A Quiet Place In Tokyo

There surely are some hobbies that are quiet difficult to confess to anyone. I guess my "you are on your own" number one hobby is to visit cemeteries. Some kind of untold and unshared passion of mine.

So one of the first thing I was looking for when arriving in Japan was to wander in one of those local graveyards. Talk about finding a quiet place in Tokyo! As it happens in most countries, I was pretty much alone in there if you except the only character that would never be missing in the set: the real unofficial guardian of the dead ones, a black cat.

I don't know if it has been built on purpose, and I am not even sure that the local people here are aware of it, but Tokyo's cemeteries look exactly like their city. Scattered all over the place, you will find vertically erected rectangular volumes of different colors, shapes and materials that copycat the towers shaped landscape of the capital, giving you the feeling to be facing a very detailed model of the city.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a dead freak or even less some Gothic kid type and surely never dress in black. The feeling I get while walking in a cemetery is one very peaceful, calming and in some way a very happy one. I sincerely believe that passed away people are good company, probably because they have managed to free themselves from the silly daily habits of the living ones: no one here is rushing, or pushing you or getting mad at a late bus here. If you look at the inscriptions over the tombstones, you'll notice that you find yourself among the best people in the world; everybody here was beloved, regretted and deeply missed. Angels, I tell you!

It remind me of the question asked by a young kid to his mother while walking through a similar place: "Mom, where do they bury the bad persons?"

Something somehow finds a sneaky way to put some sadness in me, and that's the vision of flattered flowers in a vase over a tombstone. Some kind of redundancy that always turns me still and chilly. But then the vision of a can of beer on another tombstone brings back a happy smile on my face. Okay, it's perhaps not as respectful as burning incense or a warm cup of tea, but it's definitely so truly human.

Another detail that struck me as well as being very human are those long thin planks of wood covered with scriptures. I assume that those words stand for prayers or wishes for a healthy and happy afterlife. But if you close your eyes for a moment, you will hear those planks knocking and bouncing against each other according to the mood of the wind.

Those short sharp noises sound to me like teeth kicking each others as if the dead ones were trying to communicate with us through the only part of their body that will remain forever down below the ground.

If you listen to them, they will tell you the story of that boy that likes to walked in cemeteries.

Further Japan Travel Ideas

https://www.gotokyo.org/en/tourists/areas/index.html

http://www.visitjapan.jp/en/

https://www.japanskiexperience.com/resorts/hakuba.aspx

https://osaka-info.jp/en/

http://visitkanazawa.jp/