Sorry for the lack of updates lately. As my friend and co-blogger mentioned, we’ve been on the road traveling for Christmas and I’ve spent the New Years holiday down in Kyushu visiting David. Once I get home later this week, I’ll write a long post about our recent travels. For now though, I thought I would share a few photos of a couple places I found while while wandering around town.
A small pond beside Kasuga shrine, Sasebo, Nagasaki prefecture, Japan. Kasuga shrine itself is small, but charming. The small stream running past the pond passes in front of the shrine, which is nestled up against the hillside.
Meganeishi, or glasses rock. Named because it looks kind of like a pair of eye glasses I suppose. The front of the rocks look like they used to have something carved into them. The sandstone steps and rocks beneath the arches have years, maybe decades of people carving messages into them. The building next to the rocks is a small buddhist temple, called Sairenji Meganeiwa Kannondo.
Some of the characters carved into the stone by previous visitors.
Looking north from the hilltop cemetary at Meganeishi Park. There is a paved path that leads around the side of the temple to a cemetary on several terraces cut into the back side of the hill. The vantage point at the top yields quite a nice view.
I followed a small, poorly marked but recently cut path from behind the stone arches of Meganeishi, which led to this place. The ground was littered with broken pottery, old concrete tiles, and other debris. There were a number of stone walls and worn stone stairs all along the hillside. What all of this was at one point, or how long it has been in this state, I can’t be sure.
On the left side of the Meganeishi, along one of the foot-paths into the park there is a small path that branches off to a small landing that had a small stone basin and a couple of small empty concrete stands. In the bushes were the remains of a tori gate. There was still sawdust around the foundation of where the gate used to stand, so it had to have been cut down recently. Tori gates are always found at shrines, but whether this shrine was moved or decommissioned, I don’t know.
The remains of a Japanese tori gate at Meganeishi.
It is interesting what you can find when you go wandering around a new place.