Deadlock's photoblog

This might be the day of traditional superlatives…

Visiting Nara we went out to see the Todai-Ji temple site.

On this site you’ll find the world’s largest wooden building, the Daibutsu-den (Daibutsu Hall).

In this building sits the world’s largest statue of the Buddha Vairocana. In Japan, this statue is known as “the” Daibutsu.

The Daibutsu-den

A Bodhisattva (Kokuuzo bosatsu, left) and the Daibutsu (right)

The whole temple site is inhabited by Sika deer. In Shinto religion these deers are the messengers of the gods.

Here are some of the temple sites:

The To-ji temple

The famous golden pavillion temple, the Kinkaku-Ji

and the well known tori of Fushimi Inari-taisha.

This is the Kiyomizu-dera Temple, situated in eastern Kyoto.

The main building is partly put on pillars about 13m high. From the veranda of this building you’ll have an excellent view over the city centre of Kyoto.

As the weather was really great – about 30°C, the highest April temperature measured in Japan since ages – a lot of people were on the temple site, alot of them in traditional clothing.

Some other impressions from the site…

Today the Yamanote was completely halted for about 3 hours. You’d expect total chaos on the railway stations – but not in Tokyo. The trains which could be used to bypass the Yamanote line were really crowded, you could not fall, no matter how fast the train accelerated or how hard it braked. You could barely move your arms.

But at the end everything went in order, no pushing, no scramble on the platform, everybody was just lined up to eventually enter a train which had some space left.

Hakone is well known in Japan for its hot sulfur springs, fed by volcanic activity in this area.

It’s a three hour ride from Tokyo, including a mountain railway and a ropeway. After that ride you have to climb up the last 50 metres in height by stairs.

Having reached the top you can buy kuro tamago, eggs, which have been in the hot springs for about half an hour. Because of the sulfur the shell turns black.

It is said that each of those eggs prolongs your life for 7 years. So by now we’ve prolonged our lifes by 17,5 years.

On our way we were on a ropeway. From a valley we had a great view of Mount Fujiyama.

Flying to Tokyo you fly over the northern parts of Russia and eventually turn southeast. Shortly before crossing the Japanese-Russian border we were flying over Khabarovsk: