood building in Japan, home to a massive wooden statue of Buddha.

The statue is Yakushi Nyorai, the Buddha of healing. They say that if you have an illness or ailment, something you want cured, you rub that part of the Buddha, then climb to the top of the mountain and you will be miraculously healed. Naturally, I rub the Buddha on the neck and hope my scars fade.

Next, it’s time to climb the mountain. The road to the temple is 1,015 stone steps surrounded by thick woods and strangely shaped rocks. Cedar trees make up the mountain forest. The Risshakuji Temple at the top of the mountain means “Mountain Temple,” which is the perfect name for it, considering it is atop a mountain.

Some of the steps are in sections of 108, to represent the 108 Buddhist sins. There are Jizo statues scattered throughout the ascent adorned with coins. There’s a monument engraved with another poem by Basho, and it’s a famous one:

Such stillness,
the cicadas’ cries,
sink into the rocks.

After the second set of 108 steps I’m already worn out. Half a million steps last month, I now find myself humbled by a mere 216. I’m already close to spiritual defeat. The day is hot, the air quality poor, and it’s very humid. It has a way of wearing me out, I suppose.

It’s so hot that every now and again there will be an ever-so-slight breeze, and every time there is, I notice it. A lot of the Japanese people are carrying these little portable electric handheld fans. A country famous for fans, so it makes sense. At about 550 steps there’s a massive rock that everyone is photographing.

Further up, there’s Risshakuji, founded in 860 AD, a small temple of minimalist qualities. From here I realise just how high up I am, that I can make out the city below. The thing that’s unusual is there is no barrier here. I could fall off the mountain in an earthquake, and that’s exactly what almost happens.

The mountain shakes, ever so slightly. A shift. Nobody else seems to react or notice. It’s just the subtle shift. The whole thing took a tiny step to the side. The mountain itself… adjusts. It’s not dramatic. Nothing tumbles. There’s no sound. But I feel it. And for a moment I am filled with dread. Then it stops. I wonder if being on a mountain is the worst place to be during an earthquake.

Very close to the top of the mountain is a post box. At the bottom of the mountain there is a post office, a mere 940 steps away. I naturally feel sorry for the postman whose job it is to walk up and down a mountain every day to collect what is likely just the odd piece of mail.

1,015 steps. I reach the top. The cicadas’ song fills the humid afternoon here, sharp and piercing, like needles being driven into a heart. Their cries echo, sinking into the ancient rock.

A cemetery at the top concludes the climb. Crooked gravestones pushing through moss. Everything here is slanted, aged, dignified in its entropy. I sit beside the tombs, trying not to melt into them. The mountain temple echoes these themes of death, decay, and transcendence as it climbs through cemetery terraces and silence.

I stand to rest, to catch my breath, to take it in. My shirt clinging to me like skin, thirst calling me to a vending machine back at the base of the mountain. But I linger. Amongst the graves, everything feels tilted. Stones, time, even thought.

Walking down is the reward as I can see it all. All the views, all the way down. There’s something about a good vista. I say goodbye to the top of the mountain, and goodbye to the vista. Hasta la vista. Until I see the view again, opening like lungs exhaling. I can see the whole valley now, softened by haze.

Back at my capsule hotel, I voluntarily entomb myself in a plastic drawer like a very polite corpse.

Boatman Begins

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Somewhere between October 23, 1868 and July 30, 1912, a discovery was made. What had previously been regarded as dangerous wilderness turned out to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth: Geibikei Gorge.

In Japan, they love a good top three. Night views, bridges, and today, gorges. Nobody explicitly states which of the top three is actually the best. Politeness says: make a top three list, and leave it at that. Geibikei Gorge is one of the top three gorges in Japan.

As well as being one of the top three gorges in Japan, Geibikei has also been designated a National Place of Scenic Beauty, a Natural Monument, and one of the 100 Landscapes of Japan. It certainly is one of the landscapes.

