Kakegawa Castle

The next day was a light day, only two destinations really but both were a little further out. We started the day by heading out to Kakegawa castle, which is about 30 kms or so from my home. To get out there we had to travel through Morimachi - yes that's right Forest town. The ladies had mentioned wanting to buy some tea and maybe even a tour of a tea farm. Well it wasn't quite season yet (very close) so I remembered seeing a nice tea store in Mori town and we stopped off there on the way. The store was great, there was one lady that could speak a little bit of English so tried her hardest to help us out (apologizing for her poor English- though I thought it wasn't bad). They sat us down and gave us a sample of the tea and of a nice tea jelly. The free tasters are a nice touch, but I did feel like I had to buy something now that we had tasted. Anyway, she gave us a bunch more samples and answered our questions and we all left with a little bit of tea in our hands.
Finally we found ourselves at Kakegawa castle. The castle looks quite large and is strategically located on the top of a hill, offering a great viewpoint for the surrounding area. The literature there said that Kakegawa castle is the largest all wood reconstruction of a castle in Japan. It is quite beautiful and has a nice courtyard.The castle was also quite easy to defend as you can see in the picture my mother defending the castle against marauding samurai.
There is also a nice little park located next to the castle that made it quite a peaceful setting and in my opinion a little bigger and nicer than Hamamatsu castle.

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.

Hokoji Hansobo

Rain swirling down on our heads, I was next trying to find a famous temple in Inasa that a student had mentioned that I had forgotten the name of. We hopped in my car and I started searching frantically on my GPS and found a little picture on the screen, so I thought I had found the place. Whenever there is a little picture on the GPS it means that I have found a somewhat famous place. So we made our way out to the little icon on the map.
The place we had found was not the place that I was actually looking for, we would get there later in the day. The place we found was called Hokoji Hansobo. Despite the rain (and the lady at the entrance booth was so nice she offered for me to borrow her umbrella- but being the Vancouverite that I am, I refused it) we hiked through the lovely short walk through the woods to the main temple. The path was lined with the so-called gohyakurakan - I am not sure what rakan means but gohyaku is 500- so must be the 500 buddha statues, they were pretty neat.
Up some stairs and across a footbridge, we found our way to the main temple area and found the view quite beautiful. I especially thought that the pine tree sculpted as a bonsai was quite interesting. The area we saw was quite small, but I found it to be very serene and peaceful location.

We passed on a 30 minute hike to more buildings, though I definitely bookmarked this place for deeper exploration on a future date. The actual Hokoji Hansobo spans 60 acres with over 60 buildings. The place acts as the headquarters for the Rinzaishu Hokoji sect that has roots back to 1371.

We had accidentally stumbled across a hidden treasure that I knew nothing about! I was getting heady thinking I was a great tour guide- visions of quitting my day job and just touring people around the area.... Okay not really, but I was having fun exploring the area with the ladies!

A restful day, Bentenjima and Ryugashido

After the hectic pace of walking in Nara, we had a mellow first day back in Hamamatsu. We drove around Lake Hamana down to Arai near where I used to work, then we stopped off at Bentenjima to see the Torii in the water. In the background you can see the Highway 1 bypass.
I then took them to witness the joy of shopping at Aeon Shitoro, the big box shopping mall that most people go to in this area. Here you can see the ladies picking out their favorite Hello Kitty merchandise. Ah... Kitty Chan!
The next day we took our way out to Inasa City to see the naturally formed caves. The man at the booth seemed pretty excited to see some foreign visitors and offered to take our picture for us, nice guy! I already have a bunch of picture from a previous visit (which will probably find their way into the blog one rainy day) so I only took two pictures. Here is the other one....
It was a nice start to the trip in Hamamatsu and a good break from the number of temples they had already seen. But of course I would take them to another temple next!

Kasuga Taisha (I'm back!)

I have spent the last 4-5 days in Tokyo (which I will get back to a little later- sorry for the backlog but it's fun to actually have something to blog about) so haven't been blogging, but I will continue with my tail of entertaining my mother and Aunt in the middle of last month.

On our last day we at least had a chance to visit the last World Heritage spot that is within Nara Park, Kasuga Taisha. Regrettably, I can't find the handout about the shrine- but it proved capable of matching the pure cleanliness, serenity and beauty of the other places we had managed to visit in our quick two day journey.
The ladies working at the Kasuga Taisha all wore a strange attire, that doesn't turn up so well in this picture, but it was definitely quite unique and piqued my interest. They wore wisteria in their hair, apparently the Wisteria tree is quite important to the shrine.

The shrine is also well-known for the many lanterns that hang around, they have been donated by worshippers throughout the years. Here is a beautiful young lady surrounded by the lanterns.
As we finished up there, we picked up our bags and strolled back to the station, it was time to say goodbye to Nara, and time for the ladies to get to know the Hamamatsu area.