For use almost can change the stamp of nature, and either rein the devil or throw him out with wondrous potency.

William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”

List of people at the temple:

• Okami-san, the temple wife, round face and a short bob, married to the head monk
• Junior monk, 25, the temple son, a stocky, bodybuilder monk. Likes eating meat and playing video games
• Lulu, 20, from the mountains in France, big blue eyes, a hazel bob, the veteran (four months here, on-and-off). Enjoys working in a rural environment and acts as the de facto boss of the volunteers
• Pudding, 21, shy French girl, oval face and long hair
• Roomie, 31, French otaku with a PhD in molecular biology, long hair in a ponytail and wiry spectacles, my roommate
• Joe, 27 French otaku, with thick, black bangs, and thick, black glasses. A big eater who’d done foreign exchange studies in Miyazaki in high school
• Leon, 20, slight German guy with cropped, blond hair and sharp, hawk-like features
• Topher, a tall, twentysomething German guy with thin, blond hair in a ponytail and a perpetual mask, sick and bedridden since before my arrival
• Becky, 22, petite girl from Melbourne with big, blue eyes, wavy brown hair, and delicate, doll-like features. Climbs the endless and formidable Kuon-ji flight of stairs every afternoon to exercise.
• Mamacita, 24, Mexican photographer and filmmaker with long, silky hair, enormous frames, and all the gossip
• Papacito, 27, shy Mexican guy with piercing, silver jewelry, dark clothes, black nail polish, and self-made tattoos
• The Japanese staff included a Japanese guy in charge of administration, two Japanese girls who worked with the volunteers, three obaachans and one woman in the kitchen, plus another in the café.

14 January 2024

• 9:00-11:00 morning shift
• 11:00-11:50 ceremony @ prayer hall
• 12:00-12:30 monitor tour orientation
• 12:30 lunch @ volunteering temple
• Akazawa village (30m)
• Hagoromo Shiraito waterfall (20m)
• Mochi-bana making experience and dondo-yaki festival (1.5h)
• 19:00 Dinner @ Healthy Misato hotel

Fifth Day of Volunteering at the Temple

After breakfast and two hours of preparing guest rooms, there was a ceremony at one of the temple’s prayer halls. The head monk stripped down to underwear and stood by the cemetery outside. Chanting, he poured buckets of ice-cold water on himself. The air temperature was three degrees.

Inside the hall, the two French guys served the audience hot amazake. The monk chanted nonstop while walking around, rubbing a wooden stick against the back of each of the fifty or so audience members against their back.

Akazawa Village

Mamacita, Leon, and I left at 11:50 to go to the temple’s restaurant. Today a three-day monitor tour began (“monitor” in Japanese meant consumers who reviewed services and products). Okami-san had invited three volunteers to write and photograph it, to increase engagement on social media and promote tourism.

Writing about traveling in Japan and posting pictures online: I was the first volunteer to sign up.

The “monitor” guests invited were largely people from the industry. Two French expats from two different travel agencies; an elderly Japanese from a magazine; and a Mexican influencer who’d moved to Japan last year. The latter was in her early thirties, yet looked a decade younger. She bonded with Mamacita right away, and so Leon, the two Mexicans, and I spent the three-day tour together.

After a half-hour orientation, lunch was served. Fried chicken in a sweet-sour sauce. I didn’t want to sound ungrateful, so I ate everything. But I found it an odd dish to introduce the temple.

After this, a representative from the largest medical company in Japan measured our stress levels. This tour was partially funded in order to conduct a research on tourists’ stress levels. A device measured my ECG and PPG. Out of blue (relaxed), yellow (slightly stressed), and orange (under severe stress), I got yellow.

Then we left the temple. Our van stopped in the middle of a highway, by a cliff dotted with shellfish fossils. Why were shellfish fossilized in the middle of a mountain range? We’d get the answer at the accommodation tonight.

We continued to Akazawa village, nestled between Minobu and Shichimen mountains. The buildings were so old here, that inn facades included planks with names of pilgrims who had stayed there. One inn and one café were still in operation.