Geibikei Gorge (not to be confused with the similarly named Genbikei Gorge) is a 2-kilometre stretch surrounded by limestone cliffs. A river runs through it, so boats are required to fully explore it. The Satetsu River is a liminal, stillwater river. It flows neither up nor down. It just sits there like an ancient swamp. The only thing that interrupts the water is a boatman’s pole, or such nature as a falling leaf, the lapping of summer sweetfish, or the arrival of snakes.

We buy some fish food in a little plastic bag, then sit on the boat, all 44 of us. The boatman introduces himself.
“Hello, I am Sato. Nice to meet you.”
Everyone applauds. Sato-san notices me.
“Hey foreigner, where you from?”
I tell him England. He just laughs and begins rowing, merrily. The snake swims away, frightened by the ripples of the boat. I realise that, after all the years living in Japan, I’d never seen a snake. This is now the second day in a row I’ve seen one, and I actually manage to photograph it.

I sit, gazing out. Sato-san interrupts the serenity.
“Hey foreigner, if you have a hat, glasses, camera …” he pauses for comedic effect, then mimes dropping the items overboard. “Oh no!” he exclaims.
He then repeats the same actions in Japanese before pointing and shouting, “The next rock!” Which is of course Kyomei-Gan (Mirror Rock), reflecting the sparkle of water off its surface like a giant mirror.

There’s a phrase I can’t quite remember. Something about the memory of a fish. I remember seeing fish, so that’s probably it. They’re clever and know we have food, and they gnaw at the side of the boat, almost jumping from the water. They follow us as we disturb the stagnant river.

It’s said the sweetfish leap in early summer, and the carp in autumn. One of the carp didn’t get the memo and shows up the moment I throw my stash of food into the river. The carp makes one giant leap, eats it all, and swims away. The sight of the fish is reminiscent of the Chinese legend, known in Japan as toryumon, in which carp become dragons after successfully leaping up a waterfall.

We carry on along the river. Sato-san is very enthusiastic. He slowly pushes the boat along with the wooden pole, but does so effortlessly. We aren’t rowing. We aren’t sailing. He just pushes the pole into the riverbed, presses ever so slightly, and propels us forward. The boat drifts for a moment, carried by the newly made current, then slows to a stop. He pushes again.

He points out various rocks along the gorge, makes jokes in both Japanese and English, and treats the 44 of us as an audience in his comedy routine. His confidence shines through, lightly heckling us, answering questions, entertaining us. The entertainment is so good that I almost forget about the view.

Further in, the sun splits open the sky directly above and the heat becomes immense. Some ducks appear, looking for food, and the fish still follow. We pass a small shrine in a cave dedicated to Bishamonten, the god of treasure. Everyone stands and throws their coins across the water to the shrine. Thousands of coins surround it. More gleam beneath the surface. It must be pretty easy being the god of treasure when people just hurl money at you.

We pass a man in a watchtower holding a Nikon camera. He shouts for us to say “cheese” before taking our photo. We pass another boat heading in the opposite direction and everyone waves at everyone else, like we’re in this together. I guess we are. So we continue on. It really is indescribably beautiful.

I take a moment to think, to contemplate, to evoke. Then I take some boatographs.

Thirty minutes into the boat ride, it’s time to make land and take a break. We glide over to a pebbled beach. Sato-san says something in Japanese, then turns to me.
“Hey foreigner, twenty minutes walking come back.”
I reply that I understand, in Japanese. The other 43 people laugh.

I see somewhere on the map labelled “Ninja Rock ??” but realise, when I can’t find it, that it’s a clever joke. I pass a rock shaped like a horse’s head, and at the very end of the expanse is Senryutan (Lurking Dragon Depths). A dragon is lying in wait for its chance to rise from being a Geibi carp, apparently. If you manage to throw an undama (pebble) into the hole, you’ll be rewarded with good luck. Apparently.

