Golden Week: Matsuyama, Day 2

May 22, 2010

Masako really liked the business hotel. For her, sleeping on a bed was a treat. We were both too tired to play crossword puzzles, and to be honest, I was getting a little bored of them anyway, so we just went to bed early. We’d already decided to be down for breakfast by 7:00 the next morning and leave the hotel shortly thereafter. After all, the early bird gets the worm, and the early tourist avoids the crowds.

Somewhat.

Dogo Onsen

On Monday, May 3rd, just before 8:00 AM, Masako and I arrived at the historic Dogo Onsen, an old public bath house, whose special waters had its own shrine (I kid you not) just down the lane. The sun was beginning to stroke the blue-green tiles of the roof, and there was already a line coming out the door.

Fortunately, the line was only for the people wanting the deluxe bath, with tea and a yukata (bath robe) after it. Masako and I opted for the $4 regular option. Even so, we still had to wait in line for 15 minutes to use the showers. Women sat there washing their hair, rinsing, sudsy-ing, and rinsing again. I was getting annoyed. When it was my turn, I was done in about 5 minutes. (I did not wash my hair, by the way.)

Matsuyama Bathhouse

Although the bath house seemed fairly large from the outside, the bath itself was small. The women gathered around the edges, making it difficult to find an opening to step in. The water wasn’t too hot, and there was a white fountain in the center that poured streams of water soothingly on my neck and back. On the back wall, there was some kind of picture on the ceramic tiles, but as I didn’t have my glasses, I had to go right up to it and squint.

Botchan Clock Botchan Clock

Stepping out of the bath at about 15 minutes ‘til 9:00, the line into Dogo Onsen was even longer, making a maze-like formation on the side, the kind you see at amusement parks just outside the big coaster. Crowded as it had been, we were lucky we had got there early. At 9:00, the Botchan Clock played whimsical music, and characters from Natsume Soseki’s famous novel popped out and bobbed back and forth to the song.

Ishite Jizo

Our next stop was Ishite, one of the weirdest Buddhist temples I have ever been to. It seemed like people took architectural elements from all the different sects and threw them randomly together. There were several small Jizo statues for children who died in infanthood; an elephant statue and a temple that had a needle pointing up; and round Christmas-looking ornaments hanging near red-haired, blue-skinned warrior gods painted on a wall. I didn’t really know what to make of it. Neither did Masako, though her family’s not Buddhist either.

Buddhist Caves

There were also some caves, or cement tunnels if you like, which I found by following white-clad pilgrims to what looked like a door into a hill. I climbed right on in, and Masako bravely followed, despite not really liking caves. It was cool and pitch dark in there. I could make out white pictures of something on the wall and gray looking shapes, but it wasn’t until I snapped my picture, letting off an explosion of light, that I could see the old statues adorned with red cloth, just tossed near the wall in a jumble. As we made our way through the cave, I used my camera’s flash to see what was going on around me.

Then, we went to the treasure house. I normally don’t like these things, because I can never understand what all the weird random artifacts actually are. But this time, I had Masako to explain it to me. The Major Treasure of the Temple and the reason for its name was—drum roll please—a small gray pebble about the size of your thumb and forefinger joined together to make a circle.

The Treasure of the Rock

But it’s not just any pebble; of course, there’s a story behind it. Once a very miserly rich man was cruel to a famous monk who happened to be passing through. He threw a bowl at him, and it cracked into three pieces. Later, his three sons died. Repentant, the rich man decided to go on a pilgrimage all around Shikoku to find the monk. This became the basis for the Pilgrimage of 88 Temples, which still goes on to this day. The rich man died without ever meeting the monk in person, though he may have met him in a dream. Years later, the small son of a nobleman held something in his hand and would not let it go. When he finally opened his hand, they saw a small rock with the rich man’s name miraculously written on it. If you squint at the rock, you can still the characters etched into the stone. The temple took charge of this treasure, gradually earning it the name “Ishi-te” or “Rock Hand” Temple.

After visiting a shrine where scholars gave thanks for solutions to tricky math problems and also checking out the aforementioned shrine to the water of Dogo Onsen (which did make my skin feel nice and refreshed), Masako and I caught lunch. We had Tai Meshi, a specialty of the area. Tai is a kind of fish, in this case cut into sashimi and spread over rice. There was also a bowl of yama imo and soy sauce to pour over the fish for flavor. Yama imo—how do I explain this one? The name literally means “Mountain potato,” but the only time I’ve ever seen it is when it’s been grated into a kind of slimy white goop. For some reason, though, I like it, and I rather enjoyed my Tai Meshi as well.

Tai Meshi

Now, so far, I think I’ve been very good about not boring you with a long tirade on some obscure historical figure you don’t really care about. But as we come to the Shiki Memorial Museum, I ask your indulgence just one more time. Because the life of this man really moved me.

Masaoka Shiki was born into the Meiji* era, and in many ways, he was a quintessential man of the times. He enjoyed the new fad sport of baseball, even becoming the one to coin the Japanese word for it, “yakyu.” He was a journalist and went across the seas to cover the Sino-Japanese War. He took a hard look at classical Japanese poetry and made great reforms to the haiku in particular, challenging poets to drop time-worn clichés and create new kinds of verse. He became friends with some of the greatest literary minds of the era, including Natsume Soseki (“Botchan,” I Am a Cat”) and Mori Ogai (“Gan”), and opened a salon of burgeoning poets. And he was dying.

Masaoka Shiki

When he was 21 years old, he spit blood for the first time. That image became his pen name. Shiki is a song bird with a red mouth, a symbol of his illness. This sickness continued until his death in his 40s. So can you imagine spending 20 years knowing your life is slowly spinning away? Can you imagine struggling to be involved in an exciting, tumultuous era of reform, while wracked with pain, immobilized at times? Often, the thought haunts me. If I were to live for only a short time, would I ever be known for anything? And if I, at 21, the pinnacle of youth, discovered that life was ending, would I give up or make the most of what I had?

All right. That’s all I will push on you. Now back to frivolous stuff.

Botchan Dango and Taruto

Masako and I did more sightseeing in the afternoon. We stopped at an old school that marked the first major effort of Matsushima to educate boys in the modern era, which was ironically sat inside an operational public high school (with high school students practicing baseball only a few feet away). We also saw the house Natsume Soseki and Masaoka Shiki shared as roommates, which eventually became Shiki’s salon. Between these two historical buildings, we sipped water at our hotel lobby and ate Botchan dango (three colored balls on a toothpick, with the texture of Playdough, that was surprisingly good) and “Taruto” (what looked like a slice of roll cake with a chestnut inside).

* The Meiji era: from 1868-1912. The era when Japan became modernized. Two important wars were fought at the time. The Sino-Japanese War, wherein Japan and China fought over Korea, ended with a decisive Japanese victory and a signal that Japan was no longer a backwater country. Later, in the Russo-Japanese War, Japan gained a victory over Russia, the first time in modern history that an Asian country defeated a “European” country, causing the West some degree of shock.