Cell phone problems gone

I discovered why I was unable to get email to my home account. My computer thought that the pictures were spam, pictures of real imitation watches or something. Anyway, I can now show you the photos from our walk in the rain on Sunday.

This first picture is the Tatekoshi Shrine. The doors are always (except at special festival times) closed so it is not possible to know what the manifestation of the god looks like. More often than not, the idol is a mirror, reflecting the sun (if there were any). The temple is off to the right. Actually the small building on the right is part of the temple and is the building that Kukai (Kobo Daishi's Buddhist name while alive) is said to have built. Of course, it is more than 1,200 years old so it have been rebuild any number of times.
The second picture shows Ian in his bright red Got-Tex rain suit returning from reading the signs in front of the buildings. The explain about Kukai's connections and the rest of the history of the temple.

It is still raining hard at this point. You can see the standing puddles of water just on the other side of the paved path.

The colored flags were left over from the festival that they held the previous weekend. Some of the workmen were still there taking down the temporary stage and other structures. They got all excited when they saw us. Their trucks were parked off to the right in front of the main temple buildings. When we moved over to that area one of the workmen was still there and greeted us. He seemed happy to discover that we spoke Japanese, but left quickly to start work.

The final picture was taken in front of the main temple buildings, which you can just see in the background. This statue shows Kukai as he supposedly looked as he traveled around this area setting up temples. According to the signs, one of the things that he did was to carve a statue of Buddha for each new temple.