On Sunday, I left Ni’igata and headed for Akita, where I’d visit the convent where Sister Agnes Sasagawa witnessed Our Lady of Akita.
The Shinkansen bullet train ride up the northwest coast of Japan was beautiful.
At moments, the coast line looked just like a Hiroshige painting. I guess he wasn’t making that stuff up! 😂
Once I arrived at Akita Station, I wanted to head to the convent immediately because despite leaving Ni'igata at 6 am, it would be around 1 pm by the time I reached the institute and they’d close at 4:30.
So, all that is to explain why I popped into the first open food place I saw to grab a bite before heading to the somewhat remote convent.
It was fast food, which I will only feign disappointment about. I got some fries and chicken nuggets. #onlygodwilljudgeme
The total came out to 1200 yen. I thought, wow, these nuggets must be made from milk-fed chickens who get daily massages.
When the order arrived, I realized that it was not the quality that made it expensive. I had somehow ordered a family-sized pack of nuggets and fries. I was shocked and regretful, but didn’t have time to figure out how to fix it, so I took the bag and got into a taxi.
About 20 minutes later, we arrived at the Institute of the Handmaids of the Holy Eucharist (Seitai Hoshikai) in Yuzawadai.
It was their lunch hour, so the chapel was closed. I took a walk through their gardens and ate a few of my 20 lbs. of chicken nuggets.
And just as an aside, trash bins are few and far between, where I’ve been so far. You can recycle bottles and cans, but general trash? No. So, I couldn’t dispose of the nuggets.
And what kind of person would I be to toss out so many nuggets when the sisters are living under a vow of poverty? But then, I don’t think they’d eat chicken nuggets. Maybe I could just bury them in the forest behind the convent?
I thought about what visiting this place means. Why did I come all the way here? What did I want to learn?
After a while, I saw a sister walking down the garden path across from me.
Should I say hello? Should I leave her alone because she’s praying? Either response could be rude, depending on the context.
When she got close, I decided to at least nod and acknowledge her. When the climactic moment came, she tilted her parasol down to cover her face. Sure. That works. I need to get a parasol for myself!
I went into the chapel and hoped that someone a little more outgoing would be running the show. Not because I need everyone in the world to be extroverted, but because I wanted to engage, just a little bit.
Luckily, the sister in the gift shop was very friendly and spoke quite a bit of English.
She asked me how I had found this place and I told her I’d been reading about Sister Agnes Sasagawa and was very grateful to finally get to visit the institute.
She said, with a sweet, glowing smile, that Sister Agnes is 84 now.
I didn’t pry because I didn’t want to seem like a Sister Agnes fanatic (but am I?). Plus, I wondered if these sisters are tired of people talking about Agnes all the time, when they’re the ones keeping the place afloat day to day!
But I guess the life of a nun is all about eliminating these sorts of petty thoughts that I, apparently, cannot produce enough of!
The sister led me to a room off to the side of the main chapel and showed me the statue of the Virgin Mary that had wept and bled over 100 times, in conjunction with Sister Agnes’ visions and messages from Our Lady of Akita.
When the bishop sent blood and tear samples to a lab, three different blood types showed up.
No photographs are allowed in the church, but here is a photo of Sister Agnes beside the statue of Mary from the web:
I sat and did a watercolor to remember the moment. I do watercolors to closely observe something, not necessarily to portray the thing as it really looks. Well, that statement makes it sounds like I COULD make it look like the thing if I wanted to, but that is not that case at all.
While I was waiting two hours for the snow monkeys to show up, I did a watercolor of the forest and a little Swedish boy came up and asked me if he could see it.
“It’s abstract,” I warned him. He’s like 7, but Sweden has good schools, right?
He looked at my painting and chuckled like, “Yeah, that’s totally abstract.” 😏
And so that’s why my painting of the sacred Virgin Mary statue looks like Kristi Yamaguchi:
I meditated and wrote for a bit until I felt that I had spent enough time in the presence of the statue.
I went to the gift shop, where the friendly sister was still sitting at the counter.
I asked about making a donation and she gave me an envelop, a piece of paper, and a pen. I asked her — what am I supposed to write?
“What is your intention?” she said.
I thought of Bernie Sanders.
I thought of the majority of people in the world working too hard only to not have access to basic necessities and human rights.
I thought of the intractable global clusterfuck of culture, religion, psychology, and politics that is ISIL.
I wrote my intention and added some yen to the envelop.
“Are there are many Catholics in San Francisco?” the sister asked.
“I don’t know,” I tell her, “because I’m an (okay, what is the word again? It isn’t atheist. No, no, no! Don’t say atheist! It’s the other A word…) agnostic. I’m agnostic.”
“Do you believe in the power of Mary?” she asked. And not in a televangelist’s tone, but as if she was genuinely curious about why an agnostic would come to see a statue of the Virgin Mary.
I told her that I’m curious about the power of the Virgin Mary.
I showed her my photos from Myoko-kogen, where Sister Anges had spent time, and we figured out that the church I took photos of is not a church, but rather a home for very old women run by the Catholic Church.
I was shocked to hear that people were living in that structure.
“Why it was boarded up?” I asked.
She said it is to keep the snow from pressing in and shattering the windows.
Myoko-kogen is in the Japanese “Alps” after all. But it was now summer and oppressively hot there. I guess if you can’t find someone to put up and take down those boards each winter, you just leave them up.
I’m not convinced — but if there were people in there, I apologize for playing that creepy music box frame over and over again!
The sister asked how I’m traveling and I said I’m on foot and I’d catch the bus down on the main road.
She looked frightened. “There are bears that jump out,” she said.
Bears?! None of the blog posts describing pilgrimages to this place mentioned bears.
I thought about the armfuls of chicken nuggets in my backpack. 🐻
Maybe they’d come after me because I’m agnostic? 🤔
The sister insisted that I talked with another sister who spoke more English. “Hurry, please!” she said, as the other sister started to walk away.
The sister gave me thorough directions to the bus and didn’t seem horrified that I was walking so I decided to believe in the power of Mary to get me to the bus safely.
Mary, and Google Maps.