Toshoji

 I passed through the graveyard and found some roads on the other side. I could not tell whether the building were still part of Komyoji or the next temple in the line, Toshoji.

 I finally reached what appeared to be the main building of Toshoji, which by the way means the prospering East temple.

 This stele seemed to be part of Toshoji

 At last a gate that was obviously the official entrance to Toshoji. As I understand it the larger, main gate is for religious visitor and the smaller door on the right is for people with business at the temple, tradesmen, delivery people, etc.

 My guess was confirmed on the other side of the gate, where I found a sign with the temple name written on it.

There are a number of styles for writing kanji. It is sort of like printing and long hand in English. This is called grass writing, but I can not remember the actual term in Japanese. Much of the calligraphy that we see is written in this style. It is flowing and often very artistic, however, even Japanese sometimes can not understand it since it is no longer used in daily life. I believe that the light blue character on the right is the same as the top one in the above picture and the light blue character in the middle of the sign is the same as the middle one above. The line of writing on the left is completely opaque to me. Even though I usually can not read them I like these wooden signs with the characters carved into them.