Happy 2019 everyone!

For New Years, I wanted to do two things: 1) go to a temple, which is a Japanese New Year’s tradition, and 2) see the sunrise. For the former, I decided to go to Yasaka Shrine, one of the most popular in Kyoto. For the latter, I decided to hike up Daimonji-Yama, an amazing 45-minute hike near my house, which has the best views of Kyoto I have ever seen and served as an amazing sunset-viewing spot a few weeks ago (picture of that sunset in a future blog post).

After biking to the Gion neighborhood, my friend and I began walking to Yasaka Shrine. It was already uncharacteristic to see Gion this crowded on a Monday night — this rivaled even Saturday nights! Even more uncharacteristically, as we approached Yasaka Shrine, the mass of human bodies became denser and denser, until finally reaching a standstill. My friend and I pushed our way to the front, as far as we could go before getting walled off my security forces, and were shocked. There were probably 1000+ of people lined up to go to the shrine, the line winding throughout the surrounding roads and only getting longer!

After asking the security forces and others waiting in line we realized that the line was for people who wanted to do hatsumoude, or the first ceremonial Japanese prayer of the year. However, people who didn’t want to do hatsumoude could still enter the temple complex, without entering the shrine itself.

After 20-30 minutes of pushing through people and waiting in crowds at places where we could not enter from (I still wonder how many of them were waiting without knowing what they were waiting for), we finally made it into the temple complex. It was crazy! The line for people doing hatsumoude actually made multiple rounds inside the temple complex before even going outside! Despite this (and huge kudos to the security forces for managing it) there was still a lot of space for others to walk around the temple and participate in the festivities.

We saw food stalls serving all kinds of Japanese foods, people walking around with burning ropes (I later learned that they were supposed to let the flames die out and then hang the rope up in their kitchen to ward off demons), dozens of stalls selling omamori, or lucky amulets/charms, people buying omikuji, or predictions of their fortunes for 2019, people writing their wishes for the new year on wooden plaques and burning them, etc. We walked around and took in the scenery. I drank amazake, a thick, traditional rice beverage drunk on New Year’s, and then joined the crowds for the countdown. As soon as midnight hit, there were a series of bell gongs and the long queue began rushing in to pray. We leisurely made our way out.

I arrived home at 1:15AM, just as it had begun pouring. I was beginning to re-think my plan to watch the sunrise, which would involve leaving the house at 5:30AM. Nevertheless, I decided to go to sleep and attempt the hike in a few hours.

At 5:30AM, my friend and I left to climb Daimonji-Yama. The rain had subsided, but it was muddy. We had walking sticks and lights, and hoped for an uneventful hike.

The hike up was quite uneventful. We saw people of all ages going up — from families with young children to senior citizens. We reached the viewing point, gazed out upon Kyoto, and were taken aback. It was gorgeous! It was still pitch black, so the lights really highlighted the different neighborhoods and parks of the city. We settled in on a bench and decided to wait for the sun to rise. As the sky brightened, we saw more and more people coming. While waiting, we joined a group of senior citizens doing rajio taisou, a tradition started post World War II where a radio anchor would announce exercises and everyone would do them together, to invigorate people and build camaraderie before the long day of rebuilding.

As the sky brightened, I suddenly realized that the sky in front of us, where I expected the sun to rise from, was way less orange than to our sides. Suddenly it struck me  — the sun rises in the East and sets in the West! If this is a good sunset lookout point, there is no way this would be a good sunrise lookout point! No wonder everyone else had come to this viewpoint, taken pictures, and continued on!

With 20 minutes to go before the 7AM sunrise, we rushed over and just barely made it.  It got snowier and icier as we went, but we were solely focused on catching the sun. We joined a crowd of excited people, all with their cameras pointing East. And sure enough, as the sun rose it was spectacular. Sugoi (awesome) and metcha kirei (very beautiful) were definitely the most frequently uttered phrases amongst the crowd.