Hagoromo Shiraito Waterfall

Back at the waterfall I’d visited before hiking Shichimen-san, I learned that the statue in front of it depicted Oman-no-kata, a concubine of the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. She was a devout follower of the Nichiren Sect of Buddhism, native to this area.

In 1608, she’d pleaded the shogun to spare Nichion Shonin, head monk of Kuon-ji temple, from crucifixion. In 1640, she’d hiked Shichimen-san, hitherto off-limits to women, and thus ended this ban.

From here on, we drove to our accommodation for the night, an abandoned middle school turned hotel. A monkey passed us on the way.

Each volunteer received a huge, private room with three beds.

Dondo-yaki Festival

In the late afternoon, we made mochi-bana (flower mochi) – rolled mochi stuck to branches of plum trees, a festival decoration. Then we walked outside in pitch darkness using flashlights to the town center, or rather, the only road in town, where the townsfolk, less than twenty overall, had gathered by a pyre.

Tonight was dondo-yaki: the burning of New Year’s decorations. The god Dosojin, protector of villages, was believed to descend to crossroads every January 15.

We roasted our mochi by the fire. It had no flavor whatsoever, but the texture was phenomenal, like roasted marshmallows. Throughout this, the villagers shoved sake and sweets into our full hands. A shishimai (kids dressed as a shishi lion) roared and blessed each of us. We socialized with the handful of local kids, and I wobbled back tipsy to the hotel. Stars were twinkling in the night sky.

Right after, dinner was served.

It was as fancy as a ryokan’s. Konyaku jelly with miso sauce, grilled rainbow trout, Hot Food boar nabe (Yamanashi specialty) cooked over a burning stone. My first time trying boar; it was dry, chewy, and horrendous. Also on my plate: a giant, fried eel and wasabi ball. Dessert was yuzu peel and ice cream.

After dinner, we learned that Yamanashi and Nagano prefectures used to be a sea, hence the shellfish fossils.

I ate too much and drank too much, that I barely made it back to my room. Still exhausted from Shichimen-san’s hike, I fell asleep, instead of attending the post-onsen drinking party, before 22:00.

Today’s highlight: roasted mochi and sake in dondo-yaki.

15 January 2024

• Onsen @ hotel (30m)
• 8:00 breakfast @ Healthy Misato hotel
• Mogura community (2h)
• 13:00 Lunch @ Osukuni soba restaurant
• Kuon-ji temple (1h)
• Lecture about Japanese food (1h)
• 17:30 Small New Year’s feast @ volunteering temple
• 19:30 Performance @ the prayer hall (40m)

Mogura Community

I woke at 6:30 and went to the hotel’s onsen. Since this volcanic area used to be a sea, the spring water was both sulphuric and salty. Despite being indoor, the temperature was neither too hot nor too cold. An unusual soaking.

After being alone the entire time, Leon and the Japanese elder from the biggest English-speaking magazine in Japan showed up. The latter immediately offered me his business card.

“You’re a writer?” he said. He was the executive sales director, smartly dressed (or at least before he undressed while speaking to me). “Contact me when you move to Tokyo. Perhaps you can do an internship.”

Thank god the Buddha I’d come to volunteer at this temple.

At 8:00, we measured our stress again. I kept getting yellow, borderline blue.

After breakfast, we drove up a mountain to a place some referred to as the “Machu Pichu of Japan.” A dangerous, one-lane mountain road that reminded me of Shikoku led us to the tiniest community – not even a town or a village – high on a hill.

Mogura’s population were thirteen elders, between the ages of 65 and 90. They grew their own vegetables, and got the rest of their provisions from a wholesale truck that came once a week.

The sixty houses here were mostly vacant. One was a former elementary school. Back in the day, the local teenagers would walk one hour down to the nearest middle school, and one-and-a-half hours back up.

We visited Shichimengun, the local temple-shrine, and entered the former school. Inside a tatami classroom, local elders had prepared green tea, amazake, and organic honey, over daikon and homemade dango. All the ingredients were grown and harvested by a talkative obaachan who kept saying, “Everyone, eat!”

More food was served afterwards, this time at a small soba restaurant down the mountain. Another tiny village, more unconventional food: the soba came in three layers of bowls, for three different toppings – daikon, mushrooms, and yuzu yam. In the end, we mixed the soba’s cooking water with the leftover sauce, to create a delicious soup. I’d only encountered this previously in Matsumoto, known for soba.

