Daitokuji

 This is a place to hang written wishes in the hope that they will become reality. Actually in Buddhism this sort of thing is not possible in the strictest sense, but many people believe anyway.

 This shows a detail of how traditional buildings are made in Japan. There are no nails. Here a slot was cut in the upright and a horizontal piece was slid into it, spanning the space between uprights. Then rather than nailing the horizontal piece in place a wedge is pounded into the slot, holding everything together. In an earthquake this type of construction allows a huge amount of movement of the individual pieces, while maintaining the integrity of the whole structure.

 As I was leaving I saw a newer building behind one of the others. This building is quite large and seemed to be in use at the moment. Also there was a bicycle parked by the building on the left. Then three people came from behind the building.

 The walked around to the front of this building, climbed the stairs, and after unlocking the door entered. At this point I did not have my camera in my hand and by the time I got it ready they were inside.

 Temples and shrines always have a large sign, usually stone, announcing their name and sect affiliation. This temple is, as I have said, Daitokuji of the Shingon Sect. A little ways down the hill on the same road I had arrived on, I saw a parking lot full of cars. I now knew that this lot was directly behind the new building in the third picture above so I assumed that these cars belonged to the people in the building.

Back at the Shinkansen tracks I decided to see where this road went. I crossed at the lights and found this, an auto repair shop specializing in 4x4s.

Ryuhoji

 Up under the eaves of the pagoda I notice a colorful but unidentifiable animal of some sort.

 Another Buddhist statue with fresh flowers but again I do not know who it represents.

 This is the little Shinto shrine that is next to the main hall.  The statues of two foxes in front of the torii, two in this case, plus the fact that the torii are red implies that this is one of the Inari Shrines. Inari is the Shinto god (kami) of fertility, rice, agriculture, foxes, industry, and worldly success. Apparently about one third of the shrines in Japan are dedicated to Inari.

 Some one has place a container of rice wine, sake, between the legs of this fox.

 This is the beginning of a small construction project. I know this because of the bamboo poles at the four corners of the space and right in the middle (very hard to see) a shorter pole with folded white paper hanging from it. This shows that the Shinto ceremony to bless the site has been completed. This was done even though this is a Buddhist temple.

This is a strong storage house where the temple keeps it valuables, mostly art work, I would imagine. This storage buildings have thick walls, strong windows and doors, and would be very hard to break into without making a huge amount of noise for a long time.

Ryuhoji

 If you remember, we were escorting a guest, the father of an Australian friend, and he had little experience in Japan. We stopped here in front of the bell tower and were talking about Buddhism and temples.  The idea of Shinto shrines came up since we had just visited one. We told him that shrines and temples were often collocated. He found this a bit surprising, Christianity's relationship to other religions. We suggested that he turn around and look at the red objects in the distance.

 A closer look revealed, a Shinto shrine on the raised area next to the main hall of the temple.

 This is the entrance to the main hall.

 This is a view of the pagoda from the back.

 You can see that the structure of the roof is similar to that of most temples.

We walked toward the Shinto shrine to let our guest get a better look at it, and of course, to see if for ourselves. When we got close enough, we saw a crow having lunch on the offering of rice that had been placed in front of the shrine, probably by the Buddhist priests who run the temple.

Ryuhoji

 We walked into the grounds, passed the pagoda and saw the fountain where you are supposed to purify yourself before going further.

 As usual the water came out of the mouth of a dragon.

 It was a very ferocious looking dragon, so I was sure that the water would be pure.

 After washing our hands, we proceeded deeper into the grounds and found this Buddha, or maybe a Bodhisattva. There was an offering of an orange and some water. Someone had placed a red cloth hat and bib on the statue but it had long since been bleached almost white by the sun.

 This round stone statue was quite impressive. The plaque says "pile of flowers" or something like that. As often happens I have no idea what it refers to.

Just before arriving at what appeared to be the main building there was another group of stonework. I know that the objects that the Buddha/Bodhisattva carries tell us who he is but I do not know much of the symbolism.

Hachiman Jingu and Ryuhoji

 Here is another wish. This one is for the Sendai professional baseball team, the Rakuten Eagles, to come in first this year. The plea was not very effective. The team came in fourth out of the six teams in their division.

 This is the sign over the door to a men's room. It is the outline of a man wearing a kimono covered by hakuma, a pants like arrangement that covers the kimono and is now worn only on formal occasions.

 This is the women's room. It is a woman wearing a kimono.

We had now been all the way around the grounds and had seen at least the outside of all the buildings. We decided it was time to leave and took a side exit, just to see where it went.

 As we walked down a narrow backstreet, we sat the roof of a pagoda. A quick look at a map told us that this was Ryuhoji, the dragon treasure temple. Since we had plenty of time, we decided to find the entrance and explore some more.

 A short walk brought us to the main gate. There were no guardian kings but maybe because it is next door to Hachiman Jingu, a shrine dedicated to the God of War, they felt that no more protection was needed.

The first building inside the grounds was this very nice two story pagoda. It looked fairly new, or at least in excellent and recent repair.

Yamadera

 We passed the final building, which although outside the temple was still part of the complex.

 Just beyond that building we came to a large cave that had a man-made support on the left side. The white objects are a row of rocks and beyond them the cave continues into the mountainside. This was (is?9 probably used as a meditation site.

 We turned into the sun and toward the river and the bridge back into the small town.

 From the bridge we could see the bridge that carries the train that will eventually take us back to Sendai. The only problem was that there is only one train an hour. But before worrying about that we decided to find someplace to eat.

We decided on this restaurant. We sat in the right hand corner nearest the large boulder. We had a great view of the river.

Yamadera

 This hole in the rock face (above the greenest leaves) was apparently a place for meditation. Throughout Japan many temples have such holes where a monk could go and meditate for long periods, often days, without having to contact other humans.

 This stone lamp post seems to be wearing a stone straw hat.

 This is a tree trunk that is completely covered with pieces of bamboo, apparently for protection against the snow which is very deep here every winter.

 This is the view down through the branches to the next level. If you look carefully, you can see at least three or four people.

 Here the stairs narrowed to not much more than the width of two shoes as the path passed between to large boulders.

This is a second trail that comes down from somewhere above. The next time I visit Yamadera I will follow this path just to see where it goes.

Yamadera

 When not climbing long flights of stairs, the walk was very pleasant.

 This large boulder has been hollowed out and behind the door there is a small wooden building containing a statue.

 This building was old and in need of some repairs. There was a meditation room and altar off to the left but a bunch of noisy people, including one man who was talking with this office about work in a very load voice, arrived so we left before they broke the mood.

 Starting back down the mountain, we could see across the valley.

 As we went down each level, the mountains on the other side of the valley seemed to grow taller.

One of the administrative buildings had this huge set of pray beads. You were supposed to grasp the beads with one hand and pull down on them while reciting some sort of short group of words. Each bead was almost as big as my fist.

Yamadera

 This stele had a bas-relief portrait of an actual person. It was placed here by the family to celebrate the life of a man who had been in the war between Japan and Russia just over a hundred years ago.

 This is another temple and it looked very old.

 This is a statue of an elephant. You can see it in the top right corner of the previous picture. Having an elephant here is very unusual, ordinarily there are lions, but I have no idea what the significance of it might be.

 I found another unusual feature when I looked inside at the altar. The main object was a large mirror. I can understand the symbolism of looking at a reflection of yourself, but mirrors are usually found in Shinto shrines where the represent the reflection of the light from the sun god.

This building is a storehouse for valuable items. Notice the symbol up under the eaves. It looks like something you might find in Nazi Germany, but actually this is a 2,500 year old Buddhist symbol.