My wife and I decided to walk along the back roads on the north side of the main street, an area that I had not yet been in. On of the first things we saw was this rather in-congruent combination of a torii and a camper. When we got up closer, I started to take some pictures of the rather strange building behind the torii when we noticed a sign on the building stating that this was the office of a branch of the yakuza. I decided not to take pictures and to just keep walking. By the way, the rather Mexican looking building next door turned out to be a pizza restaurant.
The area was quite nice, lots of trees and fairly good houses.
We came upon and open lot with a small building at the back. It looked a bit like a temple, no torii so not a shrine.
I walked over to look at it and found that it contained a small altar
with a couple of Buddhist statues and lots of very fresh flowers. We
decided that it must be a family altar.
Up under the eaves there were photos of groups of people, reinforcing the idea that the altar was related to a family or some local organization.
A bit further down the road, a large well landscaped lot appeared to be a home. The name plate on the entrance post on the right says that the family name is Zenin. This is a very strange name. The first kanji refers to the Zen Sect of Buddhism and the second refers to administration, so the name was probably given to t he family the administered a Zen temple in the area. As we continued walking we found almost all of the homes in the area belonged to a family named Zenin. Very strange. As I will show you tomorrow, this mystery deepened when we found the temple.
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