Daibutsu

All right, it's been a few months but I wanna keep putting pictures up. I'll try to post more often, but no promises. Being an engaged grad student doesn't lend itself well to blogging. This post is of a trip we took to a Buddhist temple called Toodai-ji which included the world's largest Buddha statue (called Daibutsu). Each Buddhist temple is actually a complex of various buildings and has an ornate entrance gate.

In the gate's two pillars are two rad guardians which protect the sacred site from evil spirits. These guys are several stories tall - they were huge! The person at the bottom of the picture should give you some perspective.

With the guardians in Japan one always has his mouth open and one has his mouth closed. This represents one saying the first "letter" in the Japanese alphabet, 'a' (mouth open) and the last "letter" 'n' (mouth closed). It's the alpha and omega kind of idea.

I love Japan's intricate woodwork!

I don't know what this is. For some reason I thought it was cool enough to take a picture of. Maybe it's a lion statue. Those are pretty common.

Okay, here's the giant Buddha statue. Some of the pictures didn't come out too clear. It's pretty hard to tell just how huge this guy is because he's set pretty far back. I'm pretty sure several people would be able to stand on his flattened hand.

Here are some giant metal flowers and one of Buddha's friend.

These giant wooden statues were awesome. Warrior-scholars.

"I will beat you senseless with my scroll of unfathomable wisdom."

In the hall they had a smaller model of the temple complex.

Behind the giant Buddha statue was a thick pillar with a hole that ran all the way through it. People lined up to wriggle through this little hole because the legend says that if you can make it through the hole then you'll end up in Nirvana when you die (or something like that). Well, it was a tight squeeze but I made it through so I guess I'm Nirvana-bound. Here's a blurry action-shot!

One of my favorite things about going to tourist traps was that there were always high school students whose English teachers assigned them to interview gaijin (foreigners).

"Herro. My name is Kenji. What is your name? Where ah you from? How long in Japan? Picture, okay?"