More fun in Shiga....
I did promise more, whether you like it or not.... *grin*
Ah yes, the cave. It was cool, in several ways. After that, we drove the long and widing road out to Taga town, where The Boyfriend used to work. He wanted to show me a little local flavor - a small museum with an elephant skeleton that was uncovered in the area. Yeah, I was kind of surprised, too. I was a little more surprised by this, though:
It's not the sort of thing you would expect to find in rural Japan. The whole exhibit was chainsaw art, and most of the other pieces were animals and such. A few others had writing on them, but they were more of the "We love the forest" type. So I was compelled to take a picture.
The rest of the museum was basically a science museum, with tons of insects, stones and fossils. It was like being in World of Science all over again, but without the Beanie Babies.
*shudder*
From there, the rest of the afternoon was temple-riffic. We went to Tagataisha, which is apparantly a shrine for couples, though I didn't see anything too obviously couply there. I got a whole mess of pictures....
I have a thing for lanterns, it seems....
I really like this shot.....
Sitting on the bridge.... You might notice the height of the bridge. It's a nasty little slope, over which people were apparantly made to carry o-mikoshi (portable shrines) during festivals. These things are heavy, requiring a dozen men to carry. I can only think it was designed bya sadist....
Here - a better view of the side of the bridge.
And a shot of me, off-center. Which makes it artsy.
Here's a wide view of the temple....
We then headed over to Saimyouji, which was founded in 834, which hurts my brain. We got to tour the main temple hall, guided (in Japanese, naturally) by one of the temple workers. Nice guy, but for some reason, he thought I was Italian. Or French. I've been mistaken for a few nationalities in my time, but my distinct lack of swarth tends to eliminate the more Mediterranian ones. Anyway, it was a lovely place, with a nice garden....
A couple of scary statues, not behind chicken-wire, as they usually are....
A pagoda - and if anyone can tell me why my camera can't cope with overcast skies, I'll be your best friend fore.... well, for a while.
All in all, a very nice place.
From there, we went to Kongourinji, a temple which was founded in 741, which makes my head hurt even more. It was coming up on closing time, so we had to hustle. Up about a billion stairs.... Still, it was cooling down, and my boyfriend distracted all the mosquitos, so I did okay.
The most notable feature of the temple were the hundreds and hundreds of Jizo statues....
Big and small....
Now, the rows upon rows of little statues really put me in mind of military formation. Thus, I called upon them to arise and fight for me....
Of course, it turned out I was being really, really tacky. The thousands of little statues are for the souls of miscarried and aborted children. It was kind of a wierd thing, seeing all of them lined up like that. All I could think was that there are groups in the US that would wet themselves for something like this - a commemoration of the unborn. But on the heels of that thought came another one - whatever they did would be a political statement and nothing else. There would be no spiritual aspect of it, no search for peace of mind. It would be all politics and nothing else. It would be sickening, rather than contemplative and peaceful, which is what Kongourinji was.
Still, "Rise my army of neverborn!" has a certain Evil Overlord feel to it....
At the top of the hill was a main hall, almost identical in construction to the one at Saimyoji. Without the tour guide with Europe on the mind. Lovely Buddha statues, scrollwork, paintings..... And old. Did I mention old?
Time wore on. I had forgotten to wind my watch, so it was 4:30 for about an hour and a half. Before we left, though, we saw the bell....
Now I've always loved the deep sound of the temple bells in Japan. These things ring for a minute and a half after you hit 'em, and they have a low, steady sound that relaxes me to no end.... So I looked all over the internet for an audio file, with no success. Here, I had a chance to make my own. Using the video feature of my digicam, my boyfriend recorded me hitting the bell. We let it ring for a while, and lost battery power after about 17 seconds. Still, as Zorg said, "More than I need."
I came home, fired up Audacity, and peeled off a sound recording. Here it is, for your listening enjoyment....
Kongourin-ji bell (mp3)
Kongourin-ji bell (wav)
I use it as my statrtup and shutdown sounds. Seriously, listen to them. (Right-click and "Save target as...." and all that)
Anyway, at that point the sun was setting and the temple folks wanted to close up, so we headed back to Otsu city and had dinner. And then I hopped the train home.
Nice weekend, good pictures, and I got my bell sound. This could be a whole new little hobby for me - collecting the sounds of temple bells. Unfortunately, most places won't let you ring them except on special occasions, so I'll just have to catch what I can. I would love to get is the bell at Chion-in: 74 tons, with a striker the size of an oak tree that requires 17 monks to wield. I can only get it on New Year's Eve, though, and the crowd noise would screw things up. Dammit.....
