Ofuna Kannon Temple – 大船観音寺

If you have ever traveled on one of the many JR Trains heading south west from Tokyo to Kamakura or beyond, you’re most likely to have seen or at least passed while unaware of it, the huge Ofuna Kannon Temple statue on the hill to the right just as you pass Ofuna station. I have been on that train hundreds of times and every time I passed Ofuna I always thought that someday I should get off and investigate that huge white statue up there. Technically Ofuna is part of Kamakura City, but due to the geography of the area Ofuna is almost completely cut of from Kamakura in the south, even though I have walked between the the two stations in about 45 minutes a couple of times. The Ofuna Kannon Temple is quite young, being founded in 1929 and only completed 1960 with the finish of the handmade 1900 ton heavy statue of the Bodhisattva Kannon. The temple is dedicated to peace and has a number of relics from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including some building stones and a flame taken from the fires that raged after the bombing and kept lit since then (you can barely see it in of one of the photos). The kannon statue itself is hollow and there’s a small prayer room inside with hundreds of miniature hand carved buddha statues with toothpicks for staffs in their hands. There’s also quite a few memorials to the friendship between the Japanese and the countries of South East Asia, and a lot of Vietnamese and Burmese people visit this temple. I saw one ema votive plate written in Vietnamese. I wonder what it says?

I visited the Ofuna Kannon Temple in spring, so the photos look a bit bare, also scenery in the middle of the day is as far from my preferred subjects as it can possibly get, hence the poor quality. I wish I had had a color negative film camera for this!

Bonodori Drummers

In July last year during the strict electricity savings I took these photos at a bondori festival in Zoshigaya near Ikebukuro in central Tokyo. Bonodori festivals are always in the summer, hot, sticky and very intense, one of the classic Japanese summer festivals. It is usually difficult to take photos in the lights from the bonodori lantern decorations, but this summer the festivals were even darker than usual, just as dark as in these pictures, and the only light being a bright red. This particular festival is usually visited by a group of young and very talented taiko drummers. Just editing these pictures I really started to long for summer, before spring has barely started!

Asakusa’s Sensoji at Night

I have visited Sensoji temple at Asakusa, one of Tokyo’s foremost tourist attractions countless times, in the morning, days and even midnights (at New Year’s) but I have never visited it very late at night with all tourists gone and just a few locals passing by. I can really recommend it! The night I was there was almost pitch black, the moon was a mere sliver of silver in the sky and the complete lack of clouds to reflect the light emitted from the great city made the sky above the temple the darkest hue of black I have ever seen in central Tokyo. The temple grounds, lit up by a myriad of lights really stood out. Sensoji was only recently completely renovated and it is now ready to greet visitors again, without those bothersome scaffolds and tarpaulins covering half of the temple up. If you have an evening free and want to see something different, I can really recommend this temple, free of crowds and tourists!

Burning Daruma – New Year’s Ritual Fire

Right after the start of the new year, instead of hurrying towards the exit of the over crowded temple compound I made my way towards the main building to try and find the ritual pyre. Most bigger shrines and some temples arrange a pyre where they burn the talismans, votive plaques and good luck charms or any other things related to religion that people want to throw away. In Japanese this is called Otakiage (お焚きあげ), It’s considered very bad to simply throw out religious objects in the common garbage, instead people give their objects to these places where staff will keep they pyre going for as long as necessary. In some places it is over in an hour or so but I was told that this fire would be burning until the next morning as they had over a ton of items, books and wooden objects to burn. When one of the staff members carried a huge daruma doll towards the fire I just had to take a picture of it. The daruma doll is a talisman that you get in order for it bring you success in a special endeavor. When the endeavor has been accomplished it is time to pass the daruma forward by having it burnt at your temple or shrine. Another thing commonly burnt are the long wooden prayer sticks you find at graves.