Ian's photos 25

The same window (door?) had a large daruma with an offering of fruit. Daruma was an indian Buddhist who, according to legend, sat in meditation for so long that his legs fell off. In Japan these little, or sometimes quite large, statues usually only have one pupil painted into the eyes. The other is just plain white. When you want something, for example winning an election or passing an exam, ask daruma to help you. If you are successful, you reward him by painting in the other eye. His original name was Bodhidharma and he was the Indian who was credited with bringing Zen to China. If you are interested, there is a comprehensive article about him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhidharma
This is another example of the things that you can find if you have time to wander around the grounds. In summer, the sections of tree trunk in the foreground would probably be full of flowers. The structures in the background are the main hall and administrative buildings.
We left the temple and started down the mountain. We had a long way to go before reaching our night's lodging so we had to hurry. If it got dark, we would end up on mountain trails with no light at all. It was almost raining so at night there would be no light at all. As you can guess from the following pictures, the edge of the road just dropped off for 10s of meters, sometimes with slopes of 80 degrees or more. However, even without strong sunlight the scenery was wonderful so it was a nice, but tiring, walk.