Have You ever been to Yama Dera?

When you travel in the Tohoku region of Japan you must visit the Yamadera temple Complex the mountain retreat of Zen Buddhism. It is like you are on a pilgrimage.

The famous Zen Priest and Haiku Master. Matsu Basho passed through the region and paid a visit to the Yamadera.
ama-dera (山寺, lit. "Mountain Temple"), (山号 宝珠山; Sangō Hōshu-zan) is about a twenty-minute train ride (Senzan Line) northeast of Yamagata City, in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. The temple is a nationally designated Place of Scenic Beauty and Historic Site.^[1]

Yama-dera is where the well-known haiku poet Matsuo Bashō wrote his famous haiku "ah this silence / sinking into the rocks / voice of cicada" in 1689. A museum of Basho's writings and paintings and other related art, the Yamadera Basho Memorial Museum, is a short walk up the hill on the opposite side of the steep valley. In 1996, the Ministry of the Environment selected the cicadas of Yama-dera as one of the 100 Soundscapes of Japan.^[4]

This age old Japanese landscape with its rustic Japanese temples  situated all over the hillside invoked a sense of surrealism in me as though I have been there before in my previous life. 

As I walked up the hill throughout the temple complex I felt transported to time gone by where the life of discipline and devotion was a way of life and what a beauty it must have been to wander around among the tall pine trees and jagged rocks with wooden temples were built snugged into the mountainous landscape.

The Japanese were master builders in wooden structures and their sense of aesthetic in  making sure that nature and man made structures complements each other is  evident in their design of rock gardens in their environment. The strong contrast between Bronze and wood, rocks and green trees, makes one feels like it was all a work of art.

Yes if you ever get the chance to travel the Tohoku region of Yamagata Prefecture, you must climb the Yamadera Mountain retreat. and if possible make it during the Fall season when the trees changes their colors.
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