Pilgrimage

Hey all,

Today was a national holiday in Japan (Marine Day) so my family took me to some religious sites in our area :) For those who don`t know, I`m a Buddhist, so it was a great experience for me, kinda like going to Lourdes for Christians :)

First , we went to this incredible statue: the Daibutsu (literally, Big Buddha)

It`s a 13 meter, bronze statue of Amitabha Buddha and it is truly breathtaking. It was built in 1252 by the Shogun, and originally it was housed by a giant temple. But, what makes this statue really special and holy (in my opinion) is that when the temple was destroyed in a huge tsunami in 1948, the statue was untouched. Similarly, the base of the statue was damaged in the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, but the Buddha`s body remained unscathed. Remarkable!The statue is also hollow, so you can go inside and see where extra reinforcements have been added to the neck and head over the years. It`s amazing.
I was approached by an old Japanese man here who gave me a letter written in English and asked me to write to him and be his pen friend when I got home. It was so cute :`) I also posed in the same way in front of the Buddha for a photo (which I will upload when I have WiFi) and loads of random Japanese people thought it was hilarious and took photos. I felt so famous :D

Next, we went to Hasedera, one of the great Buddhist temples in Kamakura. Here is me praying there :)

Big smile on my face cos I knew I was being photographed.

It`s got huge gardens and is dotted with statues of Buddhist deities, koi ponds and beautiful old trees. There`s also a sprawling underground cave filled with fortunes and small statues. I did おみくじ (fortune) and got an eerily accurate good luck fortune (which was better than the equally accurate bad luck fortune I got in Sensouji in Tokyo. But, I was able to negate the bad luck by tying the fortune to a special pole, so it was OK!) When I say eerily accurate, I mean it- these aren`t just things vague enough to apply to anyone. When Yukika, my Japanese teacher, and her son did omikuji before, his said "You are the youngest of three siblings" like WHHAAAAT HOW. I`m not putting mine up but it was very very real. whhhooooooa trippy

This is where you tie your bad luck fortunes to negate the bad luck.

Hase-dera temple

Hasedera is famous for its large wooden statue of  GuanYin Buddha (same one from Ofuna). Starting to sound like a broken record? She`s a very popular deity in East Asia, because she`s basically the Mother Theresa of Buddhism. Legend says that she was granted 11 heads and 1000 arms by Amitabha Buddha so that she could help more people than before.

After that we took a stroll around a Shaolin temple before heading back home. It was a truly beautiful day and I felt like I really got in touch with my spiritual side :)

Special shoutouts to @ConstantlyYoung, @Forever_A_Conee and this creepy man for shamelessly promoting this blog on Twitter! :D if you wanna get mentioned, feel free to tweet the link to the blog and leave the link to the tweet in the comments :)
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Peace out!
クイーヴァ
Caoimhe