Kate’s Quests

Saturday December 2nd, Shara and I went to Kamakura and Diabutsu to see the Great Buddha and later the Hase-Dera Temple. We took a TON of pictures, but I’ll just share my favorites. Anyway, we took the train to Kamakura and then hopped on the bus to go to Diabutsu. The bus lets you off and you have no idea just how close you are to the Buddha. It’s such a giant statue that you would think that it would be noticeable from the street, but it’s tucked away quietly behind a mass of trees. I have a lot of other pictures, but this one is my favorite.

The statue was cast in 1252. In 1498, a tidal wave swept the area and destroyed everything but the Buddha’s body. Then an earthquake hit the area in 1923 destroying the base, but again leaving the Buddha’s body intact. The base was repaired in 1925. The Buddha is hollow and you can go inside. For 10 yen (about a penny) you can stand in a very long line, squeeze up a very narrow staircase with people squeezing down past you to walk in a circle inside the shoulders (I think we were in the shoulders). Then you squeeze your way back down. You can feel the stone though and there is a BIG difference between the stone in the sunlight and the stone in the shade! After posing for about a hundred photos with Shara and wandering around the place for awhile we wandered down the street. We stopped at some stall and got a fried sweet potato. We had no idea what it was when we ordered it and had no idea as we were eating it, but it was quite tasty. Later at a restaurant we met up with a couple who spoke English and they explain to us what we had eaten. I guess the area is famous for their purple sweet potatoes. And believe me, it’s such a vibrant color purple, you’d think we were eating nuclear potatoes. You get the idea. We also stopped to get ice cream. Shara got a green tea flavored one and I think I had hibiscus. The flower was sitting next to the ice cream, so I can only assume. Maybe it was lavender? No idea. It was good though.

Then we ran into the Hase-Dera Temple. This is a temple with little carved Buddha’s EVERYWHERE. They are carved to honor the souls of fetuses that have died. The temple is dedicated to the eleven headed goddess Kannon. According to the pamphlet that I picked up, there is a legend attached to the Hasedera Temple. In 721, a Reverend made two statues of the eleven headed goddess from a holy camphor tree trunk. The statue made from the lower part of the tree was enshrined in Hasedera and the upper part was thrown into the sea with a prayer that it would one day reappear to save the people. Sixteen years later it washed up on shore on the Nagai beach (the one in my neighborhood) sending out rays of light as it did so. They transported it back to Kamakura and enshrined it.

I have a couple of shots that I love here. I love the prayers blowing in the wind. We had just walked up a long flight of stairs and this is what greeted us at the top. Then you continued on to the right and were able to see a lot more of the temple. I would have taken a lot more pictures, but many of the spaces are sacred. Not that the signs that said “No Pictures” stopped the Japanese from snapping photos, but I don’t want to be the ugly American. Especially in a place that sees their fair share of them. In one particular room was a turning scroll holder (or rinzo). This is where the important Buddhist sutras for the temple are kept. And it is said that by rotating the rinzo, one can earn the same merit as from reading all of the sutras. Of course I turned it. I can’t say that I felt much more knowledgeable, but hey…when in Rome.
And here’s two more pictures. Here are the two of us in front of the Temple. Shara is on the left, I am on the right and when the camera man turned around the other picture is of what we saw.