On our way back from Osorezan, we decided to follow up on a strange rumour that we'd heard amongst Sendai ALTs -- that the body of Jesus Christ was buried somewhere in Aomori.
The story goes as follows: in 1935, some scriptures were discovered in Shingo, Aomori, which were supposedly signed by Jesus himself. The scriptures said that, at the age of 21, Jesus came to Japan to study religion for 12 years. After returning to Judea and doing all of that well known Bible stuff, he switched places with his younger brother, who did him quite the fraternal favour by being crucified in Jesus' place.
JC then wandered the globe, apparently visiting Siberia and Alaska before settling in Shingo, where he married a Japanese woman, had three daughters, and died at the ripe old age of 106.
Of course! And we saw it. A couple of burial mounds with crosses above them, one containing the body of Christ, one a memorial to his brother.
The museum at the site had some very old, slightly frightening dummies made up to look like Jesus and his family.
There are several other supposed proofs that Jesus lived and died here, including the tradition of painting a cross on the foreheads of newborn babies, the existence of a local folk song made up of gibberish that sounds faintly Hebrew-ish, and the seal of the area being a star a little bit similar to the Star of David.
Of course, no original copy of the scriptures is known to exist now. And should we skip over the theory that the mayor of Shingo was looking for a way to boost interest in his town at the time of the documents' discovery? Still, it was an interesting diversion on our trip home, and hey, it did get us to visit Shingo.
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