Summer Solstice in Nikko, Japan

Konnichiwa from Yokohama, Japan. Wow, it has been an amazingly rich and profoundly transformative 10 days here in Japan. After a 12-hour flight from Houston to Tokyo, a 2-hour wait in the Tokyo airport, and 3-hour drive to Nikko, I was immediately warmly welcomed by my host with a dinner party for 15 friends at her home. After a lovely dinner I crashed hard on a futon on the tatami (straw mat) floor of a local Ryokan (traditional Japanese hotel), situated on a mountain side near a raging river. I slept with the windows open to be refreshed by the clean mountain air and the sounds of rushing white water and the pouring rain throughout the night.

With my body clock still adjusting to the new time zone, I was up at 5 a.m. to meditate and to write in my journal on the 2008 Summer Solstice. I was then picked up at 7 a.m. and driven a few minutes to the 1200 year-old Rinnoji temple, which is famous for its 3 gigantic gold-leafed Buddhas. There I met the head Tendai Buddhist priest and he happily gave me and my little merry band a private tour of the temple a couple of hours before it was opened to the public. In a publicly restricted area of the temple the priest honored me by inviting me to sit near him while he performed a fire ceremony with mantras, mudras, and a variety of magical ingredients. I added my own prayers and blessings for all of us to the fire on behalf of our community. After the fire ceremony we went upstairs to the main altar area of the temple and sat with a group of monks chanting, pounding drums and blowing horns.

From the temple I walked to other near-by temples and did a photo shoot for a 6-page feature that the Japanese Yoga Journal is doing on Anusara Yoga. Without having practiced an asana in days I immediately jumped into handstands and balancing poses at the top of temple stairs, in front of the big Pagoda, and in the rock garden (on the rocks!). Sweating through my Light the Sky T-shirt in the humid mid-morning air, I then walked to a spectacular yoga studio that is part of the Buddhist shrine complex in the heart of Nikko to teach a 3-hour class for 75 very enthusiastic yoga students. In honor of the Solstice I gave a one-hour talk on the great celebration of life, and how if we harmonize with Nature or the flow of the Shakti, then wondrous revelations of the deep meaning of every event will fill the mind with a luminous tapestry of Light. A key point of the talk was that there are no coincidences in life, and that we are all interconnected in this tapestry of Shakti. I videotaped the talk and the class, and the camera crew were in awe since as I was talking the clouds cleared and the rest of the day was filled with extraordinarily sparkling Solstice sunlight! This was particularly stunning since the day’s forecast was for 100% chance of rain and there was flooding the night before. It was an unforgettable class and students left radically shifted.

Since the weather was so beautiful I walked down a road with some of the Merry Band to a solitary temple in the forest and ate my Bento box lunch outside on some ancient steps. Although I thought we were away from the Nikko tourists, suddenly a couple of young women dressed in platform high heels, hot pants, and skimpy tops walked up to the quiet temple near where we were sitting. This kind of western dress is not uncommon among young women in Japan today. During my 3 visits to Japan I have observed that many young Japanese women from the cities wear mini-skirts or hot pants with high heels and fishnet hose more as a fashion statement than as a conscious expression of their sexual desires or sexual energy. There is very little public touching and hugging is certainly not common. Sexuality is not openly discussed, and yet pornography is huge in Japan. The girls who dress like very sexually loose girls in the US have such an innocent air about them and the style is so common that no one seems to give them any special notice...except the western men!

As we were leaving the temple area after our lunch we stumbled upon another incongruous, random situation. On this very quiet rural road in front of the ancient temple, we met a couple of girls who worked for Red Bull energy drink! They arrived by man-powered rickshaw, and they carried with them a cold cooler of cans of Red Bull energy drink, which they handed out to us!

From there I walked a 1/2 mile to my sponsor’s home, where I was dressed in a beautiful, new Kimono by a very tough, little Japanese woman who completely manhandled me as she dressed me. In full regalia I walked down an old road lined with old stone walls and a densely green forest to a wonderfully rustic yoga studio in the woods to teach an hour pranayama class to group of about 50 students. After the class I led the students down the road to a nearby tea house where we were instructed for over 2 hours in a traditional tea ceremony by a master teacher. It was a most wonderful experience to be immersed in such an exquisite practice where I could slowly bathe in the silent delight of sharing such refined beauty with friends.

Following the tea ceremony I met privately with the tea master and exchanged gifts with her, and then was whisked away by car to a 200-year restaurant to enjoy a delightful, traditional Japanese 7-course meal cooked by a 9th generation chef with about 15 of the Merry Band! This is a restaurant that has sustained itself through the generations by offering the emperor first class meals when he would visit Nikko on his weekend getaways and holidays! At one point in the meal I casually inquired about the availability at the restaurant of a high-end sake. The head waitress bowed very seriously to me and said that she would find out what high quality sake they could find for me. I didn’t find out until the next day that the assistant manager of the restaurant got in her car and drove around town searching for a locally brewed, extra-premium sake for me! So, around 11 p.m., 18 hours after the start of my day, I walked happily back to my Ryokan for a good night’s sleep. As soon as I entered my room, it started pouring rain. It was truly an unforgettable Summer Solstice of '08 and a full first day in Japan to say the least!