Kintsugi (Episode 4): Life-Saving Advice From my Japanese Mother

In episode four, you'll follow along your own hero's journey, and we do a little recap and reflection on everybody that we've learned from, keeping in mind that everybody goes through the same types of growth just at different points in your life. Remember, Ram Dass says that we're all just walking each other home. We're all going to that same place in the end, and so we may as well lead with love and kindness and empathy and compassion, and truly do so in our walk every single day. I hope you find a place in your heart for kintsugi, share it with a friend, a loved one, and find a little bit more compassion and love and honor. We meet Shirahama-san, a Ohenro pilgrim in the Shikoku Mountains. We meet Shinichi Sasaki-san, a monk who also lives in the Shikoku Mountains, and we also meet a young skateboarder finding his way in Tokyo, and we follow my mother and I to say goodbye to my grandparents at their final resting place in Beppu, Kyushu, Southern Japan. My ancestors will always live on through Japan, but it's my job and your job as mixed kids, Americans, and people from different parts of the world to be a really good representation of where we come from. And remember that we all come from different places, but when we come together, we learn from each other, we see one another, when we listen and when we hear from one another, we can really learn. So at the end of this episode, your hero's journey, I hope that you find places to reflect and connect back to yourself, and know that you are just right where you're supposed to be. As you've seen through every episode, we've worked on health and wellness and taking great care of yourself. But it doesn't mean anything unless you give people an actual practice they can utilize in everyday life. Hello. Hello, good morning. Thank you. Hello, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. I'll explain the route we're going to take. We're going to walk on the Tamaga Pass. It's very tough, it's pretty hard. It's hard, it's very hard. It's okay. Let's pray. Thank you. Please come this way. This way. I think it's important to reflect after watching these last three episodes that we talk about actionable advice and ways that we can all practice to do the work and enrich ourselves back to real health. Stuff that we can do every day to heal and mend and grow. What can we do to better ourselves in real life? How can we get a hold of ourselves in reality? That's what I think is very important right now. The temples of Shikoku are a sacred place where we turn to for inspiration. And they're a place where we can all better connect to ourselves. How can we focus on doing the work? Or what can we look to as an example of doing the work? I bow to the Buddha, When we chant the sutras, the power comes back to us through the Buddha. That's one way to bring us back to our original state. When we were visiting the Shikoku shrines and temples, I met a monk named Shinichi Sasaki-san. He was at Arankuji Temple. It was so nice to meet him as he talked about why it was so important to stay healthy and to stay surrounded by greenery and to keep him feeling young at heart. Can you tell us a little bit about what do you do to practice kenkou to yasuragi in your everyday life? For me, staying healthy means staying in the temple and looking at the greenery and seeing the trees. That's how I feel at ease. Looking at the trees, looking at the moss, looking at the rocks, looking at the leaves, observing is the easiest way that you can actually take good care of yourself. We call this shinrin-ryoku in Japanese. It translates to forest bathing and just being one with the trees in nature, breathing in the oxygen and breathing out. One thing we have to remember is that taking care of yourself is the most important thing. It's called ki wo tsukete in Japanese. It's not a matter of being selfish. It's simply a matter of being very smart. Do your best little by little, little by little, slow, slow, slowly. For example, if you feel like this is too much for you, it's important to understand your limits. There are always points of struggle in everyone's life where you say, I'm done, I give up. It's totally normal. And it just means that you're in need of some sort of healing or sealing. One of the best things I recommend is to come and visit the temples of Shikoku, do a pilgrimage on your own and have a moment to yourself. Shikoku pilgrimage is an ancient practice that can still help us in modern day life. It's about 750 miles in total with 88 temples in one loop. It is said that you can finish between one month to three months depending on how you travel, by foot, by bus, by motorcycle. Whatever your heart desires is what you can do. Many people come to Shikoku and receive a lot of power. They get tired in their daily lives and become exhausted. But when they come to Shikoku, they get energy again. It depends on the person. It's a different way of receiving power, but everyone gets a lot of power and becomes energetic and then goes home. As you go around, you can have a lot of experiences. As you walk around, as you drive around, you can meet a lot of people. You can have that kind of time. Shikoku has so much to offer you and anybody who wants to become an Ohenro pilgrim can come visit. You can meet some incredible people along the way. One of the most amazing souls that we met on this trip was Shirahama-san. He filled us with joy and love. He was a former blue-collar worker who fled the city life. He said he remembered his grandmother praying so hard at the Buddhist altar that it changed his life so much that he