Kuon-ji Temple

Back in Minobu-san, the junior monk gave us a walking tour of Kuon-ji temple. The headquarters of Nichiren-Shu Buddhism, it was founded by the monk Nichiren Shonin in 1274. The main hall could contain up to 2,000 people, while the spacious grounds stretched across ten million square meters. The temple I was volunteering in, as well as the only shopping street in town, were part of these grounds.

Yuba had become a local specialty when disciples of Nichiren had fed it to him out of concern for his deteriorating health.

I learned that the formidable staircase leading up to the temple was called the Bodai (“enlightenment”) steps – 287 in number, 104 meters in height. They were divided into seven parts, for the seven letters 南無妙法蓮華経 (Namu Myoho Renge Kyo). “Glory to the Dharma of the Lotus Sutra” – a chanting of Nichiren Buddhism.

We were supposed to climb the Bodai to achieve enlightenment, but fortunately, ran late. So we went by car up the parallel road to the area where monks underwent training. Every year, the trainees comprised 40 men and 20 women, sometimes foreigners as well.

Memorials to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, as well as 2011 Fukushima earthquake disaster, stood in the vicinity. The former included melted roof tiles from both cities.

Small New Year’s Feast

After one hour, we returned to the volunteering temple for a stress measurement. (Yellow again.) A chef of Shojin, Buddhist cuisine, lectured about the history of food in Japan.

20,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers had invented tools and agriculture. With the culturing of livestock, such as cows, horses, monkeys, and turkeys, eating these animals posed damage to the cultivation of rice fields. For this reason, Japanese settlers had avoided eating meat.

Japanese cuisine was thus born vegetarian.

The Japanese archipelago was the place with the most volcanoes and earthquakes in the world. This had formed a lot of sea, and as a result, seaweed and fish. Moreover, the narrow Japanese streams didn’t dissolve minerals, unlike the fast-flowing rivers overseas. This had created differences in soup stock: Western cuisine used vegetables and beef, while Japanese cuisine used kombu dashi (seaweed).

Shojin – the ascetic quest for enlightenment – excluded even fish from its diet. It was based on vegetables, grains, and beans. To compensate for the lack of animal protein, soy products were emphasized: natto, yuba, soymilk, edamame, and so on. Ganmodoki, for example, a dish containing thinly sliced vegetables and wild goose, was served with fried tofu fritter instead.

To exemplify this cuisine, we were served a recreation of Nichiren’s daily meal: mugako – the bulbil of a young potato; awa – foxtail millet; seaweed; lotus root; and amazake from Sado Island, where Nichiren was exiled because his sect was denounced as a cult, and drank it as a nutrient.

These were all bite-sized samples, all fresh, raw, and unseasoned. A modest meal for religious training. For me, it tasted like an appetizer.

Right after, came the time for tonight’s Small New Year’s dinner. Osechi was the traditional food, a bento-like box with a minute arrangement of a dozen or so samples. A detailed illustration explained the ingredients and fortune of each.

Clockwise, from the upper left corner:

• Black beans, for good health and a long life.
• Tadzukuri, dried sardines, for a productive rice cultivation.
• Red and white kamaboko, steamed fish paste, colored like an auspicious sunrise.
• Kobumaki, dried herring wrapped in kombu, for a happy life.
• Kinkan, kumquat fruit, for good money.
• Datemaki, fish paste omelet, for academic excellence.
• Shrimp, bent like an old person, for a long life.
• Mamekinton, mashed sweet potatoes topped with a goji berry, a money cushion to improve fortune.
• Namasu, raw fish and vegetables in vinegar, colored red and white for good fortune.
• Scallops, to signify treasure.

A Shojin dinner accompanied this lavish composition. Sesame tofu; yuba; white miso cucumber; miso egg yolk yuba; herring kombu; ozouni, a New Year’s soup containing mochi and deep-fried vegetables; fried natto rice; and natto on a bed of yuba chips.

