35°47’20.709″N, 139°9’20.0124″E

Normally, this road would be busy with weekend visitors, but today it feels as if we have the mountain nearly to ourselves. For this, I can thank the weather.

The canopy of the forest is dense and the understory only sparsely populated with smaller plants. Even on a sunny day, this place would be fairly dark. And on this day, thick cloud has encased the mountain, filling the space between the trees with a heavy fog that eats up light and sound. It is a murky, dimly lit world where trees recede into an indistinct distance and the forest is holding its breath.

Halfway up the mountain road, we stop to take a rest. We are surrounded by cedar trees large enough that we’d need a third person if we wanted to put our arms all the way around the trunks.

On the top of this mountain, there is a shrine that’s been there for centuries and has a history much older than the buildings themselves. It’s one of the rare place where they practice futomani, an ancient form of divination. Thought to go back to the Jomon period, it involves heating the shoulder blade of a stag until it cracks, and reading the lines thus created.

Farther down the mountain, there are neither ancient shrines nor burnt stag bones. There are only the massive trees, the road, and the two of us, feeling tiny amongst towering cedars, cloaked in silence.

35°51’12.0″N 139°39’18.8″E

There are many rabbits in this place. It is a shrine dominated by them. Some of them are doing jobs more commonly held by foxes or lion-dogs, while others hide in corners of carvings or sit under shelters, relaxing in their old age.

A family of rabbits stands guard at the entrance, flanking the path and keeping watch from above. Another, much larger rabbit sits patiently above a carved stone trough filled with cold, clear water.

The water that flows from this rabbit’s mouth is used to cleanse and purify. Early in the morning, when most people are still asleep, the shrine is hushed, and the flow of the water joins the rustle of the trees to gently fill the air with sound.

Every day, people come to be purified with this water and to pray. On some days, only a few dozen come. On festival days, throngs of thousands too numerous to count crowd and jostle one another.

One by one, they pick up long-handled dippers and scoop water from the trough. They rinse their hands and their mouths with it, before continuing on to the worship hall to pray.

At every hour, by daylight and starlight alike, the rabbits watch over this place. Humans come and go, and appear to run the shrine, but in the end it belongs to the rabbits.

The shrine near my apartment is Tsuki Shrine, or Tsuki Jinja. Though written with different kanji, this tsuki (調)and the word for moon (月) are homophones. Japanese folklore includes the story of the rabbit in the moon, which (as best I can tell) is how this shrine wound up with rabbits instead of the much more common foxes or dogs. It is my favorite shrine, and the rabbits are one of my favorite things about it.

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35º44”57.27’N 139º44”44.45’E

1. Lifting

If a train is crowded enough, there can be a phenomenal amount of physical pressure exerted on standing passengers. On three different occasions, my feet have lost contact with the floor of a train due to the pressure of the shifting mass of bodies as we rounded a curve.

2. Commuting in Parallel

In Tokyo, there are often trains running on parallel tracks. At times, you can see clearly into the next train as it runs next to yours at the same speed, just a few meters away. You sometimes make eye contact or notice interesting things about the strangers in the other train as they look back at you. Nobody ever waves.

3. Flipped Relationships

Sometimes I can’t quite make it to my desired car on the train before the doors close, so I get on and begin walking down the length of the train on the inside. If I’m walking opposite the direction the train is travelling, there is a brief moment when it begins moving that I am walking forward but the platform out the window seems stationary, giving the curious sensation that the floor is travelling beneath me, rather than me travelling across it.

4. The Mountain

From where I live in Saitama Prefecture, Mt Fuji is sometimes visible. You need clear weather, though, and you need an elevated position. Most of the time, if I can glimpse the mountain, it’s from the train as I commute into Tokyo. I consider a clear sighting as a good omen for the day.

35°51’13.2228″N 139°39’23.529″E

There is a bench that I think of as my bench, in a park that I think of as my park. If I am not at home, not at work, and not walking around, there’s a good chance I’m sitting on my bench.

I first visited the park nearly six years ago, on the day I moved to Japan. A friend brought there me to join an evening cherry-blossom party. Several years later, when I moved from Tokyo to Saitama, I realized happily that it was only a two-minute walk from my new home.

I go there nearly every day, whether to read, to write, or just sit and let the world do what it will as I watch. It does a lot, but what I most enjoy in the park is to see the different categories of people who cycle through the park as the day progresses.

Retirees do calisthenics in groups early every morning. Preschool classes and mothers with young children arrive in the mid-morning or early afternoon, playing cheerfully and sprinting across the open spaces with glee.

Dogs and their humans congregate in the early evening. In the late evening, couples and exhausted office workers alike steal a few quiet moments before heading home.

You’re apt to find me there at any time when I don’t have good reason to be anywhere else. Usually, I’ll have with me something to read, a notebook, and a pen, though sometimes they just sit by my side. The park is diversion enough on its own.