A hand towel, a monk, and the first alpinist

Pictured is a hand towel, or tenugui (手ぬぐい), commemorating 1,300 years since Mt. Haku (2,702 m) was first climbed. Taicho, known as "The Monk of Echizen", accomplished this feat of mountaineering in the year 717: in other words, over 600 years before Petrarch (he of the sonnets to Laura in the style that bears his name) became the "first" alpinist in the modern sense (that is, climbing mountains to enjoy the views, among other things) by scaling Mt. Ventoux (1,912 m) in 1332. Whether Taicho admired the views from the top of Mr. Haku (which, by the way, straddles Ishikawa, Gifu, and Fukui prefectures and has been considered sacred from ancient times) is, well, irrelevant. In 717 there were no climbing routes, so Taicho had to blaze his own trail. In the following century three paths were established, one starting in each of the three prefectures (not then known as "prefectures", if you care about such things) mentioned above. Nice hand towel/ wall decoration.  Tenugui make good souvenirs, too.     

New Year's Decorations: the Kadomatsu

Examples of kadomatsu flank the entry to a trad villa in downtown Niigata City.

For a discussion of the "gate pine" and other decorative elements, see the earlier post titled The Japanese New Year.

Poet and Priest Ryokan-sama

From a 2009 post:

One morning death comes before
They can use even half their money.
Others happily receive the estate,
And the deceased's name is soon lost in darkness.
For such people there can only be great pity.

Well, I get the idea about the pity, even if it is tough to feel in this case.