Entrance to Hell

This past weekend we (Derick and I and six of our friends) took a road trip up north (about two hours) to Mt. Oserezan. This place is one of the three holiest sites in all of Japan. In the center of the area is Lake Usori, surrounded by white sand and 8 peaks of mountains. This represents a lotus flower with 8 petals (the symbol of the world of Buddha) In this central area there are 108 ponds of boiling mud and sulfur representing the 108 worldly desires and the hells linked to each one. Side by side with this hellish view are the woods and lake, which suggest the beauty of paradise.

The Buddha figure at this temple is called Jizo. Jizo has “vowed to suffer hell himself to alleviate the pain from those condemned to hell, to free human beings from the illusions of life and death in this world and lead them into eternal salvation.”… Sounds familiar. There was one part that really struck me…

“The sulphurous valley in the depth of this mountainous area becomes a land of salvation, where absolute peace and happiness are freely given, Here one can listen to an inaudible sermon, which teaches that any place is Paradise so far as Jizo it there.” I think that is how we should all look at life, at least this is my new goal, if you really listen you can hear an “inaudible sermon”… this land cries the glories of our God! We just have to take the time to listen… and any place is paradise as long as God is there, and where is he not? I don’t know if it is being in this place surrounded by ancient forests, the endless crashing ocean, thick mists and huge mountains but there is something deeply spiritual about this place, something deeper and more vast then I will ever begin to understand…

Anyway… take a look at what we found at Mt. Oser!
Driving there we took the road up the coast with the ocean on one side and hills and forests on the other, and occasionally there was room for a rice patty or two. I love the homemade fences right next to the giant power lines. We live pretty close to a nuclear power plant, the people that live off base actually get a check from the Japanese government each year as an “I’m sorry you are going to get cancer cause you live within 100 k of a nuclear power plant.“… I think its like 80 dollars.
This is right before we got to the mountain, this is actually part of Lake Usori, we just didn’t realize we were that close, but it definitely smelled of sulfur at this point.
This is a sign with the name of the lake written in kanji. You can see how clear the water was. It was so gorgeous and that looks like a walkway or a dock or something that used to extend out into the lake.
This is getting ready to walk into the main temple area, there were these statues on each side, slightly ridiculous looking, here is Derick taking a picture of one with his camera… (we don’t do well when we have to share a camera)
This is he main temple, it was very gorgeous, I love the rooflines. Apparently there are snow monkeys living in the forest behind the temple, we did not see any monkeys but we did hear them calling to each other.
This is the entrance to the walkway to “hell”, it was really cool, and not as stinky as I thought it was going to be, we kinda got used to it. I love how old and worn this marker is. It was quite light outside despite the ominous looking clouds and makes for great pictures.
This is one of the vent where hot sulfurous air poured out, if you look closely all around the opening and down the side are coins, some are so old they have changed color and some have become charred from the intense heat and whatever else is coming out of that hole, I thought they looked really cool.
This is looking at the “paradise” area from the “hell” area. The lake was so pretty and it
had the most gorgeous aqua blue water. And you can see the incredibly dense monkey ridden forest surrounding this area.
Here is one of the many many sulfur streams running through the area, they were a variety of colors, and all stinky, but super cool looking.
A great big statue of Buddha, at the back edge of the hell area next to the forest, this looks pretty new, I don’t know how long its been there.
Here is one of the boiling sulfur ponds, I read on wikitravel that the ponds are all colors from sulfur yellow all the way to blood red ones, but we never found the blood red one, I was really disappointed.
Derick and I on the back edge of the “hell” area, you can see the back of the Buddha behind us, you can see how big he is compared to us and he is really far away, and somewhere in between is where the boiling yellow sulfur pond is.
On the way down to the beach we came upon this reflecting pool, and I am sure what I am doing is super sacrilegious, but its not my religion and nobody else could see me so, I did anyway, and I think it is hilarious!
The white sand beach, but don’t let the beauty fool you, even the lake was bubbling and had sulfurous yellow stains in the bottom, I doubt much lives in that lake…
There were piles of rocks everywhere, just random piles of rocks… now I heard a few different stories… one was that when people had small children die they came here to mourn the death and would build a pile of rocks for them, the other version said the spirits of the dead children would come here and build the piles and wait there for their parents to come join the child in death. Either way its pretty sad and there was a whole area just for stillborn babies, and at the foot of a statue in this area was of course a bunch of rocks and mixed in the rocks were these little statues, I assume when a family has a child die they buy a little statue and leave it in their honor. So sad….

Well Mt. Oser was really cool but the place we stopped on the drive back was equally as cool… check back later cause I am posting those photos next!!!!