Ian and I decided that it was time for a break while we waited for the woman to finish the pages for our books, so we took out the bottles of sports drink that we had been carrying since Sendai Station and sat on the stairs. While we sat there relaxing, a number of people greeted us as they walked by on their way to placing flowers on graves in the graveyard further up the hill. We were a bit surprised by their lack of surprise at two foreigners sitting there sucking on bottles of sports drink and also by their friendliness. We had finished about half our drinks when the woman came out and brought us the book pages. We paid her the 300 yen each and she left. We settled down to finish our break. All of a sudden, the woman was there again. This time she had a packet of expensive cookies for each of us - as something to go with our drinks. We talked for a bit and then she returned to the residency. Ian and I got up and started to look around the area. The first thing we found was a bell tower.
Then off to the left we discovered a row of statues, all dressed in red with fresh flowers in front of them.
This statue represents a protector of children and the words on the post say to use the ladles and pour water over it to activate the protection.
A little further on, we found a small roofed shrine dedicated to infants. The first picture shows the inside and the second the view from the bottom of the stairs leading up to it.
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