The festival of lights

There is a light sprinkle of August rain and the sky is heavy, a watercolour in shades of grey. We ride our bike up a wide avenue strung with round paper lanterns, they stretch up the hill to the temple above. Parking our bikes next to a stall selling flowers and paper prayers that you tie onto trees, we climb a steep stone staircase to the heavy temple gates.

The lanterns inside the temple grounds have been handpainted by local children and are adorned with prayers written in a child`s deliberate rendering of the kanji script. There are lots of people everywhere, but the vibe is quiet, not somber but serene. The only sounds are the faint ringing of temple gongs up the mountain and the trickle of water from the pond at the entrance. We follow the trail of people and reach the cemetary.

It is an unbelievable sight, one of those sights you know will be with you your whole life, one that will rise up with a tide of nostalgia in years to come.Dusk is slipping away behind the forest canopy and a huge cemetery of smooth vertical columns climbs high up the side of the mountains. Strung between the stones in neat rows are literally thousands of paper lanterns, flickering candles dancing in the dim light. The sky is full of black crows, huge wings flapping, their mournful cries filling the sky.

People gather around a stone fountain, filling bamboo cups and buckets with water, which they use to clean the headstones of friends and relatives. Some carry fruit, scrolls and incense, which unfurls in an aromatic fog which is carried on the breeze.

We stand at the base of the mountain, watching the lights of the lanterns dance in the gathering wind and we silently recall our own lost relatives and friends, carried away like the incense smoke, dissapating into the ether. We send prayers and messages of love, which are lifted by poweful black wings to the heavens above.

We climb up among the stones on the perimeter, where the graves of the forgotten mingle with the roots of the forest. I wish I had bought a bamboo bucket, to clean the stone of one who will not be tended to by family or friend.

A steady rain begins to fall and we make our way back down the mountain, lingering at the bottom as night settles over the town and the rain begins to snuff out the flickering lanterns.