There you go. I hope the wait was worth it....
Ah yes, the cave. It was cool, in several ways. After that, we drove the long and widing road out to Taga town, where The Boyfriend used to work. He wanted to show me a little local flavor - a small museum with an elephant skeleton that was uncovered in the area. Yeah, I was kind of surprised, too. I was a little more surprised by this, though:
It's not the sort of thing you would expect to find in rural Japan. The whole exhibit was chainsaw art, and most of the other pieces were animals and such. A few others had writing on them, but they were more of the "We love the forest" type. So I was compelled to take a picture.
The rest of the museum was basically a science museum, with tons of insects, stones and fossils. It was like being in World of Science all over again, but without the Beanie Babies.
*shudder*
From there, the rest of the afternoon was temple-riffic. We went to Tagataisha, which is apparantly a shrine for couples, though I didn't see anything too obviously couply there. I got a whole mess of pictures....
I have a thing for lanterns, it seems....
I really like this shot.....
Sitting on the bridge.... You might notice the height of the bridge. It's a nasty little slope, over which people were apparantly made to carry o-mikoshi (portable shrines) during festivals. These things are heavy, requiring a dozen men to carry. I can only think it was designed bya sadist....
Here - a better view of the side of the bridge.
And a shot of me, off-center. Which makes it artsy.
Here's a wide view of the temple....
We then headed over to Saimyouji, which was founded in 834, which hurts my brain. We got to tour the main temple hall, guided (in Japanese, naturally) by one of the temple workers. Nice guy, but for some reason, he thought I was Italian. Or French. I've been mistaken for a few nationalities in my time, but my distinct lack of swarth tends to eliminate the more Mediterranian ones. Anyway, it was a lovely place, with a nice garden....
A couple of scary statues, not behind chicken-wire, as they usually are....
A pagoda - and if anyone can tell me why my camera can't cope with overcast skies, I'll be your best friend fore.... well, for a while.
All in all, a very nice place.
From there, we went to Kongourinji, a temple which was founded in 741, which makes my head hurt even more. It was coming up on closing time, so we had to hustle. Up about a billion stairs.... Still, it was cooling down, and my boyfriend distracted all the mosquitos, so I did okay.
The most notable feature of the temple were the hundreds and hundreds of Jizo statues....
Big and small....
Now, the rows upon rows of little statues really put me in mind of military formation. Thus, I called upon them to arise and fight for me....
Of course, it turned out I was being really, really tacky. The thousands of little statues are for the souls of miscarried and aborted children. It was kind of a wierd thing, seeing all of them lined up like that. All I could think was that there are groups in the US that would wet themselves for something like this - a commemoration of the unborn. But on the heels of that thought came another one - whatever they did would be a political statement and nothing else. There would be no spiritual aspect of it, no search for peace of mind. It would be all politics and nothing else. It would be sickening, rather than contemplative and peaceful, which is what Kongourinji was.
Still, "Rise my army of neverborn!" has a certain Evil Overlord feel to it....
At the top of the hill was a main hall, almost identical in construction to the one at Saimyoji. Without the tour guide with Europe on the mind. Lovely Buddha statues, scrollwork, paintings..... And old. Did I mention old?
Time wore on. I had forgotten to wind my watch, so it was 4:30 for about an hour and a half. Before we left, though, we saw the bell....
Now I've always loved the deep sound of the temple bells in Japan. These things ring for a minute and a half after you hit 'em, and they have a low, steady sound that relaxes me to no end.... So I looked all over the internet for an audio file, with no success. Here, I had a chance to make my own. Using the video feature of my digicam, my boyfriend recorded me hitting the bell. We let it ring for a while, and lost battery power after about 17 seconds. Still, as Zorg said, "More than I need."
I came home, fired up Audacity, and peeled off a sound recording. Here it is, for your listening enjoyment....
Kongourin-ji bell (mp3)
Kongourin-ji bell (wav)
I use it as my statrtup and shutdown sounds. Seriously, listen to them. (Right-click and "Save target as...." and all that)
Anyway, at that point the sun was setting and the temple folks wanted to close up, so we headed back to Otsu city and had dinner. And then I hopped the train home.
Nice weekend, good pictures, and I got my bell sound. This could be a whole new little hobby for me - collecting the sounds of temple bells. Unfortunately, most places won't let you ring them except on special occasions, so I'll just have to catch what I can. I would love to get is the bell at Chion-in: 74 tons, with a striker the size of an oak tree that requires 17 monks to wield. I can only get it on New Year's Eve, though, and the crowd noise would screw things up. Dammit.....
There you go. I hope the wait was worth it....