Akebono region had an altitude of 300-700 meters. A drastic difference in temperature between day and night, in addition to frequent fog, created challenging weather conditions for horticulture. Yet the result of the painstaking cultivation in this region was soybeans larger (1.2cm in diameter, as opposed to the usual 0.8), sweeter, and healthier. When fermented, their natto became neither sticky nor stinky.

Best natto in Japan. I could eat it and yuba chips to no end.

Dessert was a bite-sized yuba and sakura mochi wrapped in a persimmon leaf.

Three types of sake and three types of local wine accompanied this. One of the wines had been fermented for 16 years.

Mamacita, Leon, and I washed the dishes while the other volunteers, who had prepared all this for everyone, enjoyed the same food. In Japan, the fancier the meal, the more tiny, hand-painted containers it was served in. So it took us an hour or so to wash everything.

Prayer Hall Performance

Because some of tonight’s ample guests included artists-in-residence and photographers. At 19:30, a performance was held in the prayer hall.

An actor recited Aoi Yari no Ha, a poem by Miyazawa Kenji, the celebrated children’s author. I’d visited his home and museum in Hanamaki back in late October, yet learned tonight that he’d followed Nichiren Buddhism. A shamisen and taiko players joined in, while a dancer wearing an ethereal kimono emerged from a room, drifting into the hall in slow and precise movements. The music and dancing increased in intensity and beat, until the audience participated with personal, bat-like wooden instruments.

The taiko player progressed to a giant drum and beat it so ferociously, that my heart thumped with every thrashing. He was jumping in fervor, bellowing and panting in despair. This was the epitome of pathos.

Then he switched to a set of small drums, and played lightly with a grin. The junior monk joined the performance.

The volunteers and monitors got to chat with the performers afterwards, as well as try out the shamisen and taiko. It felt so liberating to beat a drum as forcefully as possible.

Today’s highlights: a salty and sulphuric onsen; honey daikon and dango; soba soup; a Buddhist meal; a New Year’s feast (particularly Akebono natto and yuba chips); beating taiko drums.

16 January 2024

• 5:30-7:00 morning prayer @ Kuon-ji temple
• 8:00 breakfast @ volunteering temple
• 10:00-12:00 miso making experience
• 12:30 lunch @ private villa

Morning Prayer at Kuon-ji Temple

I slept four hours and woke before 5:00. The last day of the tour began with a morning prayer at Kuon-ji temple.

At 5:30, in freezing cold and pitch darkness, we shivered outside the temple’s halls. A bald monk wearing neither a hat nor gloves tolled a giant bell. Instead of shivering uncontrollably like me, he stood motionless for a minute or so, then grabbed a rope and leaned all the way back, until his body was parallel to the floor, to shoot a wooden beam to the bell.

I’d never seen a monk toll a bell like this. He repeated this for a total of six times.

Then, twenty monks in black robes and masks crossed the verandas of the multiple halls in a procession, chanting. At the far end of this stood the main hall, the largest I’d visited.

The morning prayer began. The monks chanted in unison and played only one instrument of percussion. It wasn’t cacophonic like in Keishin-in.

We returned to our temple at 7:00 and got our stress checked. Yellow again.

The Mexican girls always got blue. Leon, always orange.

Miso Making Experience

At 8:00, we ate breakfast. The volunteers and I washed more heaps of dishes, until a miso making experience began at 10:00. A farmer from Akebono supplied buckets of Akebono soybeans. Every year, these were planted in June, sprouted in July, flowered in August, budded in September, ripened in October, and wilted by December.

Two huge pots contained soybeans that had been fermenting for the past three days. We poured their cooking water over koji (malt-like material from growing mold on rice – stinky and salty were an understatement), so that the microbes would facilitate fermentation. Then we ground soybeans (fresh, huge, soft, delicious, which I kept snacking on) and mixed them with the piping-hot koji.

It was an enjoyable and informative experience. I’d never realized that miso was made from soybeans.

Lunch was served in the temple’s private villa, next door to the temple’s café. It contained rooms both out of a ryokan and an English house. A fainting couch, a cutting-edge kitchen, stylish black toilets, and a yard with a frozen stream. I ate a cheese and vegetable doria curry at the dining room. My final stress measurement came out orange.

