Unhindered by the relative flatness of the sea, the wind was hurling snow – it came horizontally, stinging whatever side of my face I pressed toward it. I almost didn’t get on the bus. Almost gave up and sought a warm hotel.

Nevertheless, I left Sakata… onward to , a collection of three holy mountains in prefecture. My intention was to see the , a remnant priesthood of primordial Shintoism. While they have a bastion in the former capital of Kyoto, their other base of influence derives from the sacredness of these triple peaks. Almost destroyed by the ultra-nationalism engendered by the Japanese government of the early 1900s because they weren’t “true” Shinto, remain rare.

The long drawing attraction of the resides in their legendary aestheticism – sitting under icy alpine waterfalls and other acts of self-deprivation lead them on a holier life. I wanted to see this.

I got off the bus at Haguro Village, on the shoulder of the mount of the same name, the northernmost of the sacred three. I wasn’t going to climb to the top that evening – not with two meters of snow to walk over. But, where to stay? I meandered over to what looked like the bus "station" of Haguro and went in.

They were already drunk. "Excuse me, is there a hotel around?" A hotel? Oh yes… ha ha ha… four men and a woman decked in lay-person clerical robes sat about bantering with each other in a dialect of Japanese I had no clue about. They offered me – no thanks. "Don’t worry," the woman said.

She was nice. Friendly face, long and graying hair.

We got in a taxi. We went to a party. Many priests were there. They were drunk.

It turned out to be the new year’s party popular among any in-group of Japanese. Most wore the same lay-robes, dark blue garments that sported various in white. And they took turns feeding me and attempting to pour alcohol in my glass and conversing with the serendipitously at the head of the knee-high table. I talked with the über-monk, an old man with a real robe and many lines in his face. He was happy, and everybody at that gathering was his inferior, he informed me. Very happy.

One man other than myself also wasn’t drinking. He seemed conscientious, leaping to fill anybody’s glass when it neared empty, and his head mirrored mine – clean shaven (later they confided that when I first walked in, they thought another priest had come to join them). His full set of robes however set him apart from most of the rest. And this man drove me "home" to .

The temple has a history of 1400 years, although the original building disappeared in landslide or fire, not an uncommon fate for many Japanese structures. Blood can weather fire and mountain, though: my friend, the priest was descended from the original monks of the temple.

Nevertheless, is old, musty, and reminiscent of ancestors outliving their time to haunt and roam the present.

A blue plastic tarp covered most of the exterior, its striking color offset by head-high wet snow for which is famous. Why tarp? Because without it the mountainous wind would have ripped through the layers of paper that served as "walls" between the outside and places like my room that night. Icicles hung from the soap dish. Localized gas heaters warmed a room or two. I renewed my promise never to be cold again that winter.

The priest lived there. And throughout the time I stayed at , I never saw him trade his monkly robes for something warmer. In the sub-zero hallways, outside amidst blizzarding snow, under the high roof of the – the latter while chanting an invocation for me that included my name but otherwise was unintelligible to my ear – all this time he was, if not warm, then affecting the appearance of a man totally accustomed to living in an unheated abode. Let me summarize: my friend wasn’t sitting under icy waterfalls in meditation; he was guiding me around, driving cars, making dinner aesthetically.

Two temples, and her sister that I visited the next morning, honor Yudano-san, the southernmost of the Holy Three. In the past, Yudano was so sacred that to speak of it was taboo… a mountain so eminent it did not exist. The priest also showed me the viewing room from which women could witness Yudano’s summit from afar – so "holy" half of humanity was barred from ascending its slopes, at least until the present.

The monk lived there, even though his wife and son stayed in Sakata on the plain below; another "holy man" (?) also resided there; and a kind old Mama-san came by daily to fix meals. is capable of serving as a shokubo, temple lodging, but I was the only visitor that night. In the morning the woman with the long, graying hair appeared. "Okaa-chan," I called her.

The priest gave me a tour of the arctic in the morn. By the end I was shivering uncontrollably; he elaborated patiently in the robes he wore everywhere.

The main altar area was "typical" Buddhist – too ornate to describe piece-by-piece. Gold, gold, gold, statuary of Siddhartha and retinue, drums, incense urns… and an atypical recess in the floor from which a certain sculpture emerged only during the Year of the Dragon (I think).

Dominating the ceiling were massive beams and paintings so long that, for example, a pair of praying and weathered hands appeared alternatively elongated or stunted, depending on from which side I viewed the illusion.

And on the hall left of the hands sat a glass case raised on a dais. A curtain was over it, incense burners in front. The priest troublesomely raised the drape, as he did every morning. Inside was a shriveled dead man, "Iron-Gate-Sea." I had slept in that temple the night before.

Turning themselves into living Buddhas had been a popular thing for ascetics in Japan until recently when the Meiji government started to discourage the practice.

In this case, had always wanted to be the priest of . He died 180 years ago at the age of 62, though the reason for the preservation was to transubstantiate himself into a living Buddha. Monks desiring this Nirvana dine in their last days on a special diet – sometimes of only rudimentarily nutritious seeds, sometimes just water and salt, sometimes lacquer. The purpose of this is to wash out the physical impurities and allows the organs to remain in the body. As my priest explained, the Egyptians removed the soft organs of the body, placing them in urns for later use (by the dead). Buddhists however, espouse bodily wholeness; removing organs after death would probably reverse any sacrifices made during life (it wasn’t until recently that organ transplants were legalized in Japan). The intention was to remain intact (and escape decay).

Despite this precept, was missing an eye. At one point in his life he had contracted a serious illness, and receiving a vision that if he threw his eye in a river he would heal, the monk plucked it from his head, and the sickness left. I was told that in the last years of his life, he made the four-hour journey to Yudano-san thrice a day, an impossible task for me (even once) that winter. And on the last day, weakening as a result of his special diet, "Iron-Gate-Sea" announced he would die. Devotees collected in the sanctuary as he sat praying by the altar. He expired, and his gray body with its tight skin still sits slightly bowed yet meditating in a glass case in .

I was taken to the sister temple, nearby. A large man in elaborate white robes swatted ritualistically at me with a holy staff on the end of which were hundred of paper strips – rather a large pom-pom – and boomed at me the history of the temple and showed me their own living Buddha, who had taken the path of salt and water, eventually dying in a cave. His parishioners had come every day to the cave’s mouth to see if he was all right. Initially, he answered with his voice. Eventually, lacking strength, he replied by intoning a note on his bowl with a rod. Finally, he didn’t answer. He sits, having died over 150 years ago at age 92, sans teeth and beard and hair, though the latter two disappeared afterward on account of mice – thus the glass case. His hands hang down on his lap, lax in death, now frozen.

I did get to , the only summit open in winter, by bus. I saw the bearing their conch shells on which they croon long, low notes. And I saw their shrine, a heated, carpeted center complete with gift shop and attractive sales clerks. Their main hall was freezing, but I know who the ascetic are. Not me, not them.

Oh yes – upon leaving, one of the priests from the party the day before handed me an envelope on behalf of "Okaa-chan." It contained twenty thousand yen. I didn’t want it; I really didn’t want it. They had been so kind.