Hyuga City to Takanabe: Day 20

The weather was improved on my twentieth day walking around Kyushu. It was a long day but filled with sights. The route hit the coast at several points during the morning.

The village of Mimitsu was a pleasant surprise. With a historic district of traditional buildings but not a big tourist destination it seemed a little more authentic and lacking in gift shops and cafes.

There were three of the pilgrimage temples to visit today, with one having a delightful waterfall for purification with the attendant Fudo Myo statues.

There were also lots of shrines including the Ichinomiya, the highest ranked shrine of the province, with a nice koi pond and gardens.

I will be walking this section in a couple of weeks on my next leg of the Kyushu Fudo Myo Pilgrimage and am looking forward to doing some deeper explorations of the area.

Sasaguri 88 Temple Pilgrimage

Sasaguri, in the mountains just north of the sprawling metropolis of Fukuoka, is home to a miniature version of the famous 88 temple Shikoku Pilgrimage. It is less than 50 kilometers in length, but took me 4 tough days to walk because it is up and down, up and down.

Some of the temples are quite large complexes, in fact the pilgrimage stops at Nanzoin, home to the largest reclining Buddha in Japan. Many of the temples are small, wayside chapels, unmanned but usually with quite a lot of statuary. Surprisingly, in such a small area, the route also passes by many other temples that are not included in the pilgrimage.

Being in the mountains there is a high percentage of temples with waterfalls that are used for ascetic training, consequently there are many, many statues of Fudo Myo,..... literally hundreds of them.
The highest point reached is 680 meters above sea level, to a cave on top of Mount Wakasugi where Kobo Daishi spent time after he returned from China.

A few kilometers are along busy main roads, but most of the route is either well marked walking trails or narrow mountain roads with no traffic. You pass through a lot of bamboo forest including one on the 3rd day that was the most enchanting bamboo forest I've ever been in....

Kyushu 108 Pilgrimage Temple 9 Myo-o-in

I preveiously posted photos of a few of the Fudo Myo statues at Myo-o In located high on Wakasugi Mountain in Fukuoka, a temple founded at a waterfall where Kukai practised austerities after his trip to China.

Several of the other early Shingon patriarchs also visited here.
At some point in the 14th Century the temple was destroyed and was not really revived and reconstructed until early in the twentieth century.

There are many other statues around the waterfall as well as an Inari shrine. The interior of the temple is lined with hundreds of miniature Fudo statues.

Riding what is almost certainly a peacock is either a buddha, a kannon, or a wisdom king...

Kannon Falls

When we have visitors and it's hot, instead of heading to the beach to cool off we usually head to a waterfall. There are a lot of waterfalls in our area, and the highest, and also the most accessible is Kannon Falls.

Located up a small valley that runs down to the Gonokawa river at the village of Shikaga, the falls are about 400 metres up a pleasant path that follows the stream dappled in the sunlight filtering through the trees. The falls are more than 50 meters high, and end in a largish pool that is waist-deep in the middle.

It's a popular place in the summer and there are usually several families there, splashing, picnicing, and fishing, though no locals come here after dark as long ago a woman climbed to the top of the falls and committed suicide by jumping, so it is believed her ghost haunts the area.

The falls are named for Kannon, the Japanese name for the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, and there is a small shrine to her near the base of the falls. Note the figure of the Virgin Mary in the bottom right. In parts of east Asia, and among Japan's "hidden christians", Kannon was equated with the virgin mary, allowing them to appear to be worshipping the buddhist Goddess, but secretly worshiping Mary.