Japan, sleep in Buddhist temples instead of hotels

UThe journey of life in Japan necessarily makes stops in Buddhist temples, as in the Shinto shrines announced by the Bulls. It is impossible in Kyoto not to ascend Kiyomizudera and, among the crowds of Tokyo, in Asakusa, not to spot the vivid red of Sensoji which annihilates the metropolitan grey.

In Kamakura you meditate with the monumental Buddha Amida in the Kotoku-In and in Nara you get lost in the Toshodaiji, the largest wooden building in the world. To calm the mind, then, there is nothing more effective than a zen garden. Ryoanji, in Kyoto, is a paradise. In short, in the most meditative archipelago there is, you can also become a better tourist.

Zen experience

If “Zen” is now a term used and abused in the West, in Japan it remains a precise and very serious thing, which influences its aesthetics and permeates the martial arts: this set of Buddhist schools was introduced into the country by two monks in the Middle Ages and takes meditation as a practice of asceticism.

Kyoto, Nara and Kamakura are three of the main Japanese Zen centers, where one can contemplate their wonder with the fascinated eye of the traveler, but also experience it. As well as in places off the maps of mass tourism.

Meditation with novices

On the island of Honshu, in Fukui prefecture between the mountains and the Sea of ​​Japan, for example, lies the Eiheiji temple complex (https://daihonzan-eiheiji.com/en/), which includes a monastery ready to welcome pilgrims and simple foreign visitors (English spoken). Founded in 1244 by the monk Dogen, a key figure of Zen Buddhism in Japan, it hosts around two hundred novices who dedicate themselves to the study and care of 330 thousand square meters immersed in a solemn forest of centuries-old cedars and maples. It’s part of their training.

The Eiheiji temple complex in Fukui Prefecture.

Special pilgrims

The same goes for the Koyasan temple complex and the three sacred mountains of Dewa Sanzan (even if only for forest bathing, a place of worship for pilgrims heading to Mount Haku is sanctuary Heisenji Hakusan. For “living like a monk”, as well as “with the monks”, even just for a few days, you stay overnight in one shukubo , the sober guesthouse of a temple. In the past, it was the monks who moved, traveled long distances and found shelter there. Today the shukubo are open to all and there are even those who stay in different temples to try out different styles of shukubo.

Just the essentials

In any case, traditional rooms are more than basic, just a futon (light mattress), a table, a tea kettle, while bathrooms and showers are very often shared (only some temples offer suites or rooms with private bathrooms). The extra, the real wealth, is all spiritual: we participate at dawn in the morning fire ritual and the Gongyo prayer, we have breakfast and dinner with food prepared following the precepts of shojin ryorithe vegetarian (almost vegan) cuisine of the monks: no meat, fish, dairy or eggs. The alcohol? It is usually banned, but it is better to check, structure by structure. (Don’t even think about beer or wine, Sake deserves to be truly discovered, as it is now a pleasant alternative here too. In Japan the term indicates any alcoholic drink, both fermented and distilled, while in the West it identifies the typical Japanese fermented rice, for the Japanese nihonshu. Not one but infinite sakes: fruity, fresh, intense, even sweet with plums and green apples or with bubbles, to drink young, iced or hot, in codified combinations or with creative instinct).

Foreigners welcome

There are programs designed for foreigners that include group meditation sessions, shakyo calligraphy lessons to transcribe the sutras under the supervision of monks and hypnotic tea ceremonies. History, philosophy and Zen Buddhism together. Tests of concentration and great beauty. You don’t need to know Japanese to bookhere are some suggestions to consider, in English: Kakurinbo (Yamanashi); Seikokuji (Nara); Koyasan (Wakayama); Waqoo Miidera (Shiga); Shoureki-ji (Kyoto); Chishakuin (Kyoto).

A book for travelling (even in an armchair)

And in the bookshop the journey continues. In fact, more often it starts. Here are four new, bright releases on the Japanese universe

What the hell are you wearing

HISTORY OF JAPANESE COSTUME
The man. The Woman. (The Hippocampus, 15.90 euros each)

Men and women. The Heian Period commoner with his flat-topped headdress and cotton-armoured guard, the Meiji era emperor in the shining goho robe and the big bourgeois with the Western-style bowler hat. And then, there lady of the Heian aristocracy in her layered multicolored dress, the seductive Tayu prostitute of the Edo period and the high-ranking woman in a nineteenth-century dress copied from Parisian fashion. Traditional costumes of Izutsu Gafū Japan (The Hippocampus, €15.90) ​​is a magnificent, colorful parade for all seasons. A collection of the most representative Japanese clothes of each era, from the Jōmon period (10,000 BC-3rd century BC) to the first Shōwa period (1925-1989), photographed on life-size mannequins and accompanied by a descriptive card. It’s about the re-edition in two volumes of the famous work signed by founder of the Kyoto Costume Museum. The volume on men’s clothing offers around 120 outfits, the one on women’s clothing around 80. And it is a small masterpiece of style.

Pop anime

KOKORO by Noemi Pelagalli (Corbaccio, 18.60 euros)

How complex is Japan. «Hyper-technological and traditionalist, hierarchical and rebellious, measured and excessive» for Noemi Pelagalli, a social media manager who, loving it madly, considers it «home» and talks about it in Kokoro. Japan between pop and disenchantmenta very dynamic manual of history and stories that travels from the Edo Period to the contemporary through fashions and lifestyles, places and underground cultures that are the counterpart of the impeccable dominant aesthetic. “Kokoro” is the heart. Inside there is Pikachu and there are the girls of Shibuya, the kawaii culture (let’s say cute, who creates Japanese lolitas, ed.) , washoku (traditional cuisine) a UNESCO heritage site… «I have traveled a lot in Japan, I have accompanied people outside the usual tourist tours, but in Kokoro I do not propose a geographical itinerary, but rather an exclusive immersion in a world that never ceases to surprise us» .

Enjoy the reading

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A BOOK

by Naoki Matayoshi & Shinsuke Yoshitake (Mondadori, 18.70)

Books that live, think and (us) save. There’s the book with the police on its tail. And the one now abandoned on the shelf of a used bookshop. It has a very honorable history: it accompanied the life of a man who read it a thousand times… Once upon a time there was a book it is an editorial success in Japan and moves us too. How beautiful is this tale of taleswith magnificent illustrations: the story of a king who reads in his free time and sends two subjects around the kingdom to hunt for books. The books can be found, they are real characters, poetic and bizarre, the two report it to the sovereign in 13 magical nights (does this remind you of anything?). The authors are celebrities. Illustrator Shinsuke Yoshitake, also awarded by New York Times, and comedian and writer Naoki Matayoshi, whose channel YouTube it is very popular in Tokyo.

Imaginary geography

SHIMAGUNI by Francesca Scotti and Uragami Kazuhisa (Bompiani, 23.75)

Torishima, Seabird Island, in the greater Honshu region. Okinoshima, to the south in Kyushu, the island of kami (spirits), entirely divine. Yagishirito in Hokkaido, green with forests, which seems like Suffork with its flocks and rolling hills. Francesca Scotti, a Milanese who has been dividing her time between Italy and Japan for twenty years, explore fifty (real) islands of the Archipelago in Shimaguni and reveals them to us with the key to myth and fantasy. A world apart, colourful, dreamy, happily illustrated by Uragami Kazuhisa.

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