How baffling. Posh food and unique experiences. Perhaps this stemmed from all my qualms about the future.

After bonding with the Mexican influencer (who lived in Yokote and attended the nearby Omagari Fireworks at the same time as me – what a coincidence – we might meet again in Kakunodate in September), and networking with the sales director of the magazine, I realized this was my final opportunity to converse with the French man, a high-ranking executive of the national tourism organization. In other words, the biggest travel agency.

We talked about life in Korea, where he’d lived, and then about Japan. I expressed my desire to move here and study Japanese.

“If you want to work in Japan, you have to become fluent in Japanese,” he said. “It will increase your job opportunities and your salary.”

I mentioned my desire to find a job in tourism, and my recent job interview in Kyoto.

“I am not interested in hearing this kind of information,” he said. So that was it.

I returned to the temple and stuffed some natto rice into my mouth. Fancy food wasn’t exactly plentiful. Yet I rejoiced over my decision to volunteer here and cancel the silent retreat. Living at a temple; sleeping and eating a lot for a change, without worrying about money; bonding with volunteers; and receiving a luxurious, free trip with people from the travel industry, that might lead to a job opportunity. Japan felt exciting again.

Exhausted from the morning prayer, I fell asleep at 16:00. When I woke at 22:30, way past dinner and bath time, I decided to doze off again.

Today’s highlight: making miso.

17 January 2024

Sixth Day of Volunteering at the Temple

I woke at 7:00 after 14 or 15 hours of sleep. Breakfast included mochi-yaki, fried mochi wrapped in seaweed. A revelation.

With the monitor tour over, I was back to full volunteering mode. Today we cleaned the private villa from yesterday for tonight’s guests. For two hours, the French guys and I dusted, vacuumed, and wiped. We cracked the layer of ice covering the outdoor bath and tossed the shards to the river. The futons were probably the thickest and most luxurious I’d encountered.

Then, Okami-san took me for a chat. She spoke at length about the ways I could help promote the temple, i.e. by spreading the word on social media and in Israel. As it turned out, Israeli guests had frequented this temple before the war, so much that she knew several Israelis in the Japanese travel industry. Some of those, I’d met myself.

Fun fact: every time an Israeli guest of the temple had rented a car to come here, they’d ended up in a car accident. Every single time.

Okami-san wanted me to work at a travel agency, in order to bring in tourists. I wanted to work at a travel agency, because I preferred it to other jobs. We shared an agenda.

“When I saw your application, and it said Israeli, writer, travel,” she said, “I accepted you right away.”

I wanted to stay on good terms with her. She mentioned an Israeli-led travel agency based in Shinjuku, unbeknownst to me, and suggested introducing me. She spoke of all the things she wanted me to do in return, and mentioned another monitor tour in early February.

Yet my visa would expire until then.

I felt bad about leaving so soon. Even though the working hours were flexible, as in, more than agreed upon.

When our talk ended, I joined the French guys, who were cleaning the gutter outside the temple. It was clogged with leaves and dirt. I wondered how water could flow down the hill, and shoved my hands inside the dirt to look for an opening.

“I can’t find the hole,” I said.

“That’s what she said,” Roomie said.

I kept digging with my hands.

“So there is a hole after all,” Joe remarked after a few minutes.

“Yeah,” I said, my hand groping inside a small opening full of dirt, “but it’s too tight.”

“How are you gonna get in there?”

“You have to play with it first.”

After washing all my clothes, lunch was burritos, curtesy of Mamacita. She made a fried natto and green pepper version for me with loads of cheese. I also ate a lettuce salad and fried salmon with onion, carrots, mushrooms. Dessert was a Japanese-style brioche.

Ten days at the temple had allowed me to bond with some of the volunteers. I was having conversations with everyone, apart from the sick German. Becky, for example, as pretty, gentle, and articulate as a doll, taught me Australian lingo. Joe was the prankster, running jokes and rivalling my capacity of eating. Mamacita and Papacito taught me Spanish and supplied the juice.

“Vamonos, putas,” I’d tell whenever on the move.

