At 5 AM on May 14, 2007, my 58th birthday, I sat in Fumon-ji Temple in Ako City, Japan, and listened to Eiyu Fujimoto, a Soto sect Zen Buddhist nun and leader of the temple, chant the Lotus Sutra, punctuating her rich vocalizations with beats on a wooden drum and an occasional chiming of the temple’s big bowl gong. About twenty people attended the early morning service, which took place in both the large and the smaller halls of the temple.

After Eiyu chanted, she invited Sachiho and me each to sing a song in the temple. Sachiho sang a lovely song with her lyre.

There was no guitar to borrow today, so I sang, a capella, my meditation song “Hang Out and Breathe.” It felt wonderful to let my voice resonate in the big wooden hall.

Ryu Umehara, an artist who lives in the house closest to the Donto-in (the house Sachiho built in honor of her late husband Donto) in Tamagusuku, Okinawa, brought one of his paintings to the temple. Here are Sachiho, Eiyu Sensei, Ryu and his wife (whose name I forgot to write down!)

The painting is representative of Ryu’s work, delicate, playful and colorful images of people in nature; these two are playing stringed instruments, one plucked and one bowed.

Ryu invited us to come to Mau Chai, a nearby teahouse and gift shop in Ako City, where he was having an art show in the upstairs room.

Sachiho and I went over there, and I tried to buy a book of Ryu’s paintings to take home with me. However, Ryu insisted on giving it to me as a birthday gift! He signed it for me, with a drawing of a dragon, which is the meaning of his name.

What a treasure! 

So I bought myself another birthday gift downstairs – a pair of Italian shoes with Turkish wool kilim uppers. Sachiho approved, saying that usually ethnic shoes are uncomfortable, but the Italian soles would be comfortable and last a long time. They ARE comfortable.

When we returned to the temple, Eiyu’s cook had prepared us all a splendid breakfast…

...with miso soup, pickles, rice, tofu, land and sea vegetables.  Afterwards, Eiyu brought out her photograph albums and showed us photos of a Tara Dance ritual held at Fumon-ji Temple.  Eiyu herself had danced in the ritual, looking elegant in a sari.  In the Tara Dance, a mandala of dancers in many colors of saris depicts the 21 Praises of the goddess Tara.  I danced in the very first of these ritual dances, on Maui in the 1980's, because the choreographer, Prema Dasara, a classically trained Odissi dancer, was a personal friend.  She had been asked to create this ritual by the Tibetan Buddhist master Tai Situ Rinpoche.  Since the mid-1980s, Prema has been traveling internationally teaching Tara dance, although the Fumon-ji ritual was organized by one of her students.

Afterward, Eiyu gave me a birthday card with a playable keyboard that would also play Happy Birthday. She also gave me and Sachiho each a set of little bells to ring above our heads whenever we were troubled by negative thoughts. I keep mine handy!

Sachiho borrowed Eiyu’s car, and we went off to bathe at an on-sen (hot springs bathhouse). We passed this large and beautiful Shinto shrine, which is just down the hill from Fumon-ji Temple.

In front of the on-sen, I found another lovely specimen for my collection of Japanese man hole photographs.

This on-sen had outside pools with a panoramic view of the huge bay that lies between Ako City and the Pacific Ocean. We relaxed in the pool for over an hour, sharing stories, laughing, or just floating and listening to our breathing.

When we got back to the temple, we packed up, thanked Eiyu Sensei profusely, and took one last look at the big view of Ako City from the hill above the temple…

...and the beautifully restored buildings of the temple compound (this is the smaller hall where we'd had the second half of the service that morning), before we hopped into a taxi to the train station, and took a train to the airport. Sachiho flew back home to Naha City, Okinawa, where her sons awaited, and I flew back to Tokyo, where more adventures were about to begin.

Tags: aliciabaylaurel sachihokudomi japan birthday hotsprings tara onsen tibetanbuddhism akocity fumonji eiyufujimoto artshow kilim taradance premadasara taisiturinpoche ryuumehara

In the morning, after Sachiho and I folded up our sleeping mats at the home of Sachiho’s dear friend Ryoko Okuda, the owner of Planet Flower (“Fashion from Nature”), a natural fiber clothing store in Osaka (who I’d met first at the Rainbow Festival, and who came to our show at Chakra and then drove us to her home to spend the night), a Buddhist monk came over to lead us in prayer in front of Ryoko’s home altar.

