Shimokita, Ho! The Mysterious and Ominous Holy Ground of Osorezan

This past weekend Charlie Mac and I made the trek up to the Shimokita peninsula, the most northern point on Honshu, for an AJET event (in the Aomori map to the left, it's the "axe handle" coming out of the northeast coast of the prefecture). The main draw was a trip to Osorezan ("mount fear"), rumored in Japanese mythology to be the entrance to hell and one of the holiest sites in Japan. An active volcano, the mountain is visited by scores of pilgrims who come to pray for the souls of children and other loved ones who are believed to be in a state of limbo.

The entrance to the mountain is guarded by six statues of Jizo, the Bodhisattva who apparently vowed to protect those who were relegated to hell. He is said to dress as a monk, so as to hide dead children in his robes from demons.

The entrance consists of a simple gate that beckons visitors to enter the temple complex at the foot of the mountain. After paying five bucks, that is.

I'm not sure exactly what the custom is regarding the drinking of the temple water (being demonstrated here by Charlie Mac) but I must say, it was quite refreshing.

Upon entering you follow a path through the complex, passing under a series of gates. At the end of the path is a shrine and a path leading up into the mountain.



This is what you see when you look inside the window of the shrine. People walked up to the shrine, threw change into a small box in the window and prayed before entering the mountain proper.


Being an active volcano, Osorezan has a landscape befitting of the entrance to hell. Crevices in the earth spew forth mostly sulfurous gases (seen below), pools of various liquids bubble audibly and the completely barren landscape communicates an almost tangible sense of foreboding.

In some places where a black, tar-like substance bubbled out of the earth, people left offerings of coins.

The mountain is dotted with small shrines like the one pictured below. Most of them are covered with some sort of offerings to the departed, ranging from clothes to food to...

Pikachu! This was especially funny because the Pikachu doll sat at the foot of a statue where it lit up and made noise whenever someone got close enough to set off its motion-sensor. Sacrelicious.


Below, you'll see a few of the varieties of water that occur naturally on the mountain. The first shot is of a cloudy, white pool that we found. Below that is one of the many small rivers that flow with yellow water; the result, no doubt, of the extremely high levels of sulphur found at the mountain. They've even set aside a small pool of yellow water for visitors to stick their hands in. It was very warm. Osorezan even boasts a few small onsens where you can bathe in the mountain's natural hot springs.



Eventually, we reached the foot of the mountain on the other side, where we were greeted by a picturesque beach and an excellent view of fall in progress.


Here's a final view from the top of a neighboring hill of the temple complex at Osorezan.

After this little adventure I was able to embark on yet another: my first visit to an onsen (technically meaning "hot spring" but sometimes used to refer to public bath houses). While the original plan was to go to Yagen, a "real" onsen, we ended up going to a bath house run by a hotel in Mutsu, which was much closer to our cabins. In case you're not familiar with the Japanese bath house, I'll give you a quick run down: you strip naked, take a shower, spend as much time as you want in the available baths and sauna and then take another shower on the way out. While I may have found it a little strange to go au natural with a group of my friends, the public bath is a completely mundane scene for most onsen-goers (evidenced by the middle-aged men who lied around naked on the floor). Anyway, this particular onsen had the following baths: the really fucking hot bath, the really fucking cold bath, the tolerably hot outdoor bath and the electric bath in addition to a sauna. Yes, that's right, the electric bath. A series of plates in the bath pump a current into the water that is supposedly good for your muscles. When I first got in, I didn't feel anything, so Charlie advised me to stick a part of my body closer to the plate. When I held my arm up to it, I felt a sensation like a thousand needles pricking my arm all over. Then my fingers started moving involuntarily. From what I hear, this type of stimulation is actually not very good for your central nervous system.

Finally, we finished off the night in high JET fashion, preparing ourselves for another day of exploring the peninsula the only way we knew how; by prefacing it with a late night of karaoke.