Our Trip Around the World by Renate Belczyk

Author:Renate Belczyk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RMB | Rocky Mountain Books
Published: 2020-07-29T18:15:15+00:00

September 1957

We were so happy to finally leave the big city of Tokyo. We rode on brand new scooters and were accompanied by two men from Fuji Industries and a car full of reporters. The day was spent taking pictures and finally putting up camp next to a little lake up in the mountains. The air was almost cool there and so refreshing compared to the heat in the valley. The next morning the two men from Fuji Industries wanted to take the new scooters home and leave us with the old ones. This would have been fine, except one of them wouldn’t start and it took a mechanic two hours to get it fixed. We finally told them either to give us the new scooters or we would do without. This ultimatum caused great consternation and several telephone calls to Tokyo. But in the end we got the new scooters and, after many farewells and good wishes, we were on our own.

The southern part of Japan is quite different from the north. Everywhere there were palm, fig, mandarin and banana trees. It was also hotter and much more humid. The rice, which had just been planted when we arrived in Japan, was now in full bloom and would soon be yellow and ripe. We saw lots of tea plantations where Japanese green tea was harvested. We loved the bamboo forests; the trees appeared quite delicate and bent softly in the wind like young birches. Young bamboo sprouts are a delicious vegetable.

We first drove along the coast, which – like so many places in Japan – was breathtakingly beautiful. In some places there were huge walls to protect the road from the waves, but every so often a wave came right across and we got a free shower. We drove through Nagoya and from there along the beautiful Lake Biwa to Kyoto. This city was once the capital of Japan and has many lovely buildings and art treasures. We first visited the two big temples in the centre of town, both huge wooden buildings beautifully and richly carved. One of the temples is called Nishi Honganji (West) and the other Higashi Honganji (East). The supports and beams of these buildings consisted of huge, beautifully carved tree trunks, often with carved animal heads at the ends. I especially liked the curved lines of the roofs and colourful tiles. Every temple had at least one room with a big Buddha surrounded by his followers or saints.

The Shinto shrines were quite different from the Buddhist temples. Their symbol is the Torii, the red entrance gate. There are many different gods within the Shinto religion. One who is much revered, liked and also feared is the fox, a sly and cunning god. People who wanted special wishes granted bought certain pieces of paper and hung them up on trees or next to their favourite deity. Many of the gods wore a hat or a kind of bib, which were donated by people suffering from head or neck troubles hoping to be relieved of their pain.

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