Senkoji Temple

 This temple is just down the road from where we live! It has beautiful grounds covered in hydrangeas, ajisai in Japanese.

I've seen this place advertised locally over the past few weeks. There is a hydrangea festival there every June. This is the season for these flowers. For me, the first sign of the rainy season is the blooming of the hydrangeas!

The temple charges a small fee to enter. I guess it helps to keep the grounds clean and the flowers well-tended.

Our tickets

Mikey drove us, but was too tired from all the driving he did yesterday, so he stayed in the car!  Christopher came with me!  I was happy to go by myself, but having someone with me who can read Japanese really helps!

The temple is up the mountain, so it has beautiful views over the valley.

View from the parking lot.

Today was very cloudy with intermittent rain showers. There was also a nice breeze, so even though it was a bit hot and humid, the wind helped to keep things cool!  

At the entrance was the temple bell.

Explaining about the temple bell

The temple bell

As we entered, there were various buildings and different statues. 

I'm not sure what this is, but I liked it. It was in the entrance of one of the buildings!

Interesting carving!

There were some statues to pray to. 

Mizuko  statue

Mizuko is a baby that is miscarried, aborted, or stillborn.  There is a memorial service called Mizuko Kuyo done for these babies.

We couldn't see what the other statues were for!

Some of the other statues

There were other buildings, one was the temple, the other is maybe the mausoleum.

The temple

Maybe the mausoleum

We then followed the trail of the hydrangeas.

beautiful hydrangeas

Scattered among the flowers were these really charming little statues.

Charming statues

 

There's something very cute about these. There were so many, and each one was different! I bought a little badge with one on!

My badge

We stopped for a while by a very old tree. The edge of the temple is surrounded by forests, we could hear a stream, but couldn't see it.

Lovely tree

Looking into the forest, those are all bamboo.

More of the forest floor

View of the mausoleum

I took a couple of videos. Just to try and get the feeling of the place. It was busy, but somehow it wasn't noisy and didn't feel crowded.

I tried to not get people in, but difficult!

I really enjoyed myself. We could have stayed longer, there was a hillside that had a lot more flowers, but it started to rain!

Still, it was a nice hour, a break from the usual schedule!