After taking in the moment and getting all our pictures, we decided to leave. As soon as we started down the mountain, my friend felt that it wasn’t the route we had come up on. However, we figured it had been the route that forked off of it and would meet up with the main route, so we continued on.

Eventually, we got to a fork. At this point, we were beginning to doubt whether this path would meet the main route, but we had come far enough down the mountain to want to continue. We also heard voices, so were sure the main route was nearby. We saw a marker on one of the forks (a plastic bag tied to a tree, probably by a local hiker), so decided to follow it.

This happened a few more times — we would reach a fork, see a marker, and follow it. Sometimes we would follow what seemed like the right path into a dead end, then retrace our steps, see a marker we had missed, and continue on. These markers had clearly been put up by multiple people over a long period of time, since there were many different types of markers — different colors and styles of plastic bags, some painted markings on trees, all with various levels of wear and tear. We were also beginning to realize that the markers were not too informative, because which direction they can indicate changes based on which direction one is approaching them from.

At this point we had realized we were not going to hit the main route, but had gone on too many forks to retrace our steps. Plus, the markers meant that the path led somewhere, so we decided to follow them. Meanwhile, I was using the compass on my phone and Google Maps to keep our bearings. I figured that as long as we generally went downhill and towards where we entered the mountain from, we should be fine. Eventually, we hit a stream. “Great,” I thought. “Water flows downhill and meets up with other water sources. If we follow this stream, we will get back home!”

Unfortunately, I did not account for the mountains around us. The downside of always going downhill is getting stuck in valleys. And sure enough, even though the stream continued on, the only way for us to follow it would have been to walk through it or go up some nearby mountains and hope to catch up with the stream later. The markers indicated the mountain route, so we took that.  As we kept climbing, we started moving away from where we had entered the mountains from. However, at this point we just wanted to get out of the woods, even if that means going to the city across the mountains from Kyoto and taking a train back.

As we kept ascending, I realized that I had been trying to go downhill to get out of the mountains, but perhaps going uphill to get a good view of the surroundings would give us more information. Anyway, we continued following the markers, down multiple wrong turns and dead ends as different sets of markers indicated different ways or we followed what looked like paths. I was now taking pictures whenever we chose a fork, so we were prepared to re-recognize it if we needed to backtrack. I had some snacks that we started eating, but we were at the stage where we were jokingly talking about how long out food/water would last and whether we thought we could hunt to survive.

Meanwhile, I looked at Google Maps and we had ended up quite close to Daimonji-Yama again! Not only that, but the path one set of markers indicated seemed to be going up the mountain! We decided to follow that. We started seeing stuff we were sure we had seen before. However, given the ubiquity of the forest, we cautioned ourselves to not celebrate until we were out. Finally, we began seeing the sun shining through an opening. We went through, and sure enough we were back at where we had seen the sunrise, only 1.5 hours later!

This time, we were cautious to take the right trail when going down. We went by many hikers going up, joyously taking in the new year. Little did they know the adventure we had just been on! We passed the West-facing viewpoint and saw an amazing view of Kyoto. We continued down, until we saw a small shrine to Jizō-San on the path along Daimonji-Yama. Jizō-San statues can be seen all over Japan and are small Buddha-like figures that protect and provide guidance to children and travelers. I still don’t know how we managed to get back, and especially how we managed to make a big circle back to the original wrong route we had taken. It was largely luck that we took the correct forks of the road — or perhaps, it was Jizō-San’s guidance. Regardless, I said a prayer at the Jizō-San — it is nice to know that someone, something, or perhaps society as a whole values my safety as a traveler — and then continued home. The rest of New Years was relatively uneventful — it involved catching up on sleep and visiting shrines for hatsumoude.

My parents have a saying, that what one does on New Year’s is, metaphorically, what they will do every day of the year. If that’s the case, it looks like this will be a year filled with adventures, friends, and learning experiences! 🤣

I hope everyone’s 2019 is filled with health, peace, and happiness for themselves and their loved ones! 😍