Ryoko’s home, a one-story house in a quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of Osaka, has, in traditional Japanese style, windows that are also doors, and tatami covered floors that change from bedroom to living room to dining room to temple as needs dictate.

Her small bedroom is full of the beautiful clothes she sells in her store.

Even the bathroom wall is blessed by angels.

Ryoko feeds us a lovely breakfast of fruit and raisin bread toast and tea, and walks us to the train. We bid her a fond goodbye. She will meet us the next day in Nara and drive us to Fumon-ji Temple.

Across from us, three generations of Japanese women snooze to the rhythm of the train, and, above them, an advertising model grins.

Sachiho and I made friends with four little girls on a school field trip.

We got off the train at Yoshino, a mountain village famous for its hot spring resorts and temples, and took a taxi to this lovely place, where we would relax for the night.

Sachiho’s friend Yatchan, a ceramic sculptor, is the son of the owners of Sakoya, the most luxurious ryokan (traditional style Japanese hotel) in Yoshino, and, for a special family-and-friends price, he has gotten us the premier suite, and the price includes gourmet dinner and breakfast, served by our own personal hostess in kimono!

We had a suite of rooms, one large room where we would sleep and eat…

...plus this lovely sitting room…

...with this gorgeous view of the mountains, with bamboo and pine forests…

...and our own outdoor hot springs bath…

...and our own indoor hotsprings bath. Plus a two-sink bathroom with a huge mirror, loads of bath towels…

...a kimono with jacket each for our stay…

...and tea served upon our arrival…

...made from sakura (cherry blossoms) with a sauce made from kudzu (arrowroot starch), two products for which Yoshino is reknowned. Yoshino is lush with cherry blossoms each spring, and packages a famous, slightly salty tea, made of the dried blossoms.

Tags: japan hotsprings cherryblossoms onsen honshu yoshino oksaka planetflower naturalfiberclothing ryokan kudzu traditionaljapanesearchitecture kimono

We hustled into the train station, me with newly streamlined luggage, and purchased tickets for the Shinkansen, the famous Japanese bullet train, that gets you where you are going FAST. It doesn’t stop at all that many places, so it can reach a velocity of nearly 200 miles per hour. We had to take a bus from Karatsu to Fukuoka to get to its nearest stop.

Touring by train is a science. You have to be able to carry everything you need for the gig and to keep yourself together, up a set of stairs if necessary, since not all train stations in Japan have elevators or escalators.

I need two guitars for my gigs, because I play one in an open tuning and one in concert tuning. I carry my laptop for selling my products, setting up gigs and publicizing them, reading the news, doing vocal exercises, listening to music, broadcasting the karaoke version of my last CD onstage, political activism, research, correspondence, shopping, photo editing, writing this blog, and working on other writing projects. I also need performance costumes and other clothes, toiletries, and my bag of natural supplements and immune-enhancing herbs, because travel is the immune system Olympics. Everywhere you go, someone is sneezing. For an almost 58-year-old, 105-pound woman, carrying all this by train is a marathon. But I am a muse-driven specimen of my age group, and I will do whatever it takes to get my art where it needs to go.

The Shinkansen looks like a large, dangerous snake. Inside, it’s much more comfortable than the local trains. We ate rice crackers and peanuts from the station kiosk and chatted the time away amiably.

We took a local train from the nearest Shinkansen station to Yamaguchi, a town so blessed with hot springs (on-sen) that there are public foot baths in the parks. Right next the train station stood an on-sen with a giant white fox in front, exuding the advertising cache resulting from the Japanese national passion for cute animals. The Grateful Dead dancing bear does lots of business here.

Eizo, the owner of Organ’s Melody, a small night club (in Japan it’s called a “live house”) picked us up at the station, and he and his wife Yuki made us comfortable with a room above the club with futons and a bathroom. Nowhere to wash up, though. No problem; Yamaguchi is hot springs heaven. We even strolled over to a nearby park and had a VERY hot foot bath before the show.

