This is something I’ve wanted to go to see on each of our previous trips to Tohoku, but we never had time before. It’s a statue of Buddha, carved into a cliff face located a few kilometers out of Hiraizumi. It was on the way to Sendai, so we got to see it this time!
A row of gates leading through the trees to the cliff face.
We came to the temple first, and the boys and Seiju went up the steps first. You can see how big the rock face is compared to them.
As I followed them up the steps, I kept thinking, “I hope there isn’t another earthquake right about now…” On the other hand, it withstood the last big one, so it’s probably OK!
I still walked through the temple fairly fast!
Phew, safely out the other side!
Then just a little further on, the Buddha. He lost his body from the neck down in a cliff fall in the Meiji era so now he’s just a disembodied face floating in the rock. A bit creepy really.
Here’s a close up. The sculpture itself is many centuries old.
Looking back from the cliff to the temple.
There were lots of lovely woodland flowers including these primulas above and this huge pale purple thing below. We have similar white ones about a quarter of the size of these but I have no idea what they are called.
*Found what these flowers are – in English they are known as a Japanese Wood Poppy, and in Japanese, Shirane Aoi”.
Here’s the Wikipedia page on them.
Huge bamboo trees, with a bamboo shoot coming up in the foreground. This is all very normal for people in Honshu but it’s very exciting for Hokkaido people as we don’t get big bamboo like this, only the thin reedy stuff.
An elephant shaped tree root.
By this point, Harry was seriously fed up. He pointed out that he’s not very interested in history and there’d been an awful lot of it on this day. So we headed off to the expressway and Sendai.
The hotel was right in the middle of Sendai, and very conveniently there was a restaurant in the first floor, so we had dinner then went for a little walk up to the station and a big bookshop and then back for an early night, as we were all tired after the drive.
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