December 29, 2009
Japan Trip: Adventures in Nichirenland
Sunday September 27th in Tokyo. Honestly, the only thing on my mind that morning was how good it'll feel to get out of Tokyo. But we've got a day to kill before that. I haven't been practicing hard or much at all really, or thinking much about buddhism though I have been reading a biography of Nichiren called Nichiren: Buddhist Reformer.
Jean and I have talked about going to the SokaGakkai Headquarters and to the temple built where Nichiren died, but we don't know where either of them are and are a bit scared of getting lost on the subway. The day before, during a business a meeting, the subject of my vacation came up and the woman who works with me started to explain some of the places Jean and I are going, in particular Minobu. People generally seem to have heard of it, sort of, but no one seems to actually go there. Gernerally it elicits very quizical looks. Like why would anyone want to go there? So, Mayu explained that Jean and I are Nichiren Buddhist. The guy we were meeting with lights up and says, Oh you should come to my neighborhood, there's a big temple there where Nichiren died. Called Honmon ji.
He encouraged me that it wasn't hard to find, so remembering that conversation was the stimulus I needed to figure it out. While doing that I looked up Soka Gakkai and figured that out too. The Soka Gakkai was closer so we decided to go there first. I drew a map based on the directions I found online (now I'm a cartographer!) and off we went. We got off at the Shinjuku exit, got out of the subway station and tried to figure out where we were in relation to my hand drawn map. Looking around quizzically a nice woman on a bicycle stopped to help us. (This happens all the time in Japan, most helpful people I've ever met). She looked at our map and told us that the address we were looking for should be across the street and straight ahead. Now we felt good. Adventuring out into the unknown and finding our way!
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