became an Ohenro-san when he was 57 years old. How many times have you done the 88 temple pilgrimage? Over 300 times. What? Amazing! We've learned and grown with him. He had this spark in his spirit and a smile and a laugh that made every one of us feel like we were home. I could have been the biggest weirdo in front of him and he just laughed. In Japanese we have this saying, Dozo dozo. We can't forget that letting go and laughter and just straight up being silly is healing and having fun. It's also doing the work. We're not going off the rails right now. I am telling you to laugh more and to stop taking life so seriously. I could not forget laughing through those mountains. There are spirits that are alive that you can feel within yourself when you are doing the work and they run through you when you are out forest bathing and hiking selflessly and doing the right things. We're on set today in Nagasaki. Light number tres or sun. The crew enjoying. This is our life. It's the people you meet along your journey and it's the laughter inside of your spirit that will keep you going. Chukoku is an amazing place where we can experience nature just like our ancestors did thousands of years ago. Another incredible experience that's also ancient is matcha tea. It stands out as a tradition from thousands of years ago. We can still love and cherish this in our modern day culture as well. I had the honor to travel to Uji the sacred mecca of matcha. Umami like a grass. Thank you. Forty hundred years. When I was a kid matcha was a tradition that I loved. It's my absolute pleasure to learn from the farmers the soil, the ground, the roots where we come from is who we are. And that's what I love sharing about Japan whether it's the old or the new. As we move into the Tokyo 2021 Olympics we have all gone through a tremendous amount of change and struggle. And the one thing that brings the world together in unification every few years is always the Olympics. I feel grateful to be a girl chosen to do dual coverage of the Olympics for both the U.S. and Japan. In Tokyo we meet our new friend Montero who is a really epic skateboarder. He was one of the young gunners that we got to meet and seeing his perspective was something special. Do you think that Tokyo skate culture will eventually become more accepted in society or is it like more of a rebellious thing? I don't know. The cool thing I love about Japan is that we celebrate our traditions but we really welcome the new. So are there certain traditions about Japan that you love? Watch your head. I pay a huge tribute to all of the Kumai family artists. Jun Kumai. Kyoko Kumai. Miho Kumai. Jennifer Kumai. Learn about where you come from and go and pay respect to your elders and those who've passed and honor them. Keep doing all the things that make you happy. Especially and certainly when nobody is watching. As I continue to study my ancestors' practices in Japan I realize the idea of a perfect life, a perfect relationship, a perfect world. They are all transient and they don't really exist. After enduring fleeting pain as we all do we can practice to find acceptance of things as they are. As a journalist, as a messenger, as a bridge my job is to get you better information along the way and I hope that you can take from this something beautiful. All of the things that you saw in these last four episodes are so important to put into action and practice. Setting an example, constantly learning I found the most knowledge in the monks, in the elderly in those who survived war. I found it in my own mother's eyes and her wisdom. Don't forget where you are from. It's very important. I've learned from my grandpa that you can leave a lasting legacy that people can admire and adore for years after you pass away. I learned from my friend Reverend Takafumi to embrace our flaws, our cracks our trauma. You're a human being, I'm not perfect. You accept it and then be curious about it. Then you can actually bring yourself inner peace. I learned so much from the Nagasaki survivors more than anyone else. The most special thing in the world is sitting down with another individual and hearing their story. Experiencing life through another culture is the most beautiful way for you to open your mind to gratitude and to better mindfulness. I often was very confused growing up as a mixed kid because I didn't really understand where my place in the world was. After everything that we've learned in this series after growth and healing and that burden of feeling broken, my whole life evolved into my greatest gift. I'm humbled to share it with you and the world. Each of us is on a beautiful journey and we've all come from broken places. Once you start doing the work, you can put those pieces back together and start to see the gold. And that truly is Kintsugi. After almost a decade of working on this Kintsugi brand, I really hope that you take these pieces and put them back together with your own life. I'm always thinking about how it can be a better service to all of you. If you like this series, give us a follow at CandiceKumai on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and also check out my newsletter. Sign up and listen to my podcast Wabi Sabi. Pick up one of my many books between Clean Green Eats, Clean Green Drinks, Kintsugi Wellness. There are more. Spirited, Unaudible, Cook Yourself Sexy, Pretty Delicious. They're all really great books, but I would love for you to support our work in any way you can so that we can keep going and keep continuing the legacy in sharing love and honor, culture and heritage wherever we go. Thank you for watching. Kore kara yoroshiku onegai shimasu.