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Wow Place #267: Shizen-no-Ie Guest House, Koguchi, Japan
There’s this ridiculous show on Netflix called “Is It Cake?” that I can’t stop watching. Hosted by SNL cast member Mikey Day, the show’s concept is silly but eminently compelling: celebrity judges examine a bunch of ordinary-seeming objects and figure out which ones are real and which ones are actually made of cake (by the baker contestants). Inevitably, the judges mistake, say, a real bowling bowl for a piece of German chocolate cake, which never fails to tickle my funny bone.
What I like about “Is It Cake?” is the way the external face of the each cake looks completely different from what’s actually inside. Happily, this phenomenon exists in the architectural world as well.
While standing in front of the Musee Orsay in Paris, you might think this is a Beaux-Art railway station from the early 20th century – which it was…before it got repurposed as a world-class art museum. Same for the Tate Modern in London, which looks like (and was) an old Power Station but is now a preeminent repository of some of the world’s best modern art.
Although on a much-less-grand level, the Shizen-no-Ie guest house is Koguchi, Japan, is an equally intriguing “deep fake.”
As my wife, Donica, and I finish our hike on the celebrated pilgrimage trail, the Kumano Kodo (Wow Place #25), we enter the small town of Koguchi in search of our hotel for the night. Seeking help, we consult a local shop keeper who points at a nearby junior high school.
“That’s Shizen-no-Ie?”
“Yes, yes, that’s it.”
It’s like we’re on a reality show. Surely that old school can’t be our guest house! But indeed it is.
“Shizen-no-Ie,” which translates as “Nature’s House” is an old, countryside school transformed into a hotel in 1982 to accommodate summer camp students. Over the years, the guest house – situated on an island at the confluence of the Wada-gawa and Kamazuka-gawa rivers — has become a key place to stay for pilgrims coming off the Kumano Kodo.
From the outside, it definitely isn’t “cake.” Even as you enter the lobby, you still feel like this might still be a school, right down to the long, wooden hallways and the metal wash basins outside of each room. But that’s where the similarities end. Stepping into our room after check in, I’m amazed to discover all the well-appointed, Japanese-style amenities — from sliding doors to tatami mats – that you might expect from a high-end country inn. Our dinner, served in the old cafeteria, is delicious and plentiful, with the usual variety of Japanese small dishes. And after dinner – a wonderful soak in a traditional onsen. Best of all, our stay at Shizen-no-ie is under $100/night!
“Is it guest house?” Why yes, yes it is.
(There’s an old Buddhist statement, “The world is not as it seems, nor is it otherwise.” I like this quote because it says to me that we should avoid taking the world at face value, believing our own stories about reality. In other words, the world is way deeper than the way we interpret it with our limited perspective. At the same time, the quote suggests something more: that maybe even the world itself is not real. Everything we see is an illusion… just phenomena arising from causes and conditions that have no substance at all. Pretty heady stuff! All this means, for me anyway, is that we should take a beat before we judge books (or people) by their cover. And maybe, just maybe, there’s a deeper reality to our interactions with others. Perhaps there’s no distance at all—we’re all just stardust mingling and interacting with other stardust.)