The Tea House at Hagi Castle

Hagi Castle

Within the grounds of the Hagi Castle ruins there are not many buildings. A small storehouse, a fairly modern shrine, but there is also a small traditional teahouse set among some gardens.

Of all the times I have been there it has only been open once, but there always seems to be someone working on the gardens.

I believe it is possible to have tea here but I can find no information as to when or how much.

It is a nice place to wander and take pics though....

Buy dokudami herbal tea from Japan

Manhole Bridges

Misasa in Tottori is a famous hot spring resort in the middle of the prefecture not too far from Kurayoshi. Several bridges over the river are symbols of the area, and opoen air pools under the bridges contain the highest level of radon for any hot springs in the world.

Mount Kasayama is a small, 100 meter high volcano just along the coast from Hagi in Yamaguchi. It is known for its "forest" of camelias. At the base is a small pond with a bridge leading over to an Itsukushima Shrine.

The Ichinosaka River runs through the middle of Yamaguchi City, but I have no idea which particular bridge this is or its significance.

Tabuse on the south coast of Yamaguchi has this bridge named Sakura Bashi, cherry bridge, for its famous promenade lined with cherry trees. In the middle of this modern bridge are a pair of tall steel sculptures, symbols of the sakura festival.

A little further down the coast is the town of Obatake where the Oshima Bridge connects to Suo Oshima, the third largest island in the Inland Sea.

Hofukuji Jizo-Do

These are a unique form of Nio that I have not seen anywhere else. They are carved as diagonal spars that support the porch roof on the Jizo Do at Hofukuji, a small temple in the Teramachi district of Hagi. Only the Jizo Do remains, the main hall being destroyed in early Meiji.

I have been unable to find out anything about them, so if anyone has seen anything like this before, please leave a comment.

There is a legend connected to a Jizo statue here. A local man married a beautiful woman who died giving birth to a son. The father hired a nurse to take care of his son. Later he remarried and his second wife gave birth to a son. The nurse used to take both boys to play in the grounds of Hofukuji. The wife beacme increasingly jealous of the first so, believing that her son deserved to inherit the family business, so one day took a red-hot poker and struck the first son, apparently killing him.

Next day however, the son was fine with not a mark on him. Later a Jizo statue at the temple was discovered with a burn mark across its face, causing the wife to repent and become a devotee of the statue.

This is a rather unusual statue of Daruma Daishi, the Japanese name for Bodhidharma, the legendary monk who brought Buddhism to China.

Hagi Teramachi

Teramachi, literally "temple town", in Hagi is , not surprisingly, home to many Buddhist temples. I will post on some of these later.

It is also home to the old port, a few shrines, and several old buildings protected by Historic Preservation orders.

Few tourists visit the area, but their are sections that have an ambience of an earlier era.

Well worth a few hours stroll if you have the time when visiting Hagi

Mount Shizuki

At 145 meters in height, Mount Shizuki in Hagi would be called a hill in English, but is symmetry and steepness give it quite a dramatic appearance.

Jutting out into the sea it is particularly dramatic on a misty morning when viewed along the wide sweep of Kikugahama Beach.

Hagi Castle was built at its base. The castle town and a couple of other sites in Hagi have been added to the newest World Heritage site in Japan.

Hagi Pachinko

Pachinko parlors are ubiquitous in Japan. Garish, noisy, usually with lots of flashing lights they can be found everywhere,

Their architecture usually tends towards the flashy as well, and they are often huge multi storey structures that are mostly empty space. They tend to be demolished and replaced fairly often, and I was once told that this made sense for tax purposes.

Hagi, the old castle town in Yamaguchi, is known for being one of the few areas where the old samurai district still remains and one would think that there woud be some sort of zoning to keep unsightly structures out, but apparently not.

This parlor is right on the edge of the temple district, and towers above the surrounding buildings although the high-rise section is pure show and non-functional, merely a shell.

Ube City, Yamaguchi

One of the common manhole cover designs in Ube City on the south coast of Yamaguchi depicts Katta-kun, a Great White Pelican born in a local park that became quite a celebrity.