Mamacita and I had formed a habit of gossiping. As it turned out, this temple locked away more than Buddhas. I couldn’t possibly divulge any of the behind-the-scenes drama – yet it rivalled the antics of a Spanish telenovela. The other volunteers would see us speaking in hushed tones, and join in.

Before tonight’s dinner, for example, we all huddled after making the food and setting the table. Mamacita filled me in on the drama I’d missed while sleeping through yesterday’s dinner.

We continued muttering while washing the dishes. Leon chewed ice after biting his tongue; Mamacita grabbed an ice cube just for fun, and chewed as well. I thoroughly enjoyed this scene.

Today’s highlights: mochi-yaki; Japanese-style burrito; evening with the volunteers.

18 January 2024

Seventh Day of Volunteering at the Temple

Breakfast today included croissant. The French guys had been baking it for the past two days. I’d helped them work the dough a bit yesterday, yet it involved so many steps.

The result melted in my mouth. They used quite a lot of sugar and butter, obviously, but not as much as in Parisian bakeries.

With no guests whatsoever, today was the slowest one yet. We finished cleaning after a mere hour. So I helped the obaachans cook in the kitchen, did laundry, and rested. Everyone, whether volunteers or working holiday, finished their shift after three hours.

I used my free time to catch up with writing. Lunch was fried fish and a Hot Food vegetable pasta. I wasn’t that hungry after the croissants, though.

Temple Photoshoot

In the afternoon, Mamacita unsheathed her professional camera for a photo shoot on the temple grounds. Pudding, Papacito, and I dressed up in my traditional Japanese garments and posed in various locations. It was a great idea for an afternoon at a temple town with nothing to do.

The pictures turned out skillful and mystical. I’d never rented a kimono and taken brooding, atmospheric photos of myself in Kyoto, so this was a welcome alternative.

Back in the kitchen, I decorated bite-sized yuba with Sakura mochi. Dinner was as delicious as ever: tofu and cheese croquette, grilled vegetables (lotus root, carrot, potato), and lettuce salad.

Today’s highlights: croissants; a temple photo shoot; tofu and cheese croquette.

19 January 2024

Eighth Day of Volunteering at the Temple

I woke at 10:00 for my day off. Thirty people were coming for lunch. The kitchen was so hectic, that I offered to work today instead. Cooking, washing hundreds of dishes, and eating breakfast in-between.

After yet another natto rice lunch, I announced my departure from the temple next week. In a few days, after six months, I would again leave this country.

I would miss everything about Japan.

Natto, perhaps, most of all.

Dinner courtesy of the French gang was spaetzle (fried egg and flour, Eastern-European rather than French), plus shiitake mushrooms in rich, creamy sauce (SO French). I hadn’t eaten a warm, heavy, wintery meal that took siege over my stomach in over a year. The ultimate comfort food. I savored every bite.

After my bath, came the time for my daily staff-room-phone-call. Since a return ticket was required to enter Taiwan, I booked a flight to Israel on the spur of the moment. Phone calls about this to my family had kept me up until 2:00.

Today’s highlight: spaetzle with a creamy mushroom sauce.

20 January 2024

Movie Night at the Temple

I woke at 8:00, ate breakfast, and made coleslaw for tonight’s dinner. I was tasked with cooking an Israeli meal.

After some errands for Taiwan on my computer, lunch was takikomi gohan (fried vegetable rice) plus cucumber and seaweed salad. I wanted to continue cooking after, but realized we wouldn’t have enough quantities for twenty people. Okami-san’s sister and her family had come for the weekend.

We went to the nearest grocery shop, a fifteen-minute drive. The temple staff didn’t want me to drive, because Israeli guests had always crashed their rental car. They called Joe to drive instead.

This took the wind out of my sails. I didn’t want to cook for people who deemed me incompetent. I’d driven on winding, mountain roads in Japan with a rental car, without ever having driven on the opposite side before that.

In lieu of falafel and hummus, dinner was a tofu, udon, and cabbage nabe, topped with grated daikon, okaka, ponzu sauce, and a sprinkle of orange juice. Side dishes included fried squid and tempura vegetables. Sake was served, per Okami-san’s sister’s request.

Everything was too plentiful and delicious. I’d gone from walking and hiking for months while consuming very little konbini food, to mostly sitting down in a temple and wolfing down vast quantities. In five days, I’d go back to the former lifestyle.

