A Brief Visit of Chichibu

Many things happen in the town of Chichibu, in Saitama. It's a town that, although calm during most of the year, brims with festivals on multiple occasions, and has found its way to the public eye. The town is spread on a fairly wide area which it also shares with vast fields of flowers of different types - so many in fact that it doesn't take all that much luck at all to find at least one such field in full bloom. This, and its surrounding mountains and temples, have given Chichibu somewhat of a picturesque look, while removing none of its tranquility.

 I found myself making a short trip to Chichibu in order to have a look at the town, not quite sure what exactly to expect, and found myself walking amongst pilgrims. As it turns out, one of Chichibu's main selling points to visitors is the 34 temples scattered in the forest and mountain trails. The pilgrimage through all 34 temples has been done for nearly 700 years now, but though the pilgrims of Chichibu today don't necessarily do it for the sake of actual religion, it was easy for me to see the appeal of such a journey. Based on nothing but a picture on a pamphlet, I picked one of the 34 and decided I'd have a taste of it.

 Temple 28, the Hashidate-do, was only a short distance away from one of the train stations of the local line, and a very short hike up one of the mountains lead directly to it. Nestled amongst tall trees at the top of a staircase, tucked under one of the faces of the mountain behind it, the small, ancient temple was a small marvel in and of itself, and radiated with history and lore. Unlike most temples in Japan, it's said that as many as half of the temples in Chichibu are not attended by priests, and are instead cared and maintained for by locals. Happy about my discovery, I soon decided to move on.

  As I mentioned above, Chichibu's flower fields are also fairly well known. Unfortunately, I had just missed the blooming of the pink shibazakura (or moss phlox) fields, which is widely considered to be the most beautiful of the bunch. I did, however, catch the blooming of the buckwheat! Granted, buckwheat's not all that impressive of a flower at all, and I'm not even that big a fan of soba noodles, but it was still kind of neat to stand in a field of it. But a little color would have been nice.

 Altogether, though, I didn't spend so much time in Chichibu, and I'm quite aware that there are adventures to be had here if I went looking for them. There's rafting on the Arakawa river, and zip-lining from tree to tree a bus ride away from the center of the town, let alone the whole 100 kilometer pilgrimage across the 34 temples. But those will have to be for another day, perhaps.