The poster for the evening (May 9, 2007) featured the cover of Living on the Earth and a photo that Yuko Tsukamoto took of me performing last year at her club Yukotopia in Tokyo. There’s my name again in Katakana, starting with the letter P. Next to the photo of Sachiho playing her lyre is her name written in Kanji, Chinese characters.

In typical urban hipster style, the entrance to the club was practically unnoticeable. You had to know it was there.

Inside the club, the walls were black, the bar was stocked, and a bunch of little tables and chairs welcomed the patrons.

Up a narrow, kinda scary staircase, the dressing room displayed Eizo’s wild poster collection. This was my fave.

It was a pleasure to soundcheck with Eizo. His system was fantastic.

The opening act, a local musician known as Sensei because his day job is teaching school. He sang original songs; his friend played drum, and you had to love his traditional old style Japanese clothes.

Sachiho and I both enjoyed ourselves playing at Organ’s Melody. It’s always fun to play and sing through good sound system with an excellent technician at the controls. Afterwards, one of the patrons, who was celebrating his girlfriend’s birthday, took us (me, Sachiho, Eizo and Yuki, plus his friends) out to an expensive and fabulous Mediterranean style dinner at the restaurant next door. It was all I could do to stay in my body, between the gourmet cuisine, the happy, flowing conversation that I couldn’t understand, and the overwhelming presence of a large screen TV playing a dreamlike performance by Cirque du Soleil. After that wild meal, Sachiho and I walked in the rain to a large, nearby on-sen, and soaked for an hour. We slept well that night in the room above the club.

Tags: japan hotsprings nightclub onsen katakana honshu yamaguchi organsmelody kanji cirquedesoleil shinkansen bullettrain

This way to the Rainbow Festival at Aso Mountain!

On the second day of the festival I met the silkscreener who had licensed the cover of Living on the Earth to print on the festival t-shirts, and he offered me my choice as a gift.

The hemp-organic cotton camouflage tank top caught my eye.

On the back, the moon and the lovers from the back cover of Living on the Earth, plus a tipi and a puffing volcano drawn by someone else, nicely summing up the scene here.

Roku and Tako, the festival organizers, who also manufacture tipis, had just put up one of their largest tipis in back of the stage as a combination dressing room and shrine.

They created a shrine inside the tipi, in the most ancient Japanese style, according to Sachiho.

The big tipi made a gorgeous backdrop to the stage.

On either side of the stage Roku and Tako added their huge handmade and handpainted carp windsocks floating from bamboo poles.

And, I learned that, in addition to making superior tipi poles, bamboo makes a fine geodesic dome.

I was gifted a delicious meal at the Thai curry stand by the chef.

Back to the hot springs for a bath, this time with Kanako, the koto player. In this very natural bathhouse, there are no showers; you pour warm water from the springs over yourself from a bamboo bucket.

Kanako (on the right) doing a card reading with Doreen Virtue’s Goddess Cards for the owner of the on-sen (hot springs bath house), who is in the middle of having her hair coiffed.

Back at the festival, a troupe of dancers performed a ritualistic modern dance.

The children were fascinated.

After sunset, my favorite group of the festival played: Rabirabi x Piko, with electronic avant garde improvisational vocals and synthesizer by Azumi, and percussion by her husband and by her friend, Nana. The percussion got the crowd dancing, and Azumi’s wild vocals (some electronically processed and some not), her skillful synthesizer playing, and her joyous dancing took them to an ecstatic frenzy. I’d never seen a crowd react this way to electronic improvisation before. I wish I had a better photo. Sorry!

After the stage show, the nightly drum circle began, this time with fire dancers!

Tags: japan livingontheearth hotsprings shrine drumcircle tipi bamboo kyushu rainbowfestival onsen firedancing rabirabi azumi geodesicdome

On Monday, April 30th, I again began my day with a dawn walk up the road from camp.

Clouds were gathering around Aso Mountain for a big rain, but it politely waited until after my walk.

When I came back to camp, I presented Mikiko with two gifts, a silk scarf made from a vintage sari (bought at the Adams Avenue Festival) and a linen purse made by Aya Noguchi.