I walk around for a while before boarding the boat again. Eventually, everyone returns and sits in their original seat. There’s one seat empty that wasn’t on the way down. Someone has gone missing, but Sato-san makes light of it, then pushes the boat out once more. This time, instead of taking photographs, we just take it in. And instead of narrating or pointing at rocks, Sato-san begins to sing.
“Song time,” he says. “Very old time song. I do five or six minutes… maybe.”
He sings for twenty.

His voice transforms into something ancient, filling the gorge, lingering among the cliffs:

As I pole my boat,
on the clear waters of the Satetsu River,
the clouds,
that dull my heavy heart,
are dispelled,
by the Lion’s Snout.

His voice echoes long after the last note fades.

After singing, he looks exhausted, yet continues to carry us through the gorge in reflective silence. Nobody speaks. Even the water has quietened. I’m glad that of the multiple boatmen working today, that we were lucky enough to have Sato-san as our guide. His personality and comedic timing were a highlight, one of the most memorable experiences I’ve had in Japan.

After the boat ride ends, we drift back into the real world. The gift shop waits patiently. A vending machine hums to the tune of overpriced green tea. I leave and take a train back to Morioka, walking the quiet streets until I reach Hoonji Temple. I take off my shoes and enter the silence. Inside the main hall, 499 rakan statues sit frozen in time.

They were hand-carved three centuries ago by nine monks. Each statue is lacquered, lifelike, and unmistakably human. Some laugh. Some grimace. A few seem lost in conversation. It’s almost as though I can hear them talking to one another. One of them is definitely Tom Waits. Others are said to resemble Marco Polo or Genghis Khan. There’s an expression to match everyone.

My eyes, for whatever reason, are drawn to a rakan sitting quietly in the corner, with a face I know well. It’s not me. It’s Sato-san. The boatman. Same smile. Same humour behind the eyes.
I blink, but he’s still there.
I never did find the one that looked like me.


Maybe I’m still being carved.

The Girl with the Dragon Taboo

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As I exit the train into Akita Prefecture, my arrival is announced by the lonely trill of a traditional Japanese flute. Inside the station, a taxidermied Asian black bear greets me. I remember that Akita has the largest bear population in all of Japan. Outside, the mountains are lush with greenery and the sky is an æstival blue.

Asian black bear taxidermy display inside Tazawako Station, Akita — a reminder of Japan’s largest bear population.

Today I’m up in the hills of Semboku because I heard a story about a girl, Tatsuko; a beautiful young woman who once glimpsed her own reflection in a mirror-like rock. Fearing her beauty was fleeting, she prayed night after night to Kannon, the goddess of mercy, for eternal youth. One day, she was told her wish would be granted if she simply drank from a sacred spring hidden in the mountains.

Tatsuko found the spring with relative ease, drank from it eagerly, and couldn’t stop. The more she drank, the thirstier she became, until finally she emptied the spring and, in the process, emptied her humanity. She had turned into a dragon. Horrified by her transformation, Tatsuko threw herself into the lake, where she remains as its guardian spirit. I don’t know too much about dragons, but I’m pretty sure they can’t breathe underwater. So sadly, I think whether in human form or dragon form, Tatsuko may have simply drowned.

The tale doesn’t end there though. Tatsuko’s mother apparently searched the hills for days, calling her name until her voice broke. Eventually, in despair, she hurled the burnt remains of her wooden torch into the lake, which, for reasons only folklore and grief can explain, turned into a fish. Specifically, the first black kokanee salmon. Sadly, they became extinct in the 1940s after a hydroelectric plant acidified the lake.

Lake Tazawako is the deepest lake in Japan, which makes it an excellent place to hide a dragon. These days, Japanese trout live here instead of the kokanee salmon, and the waters are thick with them. I’ve never been fishing, but I’m quite confident I could catch one of these with my bare hands. They’re basically queuing at the shoreline.

I check Google Maps to see if there’s anything else nearby, but my GPS insists I’m floating somewhere in the middle of the lake, which feels a little prophetic. I take the hint and wander into the forest instead, all the while being careful to avoid the many bears. Eventually the quiet path leads me to Gozanoishi Shrine.

