While Setsuko worked in her home office (preparing to send a television crew to Bangladesh), Jun gathered and prepared foods for lunch and dinner. I love taking walks and was eager to see the neighborhood, so I tagged along. First we walked to a bamboo grove just down the road where Jun would harvest bamboo shoots, which can only be accomplished in springtime.

He dug up two, enough, he explained to me, to make a meal for four people. Previous to this trip to Japan, I’d only eaten bamboo shoots from a can, and I was delighted with the delicate flavor of freshly harvested and cooked bamboo shoots. It’s like comparing canned peas to fresh peas picked from a garden.

Jun and Setsuko’s vegetable gardens, wheat and millet fields are on land about a mile from their home. Walking there, we passed a number of large abstract sculptures made by local artists. Above is an artist’s home and studio close to Lotus House, and below are some of the pieces situated along the road.

Not far from the sculpture, we passed a magnificent piece of sacred architecture:

A Zen Buddhist temple…

…with monuments in front…

…and gardens on one side.

Across the road from the temple I saw a tea farm…

…and, nearby, a pond with bamboo growing around it.

Of course, I didn’t miss the local man hole cover.

We walked into the valley where Jun and Setsuko’s gardens are.

Jun picked a variety of greens for our lunch and dinner, and then we headed back to Lotus House.

I left Tokyo by train the next day with Setsuko Miura, to be a guest in her home for five nights, while I did two performances at a (sort of) nearby music festival and participated with her in creating a TV documentary about my work. Setsuko, her husband Jun, and their daughter Ren (which means “Lotus”), live exemplary and extraordinary lives in Fujino (which means “covered with wisteria”), a mountain town an hour by train outside of Tokyo. There, they grow and prepare almost all of their own food (including rice), live in an energy efficient house they designed and built themselves from sustainable materials, and participate in the creation and maintainance of a local Waldorf school, a community natural farming rice field, and a permaculture center.

Setsuko and Jun both work hard to create their healthful, sustainable and elegant lifestyle and to raise a happy and broadly-educated daughter. They abandoned the traditional gender roles; Setsuko supports the family with her income as a television producer specializing in environmental issues, and Jun maintains the house, grows the food, and provides a large portion of the child care. Setsuko clearly derives inspiration and satisfaction from her career. Jun’s joy in gardening and cooking are palpable, and he is a master chef. Setsuko enjoys cooking and gardening, too, when she has time, and she adores her family. She radiates peace, joy and good health, quite unlike many of people I see commuting by train to jobs in Tokyo.

They call their home Lotus House. There’s a lotus on the front door…

…an old Chinese painting of lotus in the hallway..

…and a basket of lotus pods in Ren’s room…

…plus a pine cone collection on a window sill.

The great room looks out over a wooded canyon.

In one corner of the great room hangs a print of my painting Zephyr.

On cold days, the great room is warmed by a woodstove.

On warm days, the table on the porch outside the great room is the perch of choice.

From the other end of the porch, one can see the town of Fujino below in the valley.

Across the canyon from their home, on a wooded hillside, one of the many artists of Fujino set up a giant pair of blue eyes that seem to gaze into space.

The bedrooms and bathroom are downstairs.

I was particularly struck by the serene aesthetic of the bathroom…

…but I had to laugh when I noticed an Indonesian priapus near the ceiling in the corner above the toilet.

Every night before I slept (on an organic cotton futon in Ren’s room; she still sleeps in the same room with her parents), I took a long hot soak in the tub (gotta shower first!) It was divine.

The next day I awoke at Koki and Ayako’s house in Hayama (on the closest beach coast to Tokyo) to sunshine and soft breezes. My friends were both gone for the day, so I took a little walk by myself. I had new Turkish kilim shoes with Italian soles, and a new skirt (a birthday gift from Sachiho, made of ultra-comfortable hemp and cotton jersey by a company called Little Eagle), and I felt pretty spiffy, so off I went…

…down the steep street at the top of which Koki and Ayako live.

The coastline of Hayama, with its volcanic, green hills and luxurious homes.

I walked down to Standing Stone Park again. This time Mount Fuji was not visible on the horizon, but the Stone has an undeniable drama to it. A beach with an erection.

A plein air painter worked in the park that day. I turned to see what she was depicting.

Yes, I think I might choose this view, too, if I were into making oil paintings of landscapes.

However, for reasons I can’t fathom, when I go to Japan, I want to photograph the man hole covers.

All of them. One of each.

Even rusty ones.

But Hayama definitely has a sense of place. One homeowner painted the Standing Stone onto his garage door, including a full frontal of Mount Fuji, with snow.

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.

After our dinner in Nara, Sachiho and I got into Ryoko’s van, and Ryoko drove us to Fumonji Temple in the lovely seaside town of Ako. We arrived late at night and bedded down in the dormatory (above) of the temple on futons in a tatami matted room. Already a group of women slept in the next room; all had come for a Mothers Day celebration organized by our dear friend Mana Koike (who created and runs the Alohana spiritual center on Oshima), in part to honor a visit by Clara Shinobu Iura, one of the Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. Clara’s an indigenous tribeswoman TWICE; her parents are Ainu tribespeople from northern Japan, but, because of her birth, lifetime and work in Brazil, she identifies herself with the indigenous people of the Amazon.

