KIWI YAMABUSHI
Kia ora Koutou, I'm Tim Bunting, The Kiwi Yamabushi. I am a practicing Dewa Sanzan Yamabushi Japanese mountain ascetic (What's a Yamabushi?). I have been living in Yamagata, Tohoku, north Japan, since 2010. Since 2016, I have trained as a yamabushi under Master Fumihiro Hoshino through Daishobo pilgrim's lodge on Haguro-san, and through Dewa Sanzan Jinja. If you want to find out more about how you too can train in the ways of Shugendo, check out Yamabushido.jp (tell them I sent you).
In my spare time I write stories about the overlooked side of Japan, namely up here in the Tohoku region. I write a daily blog, have a newsletter with over 1,000 subscribers, have a YouTube channel also with over 1,000 subscribers, and am on most socials as @kiwiyamabushi.
I am currently on a mission to summit and document all 100 Famous Mountains of Yamagata.
I am available for online consultation, public speaking in both English and Japanese, and I am able to guide you on The Dewa Sanzan mountains by working through Yamabushido.jp or DewaSanzan.com. As a Master Yamabushi and the creator of Dewasanzan.com, I believe I am the most knowledgable native English speaker on these three mountains.
POPULAR ARTICLES
My newsletter articles are free to read on Substack for a week, but you can just get them sent to your email for free if you subscribe. After that, they are only available to paid subscribers. However, articles that get more than 1,000 reads I put here so everyone can enjoy them. All of the articles can be found here.
DAILY YAMABUSHI
Here are some of my Daily Yamabushi posts. Get more here.
The importance of learning vocabulary when studying another language is second to none. It simply must be done for there to be any possibility of success, and in this post I outline one very useful and very effective method for building your vocabulary quickly, but surely. When learning a second language it is important to …
The N1 is the highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). In my opinion the test is a waste of time because there is no assessment of productive skills, so you can't really call it a 'proficiency' test, however passing it looks really good on your CV and can help you get a …
Ok, so we've established that the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is the difference between what a learner already knows (their actual development level, developed "retrospectively"(Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994, p. 468)) and what they can do when assisted (the ZPD, developed prospectively (ibid)), and it is virtually impossible to discover the novice's ZPD without dialogic …
KIWI YAMABUSHI
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Sakata City, Yamagata, Japan
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All photos my own unless otherwise stated. Contact for more.