I stand for a while beneath the torii gate of the shrine, looking out on the lake, looking for any sign of a dragon. The shrine itself is dedicated to Tatsuko and also features a stone statue of her. I wander up the shrine’s steps and pray that her beauty remains.

Torii gate of Gozanoishi Shrine overlooking the deep blue waters of Lake Tazawa in Semboku, Akita Prefecture.

Back at the station, I find an old Kawai piano and sit playing for a while. A Japanese woman keeps glancing over as I play. I’m either performing surprisingly well on a badly out-of-tune piano, or badly out-of-tune on a perfectly tuned piano.

As I step onto the train, I notice a massive dragon across the tracks. When the train begins to move, I sit staring at my water bottle, trying to translate the label. A wave of panicked horror hits me when I realise it says: “Bottled at source: Lake Tazawako Spring.”

Vibrant festival-style dragon float on display at Tazawako Station, echoing the local legend of Tatsuko’s transformation.

I wonder just how long it will be before I transform into a dragon.

We Are Nowhere and It’s Now

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I arrive at Makomanai Takino Cemetery at the exact moment a halo appears around the sun; a 22-degree circle of refracted light caused by ice crystals high in the stratosphere.

A solemn Moai statue gazes skyward beneath a 22-degree halo—Makomanai Takino Cemetery, Sapporo, Japan.

A Moai, still and solemn, gazes upward as the ring completes itself overhead; an accidental alignment of atmosphere and awe. I stare with it for a while. Both of us do. Neither of us understands.

Makomanai Takino Cemetery features a skateboard park, a row of Easter Island Moai, a lavender vending machine, and a full-size replica of Stonehenge, which also contains a secret underground mausoleum. But I’m not actually here for any of that.

A full-size replica of Stonehenge stands solemnly within the cemetery grounds—Makomanai Takino’s surreal side.

“If you’re going to see the Buddha, go directly there.” That’s what the sign says. That’s what the “tourist information” office tells me. Back outside, I can just about make out the head of the Buddha poking out above a hill of lavender, so I go directly there.

July in Japan is lavender season. Tens of thousands of lavender plants surround the “Hill of the Buddha”, designed by world-renowned architect Tadao Ando. They’re so magnificent I have to remind myself that I’m in a cemetery.

The Hill of the Buddha peeks above blooming lavender as a lone gardener tends the flowers—Tadao Ando’s design in midsummer.

One sole member of staff has been given the arduous task of tending to the tens of thousands of lavender plants, whilst the Buddha looks on, watching over a world in slow collapse.

I enter the chamber that houses the Buddha and instantly notice the silence. The closest thing to silence I’ve experienced in a while. I just stand there, motionless, staring at the Buddha. It’s the kind of place that wants you to contemplate something. I’m never quite sure what. The permanence of stone. The impermanence of memory?

Inside the lavender-covered hill, a seated stone Buddha rests in quiet contemplation—Makomanai Takino’s hidden sanctuary.

I pull an oracle fortune slip from a basket by the prayer wall. It says: Very Good Luck. With success anything can be accomplished. It also says that my lucky item is dried flowers. I consider making a bouquet from the ones outside but decide against it.

Makomanai Takino Cemetery is one of the largest in the country; 180 hectares of death and flowers. As I stroll through the many interconnected burial areas, I pass by multiple funeral processions in progress, and my thoughts turn to death.

Endless rows of gravestones stretch across Makomanai Takino Cemetery—flowers, silence, and summer wind.

I pass a row of graves with the kanji worn away, lost to time, like everything else. I begin to wonder what memory becomes when the last person who remembers it is gone. When even the names are unreadable.

And for a while,
there is no past.
No next.
Only this.

The moment stretches, fragile and full of forgetting.

A weathered gravestone with no visible name—time and memory eroded in Makomanai Takino Cemetery.

Then a memory.
Then not even that.
Then a stone.
Then not even that.