Daimonji

The wooded hill that rises up over our neighborhood immediately to the east has a large bare patch on which is laid out a giant kanji symbol 大, which means "big." (For those unfamiliar with written Japanese, there are two syllabic alphabets, hiragana and katakana, plus a third system of kanji in which certain (Chinese-based) pictograms are used to represent whole words or concepts.)

Although we will, unfortunately, not still be in Kyoto for this, each August there is a big festival in which bonfires are lit all along the 大 symbol, to striking effect:

Like most kanji, 大 gets different pronunciations in different contexts. One common pronunciation is dai, and this gives the whole mountain its name, Daimonji-yama (literally, 'Big-Letter Mountain').

Once I learn to recognize this kanji I started seeing it all over the place, including -- for some reason -- on the corner of the intersection right near my office building:

On a sunny evening about 10 days ago, Chloe and I decided to make the short hike up Daimonji-yama to the 大 symbol. It took about half-an-hour up a steep path that started just to the north of Ginkakuji (the Silver Temple), a couple of hundred yards from our house. The views back down over Kyoto were impressive and gave a good sense of the way in which the city is bordered on three sides by hills:

From the mountainside itself, it was hard to get a sense of the 大 symbol, except to realize just how large it is. (Philosophical aside: this mountainside 大 is a good example of an autological token inscription -- it correctly describes itself!)

A couple of days later, I stopped in a local bakery to pick up some bread and noticed that they had mini Daimonji-yama cakes, so I had to bring one home to try. The flavoring was part green tea and part sweet black beans, and the 大 was rendered in chocolate ... .