Temple Hopping

So today was my very first day of school. I did absolutely zero teaching, but I did give a brief introductory speech at the start of our opening ceremony. Afterward, I spent my day grading the sixth graders' spelling tests (abysmal) and surfing around CNN trying to find interesting articles for my adult class that I'll be teaching soon. At least that's what I'm going to tell anyone who asks why I'm on the internet all day instead of doing work. I also ordered a Denshi Jishou, or electronic dictionary, from Amazon Japan. The day went well, but I was kind of on my own, as my JTE (That's Japanese Teacher of English) has been in Matsue since last night. As you know, Matsue is a lovely city, and I spent a great deal of time there over the last two weeks. In fact, that's what this article is about. Matsue, Part III - Sunday.

So Martin, Leonard and I had to kill sometime between our 9am checkout of one hotel and our 3pm checkin at our next one. So I suggested we hit up some of the local temples and shrines. Martin, being a fellow history major, had no objections, and neither did Leonard, so we took off toward Tera-machi (literally "Temple Town"). This place was block after block of Buddhist temple, with a few Shinto shrines thrown in as well. As we wandered aimlessly about though, we started to realize that most of these were regular places of worship, in fact we didn't enter one of them because there was a service of sorts in progress. Furthermore, with the exception of one or two buildings, the temples were small and unimpressive. After about a half hour of wandering, we decided to check our maps, and hit up the big names to the west of the castle.

The first on the list was Tenrin-ji, renowned for having one of the 10 best views of Lake Shinji in all of Matsue. It was a hot day, and the stairway leading up to the temple gate was quite long. Luckily it was a shady area for the most part, and the view of the lake and temple grounds, as you can see, were absolutely gorgeous. Aside from the view of the lake (partially covered by trees this time of year) there was a massive cemetary at the temple, and it was kind of creeping us out. So on that note, we climbed back down the stairway, hopped on our bikes and set out for the next one on the list, was Daioji, a temple famous for its massive stone gate. On the way there however, we hit a snag, as we one, ran out of water with no vending machine in site, and two realized I had no idea how to read a map. Eventually we found a vending machine, and before you know it a, well a small shrine. It was pretty cool though, it was on top of a giant hill with an enormous staircase leading to the top. There was only one tiny building up there, but the stairs were too tempting not to climb.
That red dot is Martin.

Eventually we regained our bearings and made our way to a different temple on the map, Gessho-ji. This was by far the most impressive of all the temple complexes in Matsue, and was so big that they even charged a small admission fee. Originally a Zen Buddhist temple from the late 16th century, it had fallen into disrepair by the Edo Period. That's when the new feudal lord of Matsue domain, Matsudaira Naomasa, had it rebuilt and renamed, in honor of his mother in 1664. Falling Naomasa's death, his son and second lord, or daimyo, of Matsue turned the Gessho-ji into the family temple. It now hosts the graves of all nine generations of Matsudaira daimyo, a very rare case for temples today. Each of the graves has its own small shrine, which I found to be most interesting. Shrines, you see, are associated with the indigenous religion of Japan, Shinto, and are most easily recognized by their stone gates, called tori. Temples on the other hand, are Buddhist, and are marked on maps with a Buddhist peace symbol (ironically similar to a swastika). The ji in Gessho-ji denotes that it is a Buddhist place of worship, but each of the 9 graves within was made in a Shinto style, complete with 9 stone tori.
But unlike Western religions, Japanese religions can easily coexist, and it is quite common to find shrines on temple grounds, and vice-verse. In fact, on the other side of the temple grounds was a giant Buddhist statue. The graves were also surrounded by stone lanterns and moats, which really added to the atmosphere. Perhaps the most fascinating feature of all though was the giant stone tortoise at the heart of the temple. This thing was massive, and to make it even larger, it had an enormous stone pillar driven through its shell, to prevent it from awakening at night and rampaging around the city, as it did in the local folk lore.

After our visit, we swung back by the brewery to enjoy a nice summer ale before biking back to the hotel. We stopped at one more shrine, dedicated to Inari, a fox deity, but I was quite disappointed by it. Inari shrines are famous for their fox statues and orange tori gates, and while this one had hundreds of stone and porcelain foxes, the gates were scarce. So instead of writing about it now, I'm going to wait until I visit the major one in Tsuwano, where Leonard lives.

Anyways, I hope you all are enjoying the blog, and the layout I gave it. Check out all my pics on facebook, and please, please leave me some feedback. It's like getting mail, I love it.