My Japan Adventure18829
 The Fifth Golden Girl
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| This is a fantastic thread! Sounds like you are having such a wonderful time! So happy for you and thanks for sharing with us! | ||
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 Where's his Bat-package?
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Quote:Originally Posted by Nearmint67 I definitely plan on getting a goshuin from Mio-jinja, the rabbit shrine. I understand it has a bunny stamp.  |
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| @Nearmint67 The way the taxis just blaze through those tiny roads, it's a wonder there are any people left! |
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Quote:Originally Posted by OGJackster Those places look gorgeous! Wow! Taipei is a place on the bucket list for me! |
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Byrdibyrd private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by sborock It's my pleasure. I often travel with a friend but this time I'm flying solo. Posting here on the forum is like having my friends with me on my journey. I love  it! |
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 -Our Odin-Rest in Peace |
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@Byrdibyrd I saw your comment in the pets thread. Have you ever gone to a cat cafe? It looks like they have several you can visit when you go back to Tokyo. |
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Byrdibyrd private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Jesse_O I have been to a couple cat cafes. One in Kyoto and one in Fukuoka. They are nice to visit. Happy kitties that like socializing and are very well cared for.  They're very popular in Japan with people who want a pet but can't have one due to rental restrictions. I've also been seeing more dog cafes lately, too. |
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 It gets old smelling it everytime I go outside my door.
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| @Byrdibyrd Have a great day. Look forward to seeing what you show us next. I will check back in a bit. Stay safe.... | ||
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I have a lovely iced cafe latte to start my day. It's also great with an OTC analgesic because my feet still hate me, just not quite as much as yesterday.   |
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| Post 109 • IP flag post | ||
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On a train headed to Kyōto now. When I get there I'll transfer to a train to take me toward Lake Biwa. Then there will be a third train to get me 'near' Mii-dera Temple. Yes, transfers and 'near', but it won't be anywhere close to how troublesome it was yesterday. Mii-dera is not as far out in the hinterlands as Taima-dera is.  |
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This is my lovely train to Ōtsukyō. From Ōtsukyō, I will take a local train to Mii-dera Station. |
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| Post 111 • IP flag post | ||
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It gets old smelling it everytime I go outside my door.
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Nearmint67 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @Byrdibyrd Very colorful.. Looks like wearing masks is still in place for some. Some day that will end. | ||
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 Cover, 8 pages before the staples, 8 pages after, back cover.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Byrdibyrd My wife went to an owl cafe in Japan. Was very cool. |
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Quote:Originally Posted by Nearmint67 Yes, lots of masking, but I was expecting it so it's okay. |
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Quote:Originally Posted by MrNotSoNice There's an owl cafe in Kyōto that a friend of mine went to. I'm super tempted, but I may wait until I can go with my usual traveling companion. |
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Definitely had some fall colour left at Mii-dera, too. The five-coloured banner shows the temple is holding a special event or something along those lines. |
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| I visited my rabbit shrine! Got bunny lantern?  |
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Today is clearly the day of pretty trains. Here's my train back to Ōsaka: Even the interior is adorable.  |
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And for dinner I had a delicious plate of beef curry. It cost about US $7.50 and looked perfect before I dug in without taking a photo first. 🤤 |
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| The primary focus of today's adventure was Mii-dera Temple in Shiga prefecture. The temple has quite a history and in at least one way it is rare in the extreme in that it got Nobunaga'd and is still standing (I'll explain in a bit). Mii-dera was founded in the late 7th century, not long after Taima-dera, making it another one of the oldest extant temples in Japan. It was founded by Emperor Tenmu, whose brother, Emperor Tenji had passed away, and Tenmu bumped off Tenji's son in order to secure the throne for himself. In honour of his late brother, Tenmu founded this temple. I'm sure the late Emperor Tenji's spirit was thrilled by the outpouring of filial piety. Anyway, the temple belonged to the Tendai sect of esoteric Buddhism, just like its sister temple, Enryaku-ji on Mt. Hiei. Naturally, like sisters, the relationship between the two was not always the best, in fact, it was pretty dire. In the 10th century, they even developed into two separate sects of Tendai. Mii-dera became the head temple of the Jimon sect and Enryaku-ji became the head temple of the Sanmon sect. There are really no significant differences between the two sects aside from the geographic location of the two temples: Enryaku-ji at the summit of the mountain and Mii-dera at its base. The simple truth is that the two didn't want to play nice together. Both temples developed a non-trivial amount of military might, and things just got worse. The warrior monks of Mii-dera and the warrior monks of Mt. Hiei chose sides against each other at nearly every opportunity, only choosing to ally themselves together on a very few occasions. This nonsense kept going until the late 16th century, when warlord Oda Nobunaga had decided enough was enough. It was the warrior monks of Mt. Hiei who really pissed him off by granting sanctuary to his enemies and rivals. In response, Nobunaga marched his army of samurai up the mountain - straight through Mii-dera in the process, destroying it, too - and burned Enryaku-ji to the ground, killing everyone he could find. Enryaku-ji was obliterated and Nobunaga had slaughtered over 10,000 people in order to make sure it stayed that way. Mii-dera was partially destroyed, but to this day, it still stands, making it one of the very few places that Nobunaga steamrolled but did not obliterate. Enryaku-ji, on the other hand, got Nobunaga'd completely. Only two buildings out of over 100 survived (I've been to both of them). The temple has since been re-built and still occupies the summit of Mt. Hiei, but it's just not the same. Anyway, I started my day by taking a train to Kyōto and from there to Mii-dera Station (couple transfers in there, but no need to get technical). Like Taima-dera yesterday, Mii-dera is not all that close to the station that bears its name, but it's still maybe half the distance as Taima-dera is from its station. One strike against Mii-dera, though, is that a lot of that distance is uphill. *sigh* Once I reached Mii-dera, I took a quick detour and went to Nagara-jinja Shrine. The shrine is the protective shrine of the mountain that Mii-dera is on. The shrine also has as a sub-shrine Umagami-jinja ('Horse God Shrine'). I was curious as to what a horse shrine was like a-a-and... it's just a little shrine, basically. The goshuin, however, is far horsier.  