Then Sachiho and I, with a new friend, a beautiful young koto player named Kanako, driving, left for Kumamoto town to do a workshop and concert in the yoga studio above Shoko Akashi’s elegant natural fiber clothing and metaphysical gift store, Loveland. Here Shoko warmly welcomes us to her store. Shoko owns three stores in Kumamoto; the other two being Earth Collector and Fair Trade Student Cafe Hachidori.

The beautiful exterior of the store, with solar panels on the roof and a totem pole in front.

First Sachiho lead a meditation class.

After a break for tea and snacks, Sachiho did a solo performance, playing her lyre and singing sacred songs.

After Sachiho’s concert, I played some of my songs, and, at the end of my set, we played and sang some songs together.

After our show, we drove to a hotel that housed a hot springs spa to bathe and relax. Before our baths, we had dinner with three members of our audience – a Zen monk and his mother and sister.

Tags: music meditation japan concert hotsprings kyushu rainbowfestival onsen zen loveland kumamoto

As jet lag would have it, I was wide awake at 4 AM, so I got dressed and went out for a walk. No one else was stirring in camp.

I walked up the road to where I could get a better look at the summit of Aso Mountain. Although it appears to be a volcano, it’s actually part of the wall of an enormous ancient volcanic caldera that includes the mountains on the other side of the valley where Aso town lies.

The mountains that form the other side of the caldera, with Aso City below.

View of camp as I headed back down the hill.

The driveway into the festival.

I shivered in my bed my first night in an unheated room high on a mountain
with no electricity and no running water, and I remembered the old way to heat a bed with stones warmed in a fireplace. So I borrowed some bricks, bought some small towels, and heated the bricks by the campfire the following night, wrapped them in the towels and had a warm bed for the rest of the festival.

The Matsuis, ever the gracious hosts, added their beautiful old-Japanese-style hot water bottle, wrapped in a fabric from India, to my bed warming equipment, to place under the back of my knees. Elevating the knees makes the neck flat, eliminating the need for a pillow.

Mikiko Sato, who will be hosting a concert and workshop in June for me and Sachiho at her place in Sendai, Tohoku prefecture, also lent me her hot water bottle, which is made of metal, like a canteen, and has a quilted cover. The two hot water bottles provided me with a supply of warm water with which to wash myself in the morning.

Mikiko (on the left) working in the pre-festival camp kitchen. She teaches classes for parents and children together doing Steiner pre-school activities.

The way I got clean most days of the festival was catch a ride into Aso town with friends and bathe before soaking at a hot springs bath house. On this day, Sachiho and I squeezed into a van with Yu and Saori and four other friends for a whole day of fun that included soaking at an on-sen (hot springs bath house) dedicated to Benzaiten, the Japanese goddess of music and wealth who parallels the Hindu goddess Saraswati, followed by a delicous soup at a noodle house. We would also do a ceremony to Benzaiten at a shrine in her honor at a Shinto temple on the same road as the festival grounds, about a mile down the hill. Eight of us crowded into a van for this outing, and we made music while we traveled.

View of the mountains from Aso town.

Cherry blossoms (sakura) in Aso town.

Sign at the entrance to the hot springs bath house.

The bath house from the street.

The shrine to Benzaiten on the path from the office to the baths. Everyone took a moment to offer a little prayer.

Painting of Benzaiten on the entrance to the women’s section of the hot springs.

Painting of Ebisu, the god of fishing and merchants, on the entrance to the men’s section of the hot springs.

Sachiho soaking in the hot springs.

On our way home, we stopped to offer prayers to the goddess of music for our upcoming performances at the festival. We pass under the torii at the entrance of the Benzaiten shrine on Aso Mountain.

Stairs to the Benzaiten shrine.

The Benzaiten altar.

The famous pair of albino snakes who live at the Benzaiten altar. Yes, those are real snakes, and they are alive.

Sachiho leads prayers at the Benzaiten shrine.

Shrine to the seven fortune gods (of which Benzaiten is one) at the Benzaiten shrine.

Tags: hippie sachihokudomi japan shinto hotsprings kyushu rainbowfestival onsen benzaiten