A Little Afternoon Outing

 This afternoon, Christopher and I went for a little outing.

I've lived in or near this city for almost 35 years and never knew about the area called Tera-Machi, also known as Temple Town. There are 17 temples in one small area. There are a number of graves in this area of famous people from Kurume.

The area is about 10 minutes walk from the Nishetsu Station, so the first plan was to get a bus and walk to Tera-Machi, but my knee has been rather painful the past week, so Mikey dropped us off and took us back to the station after.

I was amazed by the architecture of the area. Some of the temples were older, some more modern. Some had private houses on the grounds, some were very large with graveyards attached.

I took a couple of little videos. The weather was more like spring, which was really nice, but the sun was in my eyes a lot. If the video is jerking, that's where I missed a step!

In the second video, I really like the contrast between the brick wall, which to my mind looks very English and the temple, which looks very Japanese!

A map showing the different temples in the area

Red brick and temple building.

It was so peaceful, very quiet. Some of the temples had speeches or a service (is that the right word?).

I found myself whispering as I asked Christopher to translate what the signs were saying. This is just 10 minutes from a very busy station!

A few more photos from the area.

Temple bell, this would have been rung 108 times to usher in the New Year.

I like the ornament on the corner of the roof.

Massive doors

So beautiful and peaceful

Poster about a speech

Interesting door

Mikey picked us up and dropped us behind the station. 

It's been a long time since I've been there. Last year I went with Hannah, but we stayed at the front of the station.

There are a lot more shops than I remembered: a department store, a supermarket, Daiso, and a few other places.

I wanted to take a longer video, but some people were giving me funny looks!

I went into Diaso, a 100 yen shop and the department store. The department store used to sell imported foods, but this time, they didn't have any. I guess with Costco and Gyomusuper (a supermarket that has a lot of imported foods at a reasonable price), the department store couldn't compete. Christopher bought some nice pickles; he's really into Japanese food!

By this time, I was tired and hot. As I said before, the weather was more like spring, but the stores still had the heating on!

We found a nice bakery that had seating. We got a snack bread and a drink.

This had shrimp and cheese sauce!

We wandered around a bit more, got some cheap eggs. Took another little video from the walkway.

This walkway area used to be where the homeless used to sleep. Looks like it's been cleaned up!

I had a really lovely afternoon. 

I found a map of the city, I was surprised at the number of tourist areas there are and how many I've already visited!

This last photo was from the bus stop. Where the 7-11 is, used to be McDonald's.  I remember waiting there when I first arrived here. Hisao took the bus to get the car, leaving me with a load of luggage and one small coffee. The staff kept giving me funny looks, maybe they thought I had been abandoned! This was before everyone had phones; I just had to wait and hope he was coming back. He did, but took over 2 hours!