Sadly, photos of Nagara-jinja and its sub-shrine will not be posted because the grounds of the shrine are used as a play area for a local daycare center, and I will not be posting photos of little kids who are not mine. Just NO. On to Mii-dera. Thanks to the location of Nagara-jinja, I wound up at the southern end of Mii-dera, which put me closest to its Kannon-dō Hall. That's the hall that is at the highest point on the grounds of the temple, which meant that as soon as I paid my admission fee, I got to climb a Great. Big. Long. Torturous. Stairway. It sucked, but it was worth it once I got there. Despite some trees in the way, the view of the city of Otsu and Lake Biwa beyond that is pretty spectacular.  The Kannon-dō itself is a nice temple building and it houses a very important icon of Kannon. This Kannon is a stop on the Saigoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage, the oldest pilgrimage in Japan, founded 1300 years ago by a monk named Tokudō who became ill and met Enma Daiō in a fever dream. Enma said he would spare Tokudō's life, but in return, he had to found a pilgrimage to 33 different temples dedicated to Kannon. Tokudō complied and the Saigoku 33 Kannon became Japan's first Buddhist pilgrimage. This is the Kannon-dō Hall:  I next went to the little Bishamon-dō Hall, a very small hall that has recently been restored. It's really very beautiful and the details are exquisite.   I also visited the Bimyō-ji sub-temple, which is very well-known for housing Yellow Fudō, an icon painted on a scroll that is considered so powerful that no one has even been permitted to see it since it was originally painted in the 12th century. A copy of it was painted and even that is too powerful to be revealed to the public, and it's housed in the Manshu-in Temple in Kyōto. Next I checked out the lovely 3-storey pagoda.  Then I went to the Spirit Bell Hall, which has what's left of a very famous temple bell. The bell was part of one of the most famous tales of the rivalries between Mii-dera and Enryaku-ji. In one of the raids by the warrior monks of Enryaku-ji on Mii-dera, one of Enryaku-ji's most famous monks, Musashibō Benkei, stole Mii-dera's temple bell and dragged it back up Mt. Hiei with him, which was no mean feat given the size and weight of a cast iron temple bell (they can be Really Freakin' BIG). Once on the mountain, though, the bell began to toll on its own. This was a huge deal, because temple bells, unlike church bells, don't have a clapper to make the bell ring. Temple bells are struck from outside by a completely separate implement. Believing the bell mourned for the loss of its home, Benkei returned the bell to Mii-dera. Since then, the bell has had spiritual power. Next was the temple's main hall, which had the five-coloured banner up, meaning there was an event of some kind happening.  As it ends up, the Saigoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage that I mentioned above has been inducted into Japan Heritage and is now designated a vital part of Japanese culture and tradition. The banners were up because the main hall had portions of its interior open to the public that are usually closed. I was able to go behind the main altar with its principal icon of Miroku/Maitreya and see a number of other icons that are rarely displayed. I finally left Mii-dera and on the way out I stopped at neighbouring Mio-jinja shrine, which is a rabbit shrine. I really wanted to go because (a) how could I resist a rabbit shrine? and (b) I was born in the Year of the Rabbit. Unlike poor Umagami-jinja, Mio-jinja actually has rabbits.  It also has a rabbit on its goshuin:  After Mio-jinja, I headed back to Kyōto, one of my favourite places, and had dinner before going back to my hotel. Tomorrow I plan to head out to Nagoya and see about some other places associated with historical figures, and maybe, possibly some castle remains. |
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It gets old smelling it everytime I go outside my door.
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| @Byrdibyrd "Mio-jinja actually has rabbits." I had envisioned hundreds of rabbits hopping around freely grazing in a pasture surrounding the shrine... Silly wabbit.. lol... | ||
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 Collector
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Quote:Originally Posted by Byrdibyrd I lived there for a while. |
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 Forum Crier
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Quote:Originally Posted by dfoster43 My wife was a surrogate mother for a couple from there. |
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Where's his Bat-package?
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Byrdibyrd private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I'm waiting on my bullet train to Nagoya now. We'll see if I get to purify myself in Hideyoshi's winky water today! |
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Not a bad view from my train this morning. |
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| Post 125 • IP flag post | ||
 I have a problem with fattening women up.
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| For some reason, I didn't think Japan had any real farm land. Go figure. Is there any pictures of bullet train? Is it ultra modern looking? |
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Here's an interior shot from the bullet train I'm on right now. Very modern and comfortable. A really nice way to travel. As for farmland, if there's flatness, it's usually farmland or city. There's only so much flatness that hasn't been developed in one way or another. |
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I have a problem with fattening women up.
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| Nifty Kinda looks like a cross between an airplane and star trek. |
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| It really does. Very similar to an airplane interior, but with legroom and seats not made only for very trim people. | ||
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Very pleasant park here. Never been to this part of Nagoya before.  |
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