Hachiman Jingu

 Part way up the main stairs, there was a small shrine off to the side.

 A very modern looking lamp. I assume that this is a new moon.

 At the top of the stairs, there was another large torii.

 This building looked like it might be used for meetings of some sort and maybe storage.

 This was also off to the side. There were good luck charms and fortunes for sale. At the ends there was a place to hang little boards on which you write you wishes.

This is the main shrine. A few years ago it was refurbished so all the gold is very bright and shiny. There are three ropes with bells so that during the busy times, particularly around New Years, people can come to greet the gods without having to wait so long.

The market and then on to Hachiman Jinja

 Some of the stores in the market were quite large and there was a wide variety of products for sale.

 Baskets of fish.

 Gradually the street filled with shoppers and it became quite busy.

 We left the market and took a bus to Hachiman Jinja, the shrine of the Shinto god Hachiman. This is the huge torii at the shrine entrance. The bus let us off on the wrong side of the road so we had to walk to the next intersection to cross at the traffic lights.

 On the way to the corner we passed a store with an interesting customer.

After passing through the large red torii, there was a second large torii but this one was made of stone. In the distance you can see a flight of stairs that lead up to the shrine proper.

Hachiman Jinja in Parktown

 I walked along the path and arrived at the back of the small hill. The first thing I saw was two torii, the gates that mark the entrance to a shrine. One of them, however, was in pieces on the ground

 A small stone stele had broken into half and the top was also laying on the ground.

 There are actually two small shrines that are situated side by side in new roofed structures with concrete block walls to protect the original shrines. Both are quite similar.

 This shows the inside of the second building. It contains a traditional style wooden shrine. I am sure that there is some thing to represent the god Hachima behind the closed doors

 Hachiman is a strange god. He was a Shinto god related to war, but after Buddhism was introduced and the Japanese started to assimilate Shinto gods and stories into Buddhism, Hachiman became a Bodhisattva. So this Buddhist style statue was not out of place on the shrine grounds, even though it had fallen over during one of the quakes.

 This is a side view of the protective buildings. You can just see the shape of the wooden shrine building under the roof. The building on the right is used during festivals and other gatherings as a place to store things and as a place to meet. Often such buildings are used for the eating and drinking that accompany a festival.

 The shrine is beside the Expressway so it is quite noisy one the grounds. The shrine is off to the right on the other side of the divided road.

 The road I was on has a bridge that carries it over the Expressway. In spite of having a lot of work done on it during the last couple of years, the bridge was still badly damaged during the disaster. This picture shows the temporary repair work that was done to make passable the almost 15 centimeter difference in height that developed between the road surface on the bridge and that on land.

After crossing the bridge I had a good view of the athletic dome where the high schools have various competitions.