Tokiwa Park is also home to many swans, including Black Swans, and they feature on several other designs.

The city markets itself as " a city of greenery, flowers, & sculptures" pretty much on the basis of the park, but in fact, like much of the southern Yamaguchi coast, it is very industrial with refineries and factories producing chemicals, steel, and most famously, cement.

The official city flowers are Azalea and Scarlet Sage, but the center of this bottom design appears to be Iris.

More Statues at Kobo-ji Temple in Hagi

This is the second post on the many statues found in the grounds of Kobo-ji temple in Hagi. This first one looks distinctly bored.

None of the statuary was particularly outstanding, but there were a lot of them and they were quite diverse.



The previous post can be found here

Whatever was hidden behind these multiple layers of curtains has a story attached to it. "This tragic love story is similar to a verse of long epic "Everlasting Regret"by Hakukyoi who was a famous poet during Tang Dynasty. In the Genroku Era ( 1688-1704) some beloved concubine Kikuyo fell in forbidden love with some handsome page Fusanojo. Their employer got angry and banished him to an island. Before leaving her he promised her to make a faire every evening for her until he dies. Two months later its smoke had stopped. In her sorrow, she threw herself into the sea from the nearby Kikugahama Beach. Their employer felt pity and built this lovers grave for them.

The final photo is a figure I am always on the look out for,,,,, Fudo MyoO.

Sacred Islands

There are thousands of small uninhabited islands and islets  in Japan, many of them sacred and with small shrines on them. One hears often of sacred mountains, the places where the gods descend to, but sacred islands get mentioned much less.

There are many myths and stories of the gods coming from under the sea and from across the sea, the Japanese themselves arrived here by water, so its perhaps not surprising. The most famous sacred island is probably Miyajima, home to the Itsukushima Shrine, and it was for a long time kept uninhabited as an abode of the gods.

On my recent walk along the Japan Sea coast of Yamaguchi I encountered some of these sacred islands. Nowadays many of them are said to enshrine Benten, or Benzaiten, a syncretic deity associated with the sea. Small islands in lakes will often enshrine her. She was also conflated with the Itsukushima goddess.

The first photo is the tiny Megashima, which means Doe island. You can make out the torii on the right under the biggest tree. The next two photos are the larger Ogashima, 200 meters away, which means Stag island. Being a male/female pair they are considered Meoto (married) islands. As you can see in the third photo the shrine has buildings. No-one I asked could tell me which kami were enshrined there or if there was a story....

Further along the coast, the fourth photo is Noshima. You can just make out the torii on the beach to the left and a small honden behind it. Again no-one could tell me which kami is enshrined there. Further along in Susa Bay is Nakashima. A gentleman walking his dog told me Benten is enshrined there. As you can see it has buildings.

Birds along the Yamaguchi Coast

This past Spring while walking the Chugoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage I took a walk along the Japan Sea coast of Yamaguchi,  It's a particularly fine stretch of coast with azure seas, outcroppings and cliffs, small islands and a lot of small fishing villages. Here are some of the birds I saw. The first is a heron. Sagi in Japanese, maybe its a Grey heron, maybe a Great Blue......

Lots of cormorants. I am guessing that they are Temmink's Cormorants, the most common kind, known as Umi-u in Japanese, though there are some other species which visit during migration. The difference among the onbes in the photo may be due to age and gender.

Lots of Kites, Black-eared Kite being the common species here. Known as Tombi in Japanese.

More cormorants.

This is, I believe, a Blue Rock Thrush, but I have no idea what it is called in Japanese.

Japanese Ducks

There are many species of ducks in Japan, but I believe these are Kamo, the common mallard.

They were and are eaten, and their arrival in the Autumn was used as a seasonal marker in poetry.

There has recently been a renewed interest in the use of domesticated ducks in rice agriculture. Traditionally they were used to control weeds and insects in the paddies as well as adding fertilizer.

All these were photographed in Chofu, Yamaguchi.