The communal meals. The camaraderie. I missed this volunteering experience before it was even over.

I decided to extend my stay at the temple by a day, and return to Tokyo with Papacito two days before my flight. No need to spend too much time and money in Tokyo, if I returned there in six months.

After dinner, all of these emotions deepened when the volunteers found a projector in one of the guest rooms. We grabbed a bunch of sweets, blankets, seat cushions, and put on Princess Mononoke, which I’d never seen. Lying on tatami, reclining against sliding doors, snacking on chocolate, and watching one of Japan’s foremost animations, in a temple at night. It was raining cats and dogs.

As I contemplated the fineness of this moment, I realized it stood in stark contrast to last week’s post-dinner at Keishin-in temple. Alone in a spacious room, stuffed with an old-school Shojin meal, listening to music on a futon, lonely with pangs of longing. A week later, a movie night with friends, snacks, and anime. Both moments were nigh perfect for reasons different altogether.

One year ago, I’d stopped watching movies and TV shows. I almost always watched by myself. Now, my mind wasn’t even thinking about sightseeing anymore. Only homemade feasts and movie nights with friends.

I missed my bath time slot just to stay. If it weren’t for my flight, I would’ve extended my stay even longer.

As I watched the movie and fantasized about future nights like this, perhaps in Tokyo, perhaps in Shikoku, my eyelids dropped. I dozed off one hour into the movie and snuggled under my blanket on bare tatami, between Mamacita and Joe.

They woke me up when the movie ended.

“Slumber party?” I said.

It would’ve been funny for ten volunteers to crash in a temple room meant for one person.

Today’s highlights: nabe and sake for dinner; movie night at a temple.

21 January 2024

An Israeli Day Off

I used my second day off to attempt an Israeli meal again. With twenty mouths or so to feed, I kept revising the quantities. Finally, in the afternoon, Mamacita, Leon, Becky, and I started cooking.

At some point, Okami-san’s sister came and asked the obaachans to prepare Japanese curry for the kids.

“They won’t like it,” she said, listing reasons such as the smell.

In the midst of this, I was told to use use very little of the sesame paste, because it was expensive. Even though a good hummus required ample tahini.

Like yesterday, I grew a bit bummed from all of this. But the volunteers helped me a lot, in addition to a cheerful Japanese woman from the staff who I’d been chatting with for days. We ground the hummus as much as possible. In Israel, I’d have put twice the tahini – but it tasted good overall.

Everyone chopped vegetables, cooked chickpeas, and rolled dough into balls while I gave orders, reading the recipes in Hebrew. Almost like running a kitchen. It took us three hours to make forty falafels, thirty pitas, two large plates of hummus, two cabbage salads, and two Arab salads.

The meal was a success. The pitas were the best I’d eaten, because they were homemade and fresh out of the oven. I hadn’t known they were so simple to make. The falafel was also my best ever, full of spices and herbs.

At some point, Becky suggested spreading some hummus on fried natto. The ultimate combination of food that wasn’t easy on the stomach. I broke the rules of two cultures for this bizarre marriage.

Then Okami-san unsheathed a bottle of 500-year-old olive oil for the occasion. It offered a strong and rich taste. My taste buds were singing: this dinner was a fine way to bid farewell to the temple.

At night, the volunteers joined Okami-san and her family at a karaoke down the road, near the café. We crossed a dark and sleepy Buddhist town to a house with neither a sign outside nor a hint of a party going on inside.

Beer, pistachios, steamed octopus, fruit, and chocolates. As usual, I gorged myself, singing my heart out. Especially funny was when no one joined me in rapping Nicki Minaj. We returned after two hours to the temple, near midnight.

When I went to bed on a full and happy stomach, it occurred to me that I could perhaps find my tribe someday, people I’d grow close to and build lasting relationships with, out of Israel. My time abroad had brought me together with people different to those I’d known. My friendships from home had already dissipated.

A lot of changes were coming. Perhaps some would work out for the better, in a different land, around the corner.

Today’s highlights: throwing an Israeli dinner from scratch; karaoke at a Buddhist town.