Mt. Minobu & Shirayuri Winery

Top of Mt. Minobu

Sooooo.... quick recap... Damian returned from deployment and I returned from a 3 weeks trip back to the U.S. to see family and friends and most importantly we are together! We have a few months left on our tour here in Japan and we will hopefully be together the whole time and plan to make the most of it before heading to our next duty station- Bethesda, Maryland! Whoop whoop!

So this past weekend we went on a day trip with the MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) here on base! We traveled about 5 hours from base to the sacred Mt. Minobu (min-oh-boo). The mountain houses the temple which is one of the "headquarters" of Nichiren Buddhism. There is a cable car you can take up to the top of the mountain, but as you can see in the picture to the right it was very overcast that day and we were literally in the clouds! On a clear day you can see Mt. Fuji from this mountain top! It was slightly eerie, but very beautiful up on the top. The tree behind us in the picture below was over 700 years old and was thought to be planted by Nichiren himself who founded Nichiren Buddhism.

700 year old tree

The really neat thing was that we were there on April 6th (Saturday) and April 8th is the day Buddha's birth is celebrated here in many Asian countries. They have a celebration at the temples for 3 days (6,7,8). At one of the large temple buildings we could hear the chanting, singing, and drums from the outside as it was all part of this celebration of Buddha's Birthday. In Japan it is not a National Holiday but some of the traditions include putting flowers around Buddha statues and drinking a beverage that is made from hydrangeas.

Weeping Cherry Blossom Tree

This mountain is also known for it's weeping cherry blossom trees... many were already past blooming, but there were a few.. and of course enough to get a quick picture. The weeping cherry blossom is even more beautiful than the traditional cherry blossom! The drive up the mountain had many beautiful trees in bloom all the way up! I wish we had more time to spend at this temple to walk around and see all of the different building and see the monks taking part in the Buddha Birthday Celebration...

Pagoda on Mt. Minobu

After the temple we got lunch and then headed to the Shirayuri Winery... it wasn't really what you would think of when you think of a winery... they took us on a quick tour to see the blossoming trees and then through the very small winery... I don't really have any pictures worth posting from this part of the tour. There was many wines to taste... none really that good, but they did have a cool Sakura Wine (Cherry Blossom Wine) that had actualy Cherry Blossoms in the bottle... the bottle itself looked so cool, but the taste wasn't all it was cracked up to be... bummer! We tasted a few other wines, but definitely did not feel compelled to buy any. Cherry Blossoms are actually edible (not all of them, but certain ones), and there was a whole stack of them that they told us we could pick and try... so of course I did! Basically, it tasted like I was eating a flower... I guess I expected it to taste like candy or something, but when it all came down, I was eating flower petals...

Buddha Statue at top of Mt. Minobu

Japanese Word of the Day:
Tanjobi (tan-joe-bee): Birthday