A Rainy Morning on Miyajima

 

Day 17 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage promised to be a wet one.

It had rained most of the night, and the rain still continued at first light.

Fortunately, I had a roof over my picnic bench and table in the small park.

There were some rental cabins in the park, and one group of young Japanese had been drinking heavily and made a fair bit of noise until the early hours. Every time I have been kept awake in a hotel room by rowdy guests they have been talking and shouting in Japanese, not noisy foreigners...

I was woken in the early hours by a small critter trying to take my small plastic bag of food. I think it may have been a weasel, but it had the bag in its teeth and wouldnt let go when I pulled it until I punched it on the nose....

I have no idea how scallops are farmed, but the piles of scallop shells suggest that it's not just oysters growing around Miyajima....unless scallop shells are used in some way....

A tunnel is the only land route around to this side of the island.

The locals are out and about before the tourists arrive, and don't seem at all phased by the rain....

The rain makes the color contrast a little stronger.....

Back past the two shrines from the evening before....

The mountains of Miyajima are obscured by clouds....

On the mainland, where my route now heads down the coast, it seems just as rainy..... the previous post in this series on walking the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage was the walk of this post in reverse yesterday evening

Marine Messe Fukuoka

The Marine Messe is located on the waterfront in Hakata, close to the Hakata Port Tower.

It is an exhibition space, conference center, and a sports arena.

It was opened in 1995 and was designed by Nihon Sekkei.

It is the largest indoor multi-purpose facility in the prefecture.

For concerts it can accommodate audiences up to 15,000

The previous post in this series on the modern architecture of Fukuoka was on the nearby Hakata Port Tower 

A Night On Miyajima

 

From Daisho-in Temple the views down onto Itsukushima Shrine and its iconic torii are quite impressive.

Daisho-in administered  Itsukushima Shrine until 1868, and it was, like most religious sites in Japan at the time both Buddhist and "shinto" hence the pagoda....

It was getting late and my plan was tp sleep out in a park on the back-side of the island.

I didnt go into the shrine..... too expensive, too many visitors, and having been there several times before, not much to see....

Said to be the biggest rice-spoon, shamoji, in the world...

Miyajima has numerous shrines on the shoreline, and originally all of them were only visited by boat, no-one lived on the island

Now there is a road on a small section of the coast of Miyajima, but still some of the shrines can only be reached by boat.

On the back side of the island, there are lots of oyster farms.

My room for the night was a bench in a small park. The previous post was on Daishoin Temple.

Myoo-in Temple 9 Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgimage

 

Fudo has 36 young boy attendants, and is often depicted paired with two named Kongara and Seitaka.

At the 36 temples of the Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage, each temple has one of the 36 usually, like here, as a small statue.

Myoo-in is located a few kilometers up the Kawata River from the Yoshino River, a little over halfway from Miyoshi to Tokushima City.

I can not find a lot of history or background information. 

The main hall is fairly new, replacing one from the last years of the Edo Period.

There is this group of new Six Jizo, and somewhere here is enshrined an older said to be carved by Kobo Daishi himself.

In the Daishi-do there was a small Aizen-Myoo in front of the Daishi statue.

Up the steps was this unusually two-storeyed structure.

It may be a kind of pagoda.

Built in 1574, some sources say it enshrined a Fudo Myoo and a Bishamonten.

Through a narrow slit I am guessing this is a Bishamonten

For me, the most interesting was in the Enma-do...

Great King Enma is the head of the 13 judges of hell who decide where you go after death, specifically which of the numerous "hells

Statues of the other 12 judges flank him here.

In Chinese Buddhism there are only a total of ten judges.

Enma derives from the Hindu deity Yama.

In Japan he is depicted in the dress of a Tang China government official.

I was here on Christmas Eve 2016, day 6 of my walk along the Shikoku Fudo Myoo Pilgrimage.

The previous post was on the nearby Kawada Hachiman Shrine.