Fire Walking!

We made another adventure out into Japan today: a fire walking ceremony at Mt. Takao. It was an organized trip through the base and was scheduled to be about 10 hrs. We decided that was too long to take Jackson along so some of our new friends here babysat for us.

We spent the first half of the day exploring the mountain. We took a cable car about halfway up the mountain to start the day off.
View from the cable car on the way back down.

We spent the next several hours exploring. The ceremony is put on by an isolated group of monks who have shed off civilization and accepted religion to form their own spiritual sect. They essentially worship two mountain Gods and aspire to be as close to them as possible.
The series of shrines and temples scattered across the mountain are beautiful. Many required a good hike to get to, but were well worth it. The detail and artwork is amazing (it's hard to appreciate in the pictures).
There are aspects of Hinduism and Shintoism mixed in, but also unique portions.

After hiking back down
to where the cable car takes over we had an interesting snack: sweet bean mush in a pastry. (It's actually called ningyoyaki if you want to google it). We didn't really know what it was when we bought it, but it looked safer than other things we've dared to eat since we've been here. It was actually not bad, but decidedly un-American (maybe if it had been fried and coated with sugar).

Once back at the base of the mountain we found some very safe noodles for lunch and geared up for the fire walking ceremony. I should say, geared for WAITING for the fire walking ceremony. A line was forming hours before the ceremony to walk across the coals. We got in line at 12:15 (ceremony starts at 1:00). We were probably 300 people back. So we stood in line for :45 waiting for it to start. I guess just lighting a fire and walking across it wouldn't be much of a ceremony, so they drug it out for another :45 before they even lit the fire. By the time anyone walked on embers we had stood there for 2 hours. We actually had a good view except that the people in front of started standing on the rails of the fence to get a better view, then we had none. We caught enough pieces to still enjoy it though.

Yes, we walked across the coals. They mostly put them out after the monks are done so the ordinary folk won't get hurt. When we walked across it was warm, but not hot in the least. But aside from the spectacle of walking on fire, the ritual itself was pretty cool in my opinion.
Jenni's foot after walking on the "fire".

If you want to see videos of us walking on the fire, you can check out photobucket. They were too long, and frankly a little boring, to put on here.

After walking the coals we went for one last walk. I got some potato sticks and Jenni gambled on something we know only as "three balls on a stick." They looked pretty safe, so she gambled--and lost. They were doughy (good sign, as that meant no surprise meats), and a little crispy on the outside. But they were weird, chewy, uncommon doughy. She managed to eat one before giving up. We thought about bringing them home for Jackson. We've figured out if we don't like something, there's a decent chance he'll eat it, but we gave him a break and tossed them. But we had to toss them in the trash on the bus. There were zero trash cans in the whole place, including the bathrooms. Weird.

All in all, it was a fun trip out. It was a good weekend finally getting out and seeing some of Japan. If work and weather allow hopefully we'll have lots of weekends like this one.