Fumonji Temple had to be the perfect location for the celebration, as it is the home of a famous 1200 year old statue of the Goddess of Compassion, Quan Yin (Kannon in Japanese). And also, the keeper of the temple, Eiyu Fujimoto, a Zen Buddhist nun of the Soto tradition, is revered as a great mother.  Most people call her Eiyu Sensei (teacher).  She’s seventy, but she’s got skin like a teenager, and the loveliest smile.

The old temple had been in great disrepair when Eiyu took the reins some years back, but through persistent hard work, enormous patience, and good cheer, she inspired people to donate funds and labor, and the temple was renovated to its current perfect beauty.

We gathered in the temple and sat quietly for a while. Our celebration began with a musical offering by spiritual singer/songwriters Takahiro and Rie, who played the day before I did at Happy Flower Beach Party music festival last October in Nago, Okinawa.

Next, beautiful Minaru danced her Earth Dance. She teaches this.

After Minaru, an a capella vocalist sang two of her songs.

Then singer songwriter Yoshie Ebihara performed with guitar.

I borrowed Takahiro’s guitar (I’d already shipped mine back to Tokyo), and performed a couple of songs. I had to sing sitting down because the strap was not adjustable.

Last of all, Sachiho performed her spiritual songs.

Mana, with infinite elegance and grace, danced to Sachiho’s singing.

Sachiho’s last song was her husband, Donto’s, song “Nami” (Wave), which almost every hippie lady in Japan can perform as a hula. Even Clara was dancing.

After the performances, some little children brought Clara a gift.

There was a new mother to be celebrated that day, too.

I thanked Takahiro for lending me his guitar and was delighted to connect with him and Rie again.

Another friend I hadn’t seen since the 2002 tour on the Big Island of Hawaii that I set up for Amana came to the celebration. Her name is Miki, and she’s a ceramic artist.

Before everyone left, we gathered for a big, happy group shot, and I got a special hug from Clara, whose first language is Portuguese; we could meet on a common ground in Spanish, which we both speak as a second language.

Sachiho’s starring role today was in a show benefitting a Shinto temple, and in honor of its departed greatest teacher, whom she referred to as “my Shinto master.’ The widow of this teacher attended the show, and all of the performers in the show had studied with this teacher, whose name, alas, I did not write down. When we got to the theatre, Manami, a bharatanatyam dancer, was rehearsing onstage.

Next, a modern dance class rehearsed their two numbers, the first of which starred their teacher.

Backstage, I watched, fascinated, as Manami assembled her make-up, hair ornaments, jewelry and costume. It took well over an hour for her to prepare for the stage. Sachiho’s preparation took a fraction of the time. She must have shipped her costume to herself at the theatre, because I’d certainly never seen it before in the several weeks we’d been traveling together. They both looked smashing when it was time for the show to begin.

The show opened with the modern dance troupe in flowerlike handmade costumes.

Next, Manami danced solo. After that, she danced accompanied by Sachiho singing with her lyre in duet with a percussionist, while a talented nature photographer projected a long series of his works on a screen behind her. I don’t think my photos do this piece justice; it was really quite dramatic and splendid.

Last, Haruko, a singer/songwriter, performed. I had met her before on the Big Island of Hawaii in 2002 when Sachiho and her band, Amana, and about fifty fans of Sachiho’s departed rock star husband, Donto, came to Hilo for a memorial to Donto and a music tour for Amana afterward that I had arranged. Haruko’s got sass. When she arrived backstage, she came bearing a dish she prepared from an octopus she had speared herself.

When the performers came out together to take their bows at the end of the show, they presented a bouquet to the widow of the great Shinto teacher.

There was just time after the show for a little group shot backstage before everyone got back into their street clothes and we all went out for dinner at a restaurant at the top of a pachinko building near the theatre. That’s Manami, me, Sachiho and Haruko.

!
Sunset from the window of the serene and luxurious Sakoya Ryokan on the evening of our stay. Before dinner, we each took a hot springs bath in our private tubs.

In a small private dining room, Sachiho and I were presented with an amazing collection of meticulously prepared delicacies, that kept arriving long after our small stomachs were quite full. We were glad we’d taken a long walk up a steep hill that day, and we took our time, attempting to do justice to this feast. When we returned to our suite, two thick and comfortable futons with floral quilts on top had replaced the dining table in the middle of our tatami-floored main room. Sachiho went out to visit Yatchan and his family again, and I relaxed on my futon, astonished to discover an Ethernet outlet in one wall of the tatami room, allowing me to check my email before preparing myself for sleep.

Dawn from the window of our suite at Sakoya. We would be blessed with more hot springs baths, but no time afterwards to relax; Sachiho was starring in a show benefitting a Shinto temple that day in Nara, and we had to pack up and catch the train after breakfast.

Our breakfast would be served down on the dining porch overlooking the forest, to the sounds of wild birds, in the chilly mountain morning air.

Yet another selection of flawlessly prepared treats arrived on our trays, thankfully only a fraction of what we’d been served the night before.

We savored our hot tea and miso soup, rice, pickled vegetables, fish, sea vegetables and eggs, and the sights, sounds and fragrances of the forest.

One of the ryokan staff drove us down to the train station, where I purchased some kudzu candy as a housegift for Koki and Ayako, to whose home I’d be returning in a few days. There we met some members of the forestry division working in Yoshino, including a man in white traditional-style clothing. He told me his name, Mori, which means “forest.”