I have added some pictures from my recent travels, so please check out this blog entry and other recent entries to see various photos!This past Monday and Tuesday I toured many shrines and temples in Kamakura and in Tokyo. I went with a family friend whom I had just met for the first time. He married a Japanese woman and is living in Tokyo doing work as a translator.
In Kamakura I saw a giant Buddha (it was a very tall statue, and I was able to enter the statue and see the inside as well). In Tokyo I went to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine where war criminals and other personages from World War II are enshrined.
The Kamakura Buddha is very impressive, isn't it? We used to have a little replica of this at my home when I was growing up. When I saw the actual statue during my AFS summer of 1957, I was totally overwhelmed. The statue had deep resonances for me because we had always had this little statue and now here was this huge one.
ReplyDeleteI revisited the Kamakura Buddha in 2004. Again, it was very impressive.