Ryotanji

After we finished off at Hokoji Hansobo, I was still determined to find the other shrine that I had heard of before in Inasa and the name Iinoya came to mind. So we managed to find it by searching out a restaurant in the area with the same name.
Iinoya in my opinion was a little small and a disappointment, but we wondered around and into the back area where there were some gravestones which my mother had taken an interest in. We could see another temple near the graves and we found what we had been looking for from the beginning, Ryotanji temple.

Ryotanji was very beautifully designed and featured an amazing Japanese style garden that is definitely worth a return visit to see again! I could see the lure of Buddhism as time and time again there is a showing of a love nature and a certain spiritual serenity to the settings that they build for worship.
Every new angle either showed the beauty of Japanese architecture or the beautiful Japanese love of nature, often I could see both at once.
From doing a quick search of the net I see that the temple is famous for it's carvings of dragons and the the boards in the temple are designed to 'sing like nightingales' when people walk on them. A great archaic alarm system. I actually remember hearing of that sort of floor board style in a temple in Kyoto (maybe chionin?) and thinking it was quite a clever idea.

Having enjoyed a great day of site seeing, we packed it in and made our way back to Chez Lowrey for a delicious home cooked dinner.