On Friday, Sep 24, I decided to go for a long walk and after some thought settled on the Dou'unji Temple. The temple is about 3 kilometers north of my condo. I visited it once a couple of years ago and found it to be quite pleasant. The name is interesting cave cloud. It seems that the name is about 700 years old and refers to the fact that there are meditation caves carved into a rock cliff and the fact that in the past the area was frequently buried in fog or low clouds. The temple ground occupy a bowl-shape valley with only one narrow entrance. Until the last few decades it was far out in the countryside with nothing but woods around it. Now it is completely surrounded by housing developments, which generate enough heat that there are no longer clouds or fog.
Here I will follow my trip, including both my access route and the temple grounds. The first picture today is the view along the river as I started out. Most days I walk to the bridge and then turn left to go to Yaotome station, but that day I turned right. I would then follow that road until it ends in a t-intersection with Route 4, a bypass road that goes around Sendai on the east. You can see from the picture that the weather was not particularly good, but not bad. I carried a small folding umbrella, just in case.
I paid my respects to the river god at our local Shinto temple. The cosmos are flowering and the riverside path is quite pretty.
After I turned right, I could see all the way to the top of the low hill that I would have to crest.
This is another temple that is near the end of the road. I do not know why but this temple is a little forbidding. It does not seem to invite people to enter and stroll around the grounds. For this reason, I have never been inside the gate, although I have passed it many times.
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