Near the site of the lage Buddha statue is a large oriental garden and shrine. Since we’d travelled all the way out here (on warmed seats!) we decided it was worth the short walk to go see the gardens. So off we went.
In the third picture of the above set you can see lots and lots of tiny little statues. Each one of these statues represents an aborted child. I’m not clear on the details of why they were aborted or where or when, but needless to say walking into the garden and being entirely surrounded by them makes you think.
The gardens themselves are quite large and immaculate, and they continue underground in a cave specifically built to punish people over 6″ tall. In other news, I now hate caves. More of the little statues lined the cave walls, along with 16 different statues of Gods and Goddesses, each of which represents important things in life like Health, Money and Road Safety. That’s right, somewhere up in heaven right now, some poor teenage angel is sitting through a lesson on the Green Cross Code.
Afterwards, we headed off to another shrine, to have a go at getting our fortunes told. There are a variety of different outcomes possible, ranging from Bad to Very Lucky. I got ‘lucky’, and was told that now was a good time to have children. However, due to the declining Japanese birth rate, every fortune says now is a good time to have children, even if the fortune is a bad one and says you should just stay home incase bad luck finds you. Having children would keep you occupied while you were hiding I suppose.
Afterwards, we headed back home and caught up on the six million hours of sleep we thoroughly deserved. We only had one more day to wait before it was the countdown to new year, and almost as if I’d planned it - that’s exactly what the next update is about. (I’m aware it’s 2007 as I’m writing this, but keeping up is hard sometimes.)
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I love the new header – nicely atmospheric. It reminds me of Nate’s flickr photos, which I’m convinced are in fact not his own and have been lifted from some Holiday in Japan brochure. (Either way, they’re impressive.)
Sorry for my absence all this time. I’m currently in a cyber-cafe (‘Refresh’, in Broomhill, as it happens), as I haven’t been able to access the internet at home for about 2 weeks.
They have a Road Safety God? I’ll tell my old driving instructor, he can emigrate immediately and take up a job in Japan as a priest.
(Good luck with the tall, blonde, Japanese children. They’ll make perfect Anime characters.)