Day Five, Six, Seven, Eight in Japan

Day Five Friday

We climbed a large mountain to get to the top where we could meet monkeys. They are not in the cage. We are! In order to feed the monkeys people had to stand inside a building that had two sides made out of this wire where the monkeys could climb and reach through for food. We were not supposed to get that close to the monkeys outside but they didn't mind walking right next to us.

 Here is Amanda feeding a monkey.

 Here is Chris feeding the picky eater monkey. This one would not eat apple seeds or peanut shells. He would hand them back to us, so we fed them to his friend beside him who didn't care. 

 Here is a cute baby monkey.

There three newborn ones that are a month old and we got to see this one.

Next on our list was a walk through a bamboo forest.

 Here is a graveyard that is attached to a temple; Adashino Ninbutsuji. There was not anything all that different about the actual temple. The graveyard was the main attraction. By day five all the temples and shrines start to look the same.

 But this place was different. This is at Otagi Nenbutsuji. It is surrounded by hundreds of stone faces. With the moss they look to be ancient but they were really created in 1980-1991. 

 While we were walking up to this place we met a guy who wanted to know what state we were from. The last time anyone asked they had proceeded in giving us a confused look, but not this guy. He knew exactly what we were talking about and asked us to confirm if that was home of the Badgers. Bucky Badger yes sir! Then he started dancing around saying he liked football and pretended to throw an imaginary ball. It was pretty great!

Day Six

Here is what Japanese coinage looks like.

 We climbed Mt. Kurama. We should have timed ourselves. It may have taken us about an hour or so. This mountain reaches 570 meters above sea level. The Kurama Temple is located halfway to the top. There are also other pagodas and temples on the mountain  It is said that a great king Mao-son visited this temple from Venus. And power, light and love emanate from the mountain.

The picture above are some cool steps with lanterns. 

This one below is what the actual path looked like.

 The path is winding and twisting and you walk on dirt, rocks, and tree roots. This is not something I would want to climb in the dark.

But my favorite part of the hike was at the end when my legs were starting to feel like jelly from all the stairs. I had not been doing stair interval training or anything. This mountain would be a good place for that. My legs were literally shaking if I stopped moving (although they did not hurt). I tried to take a movie if it, but you couldn't see it. Either way, I thought it was pretty cool. 

Back at the hotel we spent three hours doing laundry because the free dryer took forever. 

Day Seven:Ekoin

As you may have noticed the amount of things we did in a day went down after Kyoto. This is due to travel time. We had to spend three hours for a way one trip to a lot of our destinations. This trip to Ekoin monestary had three trains, a bus, and this funicular. 

 It's hard to see how steep the route actually was that we climbed mostly because the funicular is slanted to match so you are right side up. 

 The same thing here where everything is slanted to match the slant of the mountain. It climbed about 960 feet in five minutes.

Here is the room inside Ekoin. Due to the fact that our window patio was closed off with rice paper screens, the sun was in our room at 4 am and our neighbors were up too making noise. However, it was still a great experience. 

 This is the outside of the place. Under the taller part of the roof is the main office. Off to the left is where you enter. There is a place to take your shoes off and put them on a shelf. Everyone has to wear slippers inside the monastery. There is an additional pair of slippers to change into when you enter the rest room.

 When we were there two large tour buses were also present. We had our meal brought to us in our room. You can see the first post about food for more information on that. This table is the welcome table that had hot water and tea bags to make tea. It was pushed to the side for the food trays and pushed aside when they brought in the futon beds.

 Before bed we walked through a really long graveyard that lead up to the tomb of Kobo Daishi who was the first monk to introduce the particular sect of Buddhism that the monks practiced. He is also not called dead but in "eternal meditation." The tombstones here looked like small temples and shrines with some being long wooden posts with words on them. It is a really long graveyard/ mountain walk because everyone wanted to be buried by Kobo Daishi for good luck.

Here are the beds. To get the full experience we had to wear the yukatas that were there specifically to sleep in. The futon mat was soft. The blanket seemed to be a bunch of pillows that were sown together and tossed inside a cover like a sheet. The pillows were not traditional at all. Well not western style. Inside the pillow was filled with a type of grain that was the size of corn kernels. I was able to sleep just fine even though it was bumpy. 

 

 Day Eight: Deer Park

I never did get a deer to give me a good bow on camera, but these deer will bow back to you and then you feed them a deer cracker. 

The deer are very good at swarming you if you have crackers. They also don't care if they are laying in the middle of the sidewalk in your way. They were everywhere. 

Todai-ji Temple

Connecting to the deer park was the Todai-ji temple.This is the entrance to it below.

He appears to be a statue warrior. 

Even though we are on day Eight Chris and I were still amazed at how many school field trips there are to tourist sites. It made navigating through them a little hard at times. 

This temple contains the largest Buddha statue. His ear is 8 feet and his eye 3 feet, so basically my kids are a little taller than his eyeball and I am shorter than his ear.

The wonderful deer.