My Visit to Japan……. Mount Mitsumine
Having turned 50 years young this year I celebrated this mammoth landmark by going to Japan with sanpai Helen. Japan is a country that we had wanted to visit for many years. We toured the main island of Honshu travelling around 1400 miles mainly by Bullet train but using all forms of public transport. I took my gi on the off chance that I may get some time to train.
We travelled to Mount Mitsumune which is four hours north of Tokyo by a combination of Bullet train, local train, bus and lots of walking! Mount Mitsumine is in a national park; along with beautiful scenery, there is an area of shrines to various people, including warriors, philosophers, poets, politicians that, over the years, Japanese governments felt should be honoured for their contribution to Japanese society.
Masutasu Oyama has a shrine there, hence our journey to Mount Mitsumine. The shrine was constructed shortly after Oyama died. I had only ever seen a couple of pictures of the shrine and knew very little more about it. If you can picture the scene after four hours travelling we came to the bottom of a mountain, and were the only two people there, it was raining heavily and we were armed with a map in Japanese showing us where the shrines were located. Not speaking or reading Japanese we started to climb up the small track leading to what we hoped would be Masutatsu Oyama’s shrine. There were hundreds of shrines on the way. I knew there was a photo of Masutatsu Oyama on his shrine so we would recognise it when we saw it! The rain turned to heavy snow, it was getting dusk, we had a four hour journey to get back to the hotel and we did feel at one stage we were not going to have enough time to find it. Having read that all Japanese speak English we were delighted to find a small party of Japanese tourists on the mountain. However these Japanese did not speak English … they all recognised Oyama’s name and knew of him but not where his shrine was.
We kept walking and climbing and looking in the hope that we would find it. Just as we were thinking this was not going to be our day…. there it was! The shrine is very tasteful; not that large; quite plain in fact, this did delight us as we did not want to see a razzmatazz all dancing one. We were at the shrine for some time taking photos and appreciating the moment in the spiritual eerie, stillness of the mountain. I put on my gi and sat in mokosu in front of the shrine. The snow was still coming down and the light had nearly gone …. I performed Tensho kata both as a personal meditation and a tribute to Kancho. Having performed the kata at the World Tournament with all my contempories and Hanshi Steve Arneil in memory of Kancho and knowing that it was Kancho’s favourite kata …. it was a great feeling to be at his shrine doing the same …. one I shall remember always.
Sensei Stuart and Sanpai Helen @ Masutatsu Oyama’s Shrine
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