On our third and last New Year in Japan, I was finally inspired, entirely by my friend Jessica, to do two seven lucky gods pilgrimages. If you would like some background on what this is, here is a wikipedia article about it. Basically, you travel around to seven shrines or temples, each of which represents one of seven characters. Three of these people come from Indian Hindu tradition, three from Chinese Buddhism and Taoism, and one is a native Japanese deity. This was so much fun! It was a perfect outing for me because 1) I love to collect things like stamps, 2) I love to go to all the shrines and temples (even though B says when you've seen one you've seen them all), and 3) it was great to spend time with my friend. This journal entry will talk about the Kamakura pilgrimage.
Jessica drove this time, as trains have been forbidden by base leadership due to the pandemic. We started at a temple I had never been to, Jochi-ji. As when I go in search of my normal goshuin stamps, it is fun to wander around and find where the stamp window is.
There was a fun tunnel up to the cemetery, where we saw the buckets that I believe are used by family members when washing their ancestors' grave stones.
I'm thinking a stone step just like this is a necessity when I'm building my own Japanese garden someday...
Our next stop was one of my favorite temples of any I've visited in Japan, Hase Dera. It has the prettiest gardens in my opinion. And is celebrating an anniversary this year!
Just in case you can't see what sort of anniversary, yes, that's right, this temple has been here since 721. No one does old like Japan...
From what I understand, Hase Dera temple was formed when a gigantic statue of the goddess Kanon, carved from a huge camphor tree, washed ashore at the beach near where the temple now sits, in yes, the year 721. So you can now see this goddess, here, for the last 1300 years. You aren't allowed to take pictures, but here she is courtesy of the internet. She is over nine meters (30 feet) tall. Absolutely beautiful. My friend hadn't ever been to Hase Dera! I felt terrible for not informing someone I know of this amazing place...
I always like looking at the ema, or prayer plaques.
I especially love the "I want to go tall!"
Hase Dera has loads of Jizo statues, but I LOVE this particular one. It has three! And I have three girls. I would love to have a tiny copy of this famous statue. And of course, since Kamakura is a huge tourist area, you would think it would be easy to find at the many gift shops around. But no. Everyone sells individual little jizo, but no replicas of this. But... Miss A had the marvelous idea of having B, who just got a 3d printer, to make me one! He was not keen on this idea at all. He has a no figurine rule for some reason... But he poked around a bit; because he said he did not have the training or ability to just pull a copy of this statue out of thin air to print; and he found some free software called meshroom. If you take lots of photos of an object from all angels, this software will track where the photos were taken from, and create a 3d model for you. He tried it on Flopsey, Miss M's beloved rabbit, and it worked great. So B told me on this trip, to take photos of my jizo, and he would see what he could do. But I ran into some problems. First, I didn't want to climb into the moss to take pictures. Second, I couldn't remember how to switch my camera's viewfinder to the big screen, so I could see what I was actually taking a picture of. Thus the slanty photo below. Third, there's a big wall drop off right behind the jizo, so how could I take pictures of them from the back? Fourth, it was too sunny, leading to strong shadows. So I gave up.
I don't know what this winter bloomer is, but it smells incredible.
We left Hase Dera and went to Goryo shrine, which was right next door. I had no idea it was even there. They had nice dogs.
It's always fun around Kamakura- one of the old ruling clans had as a symbol the triforce symbol from Legend of Zelda. Or, more properly, the extremely Japanese makers of Zelda used this old Kamakura symbol in their game. I always take some photos to show the girls, since they're big Zelda nerds.
We made our way around a few more shrines and temples in Kamakura proper.
Camellias are in full bloom now.
Biggest mask I've seen yet.
Then we went to the island of Enoshima for our last stamp.
Lots of cute cow stuff this year, because it is the cow's year.
Here is the finished board. It came with the colorful gods in the middle, and all the black ink and red stamps were done at the various temples and shrines we visited. It was so fun! The blank spot is because one temple was closed because of the virus. I thought it might be nice to have someone write our name in calligraphy in that space, and stamp it with our hanko.
A gorgeous view of Mt. Fuji from the bridge to Enoshima to end the day.
