Dazaifu

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October 23, 2007

Dazaifu

We went to Dazaifu last weekend, which was an ancient capital in Northern Kyushu over 1000 years ago.

Here is a lovely field of cosmos in bloom.

These stairs were the entrance to the government building complex. There are only foundation stones left now.

Here is a model of what the buildings looked like. You can see the stairs at the front.

Persimmons are so pretty!

An old temple

The ginko trees are starting to change into their fall colors.

There, that explains it.

The temple building

Inside the temple. That is a Buddha or something in the background. Buddhas don't like to have their picture taken, so I only tried for one shot here. That metal bucket on the red pillow is a bell that is rung to get Buddha's attention, and the thing on the right is probably a mokugyo, a hollow wooden object that is struck as sutras are chanted.

I liked the pigeons liking the roof.

These Buddhas used to be crammed with several others into the previous building and were moved to another building next door. These are about five meters tall, or about 15 or so feet.
Here is the fellow in the middle, wood overlaid with gold.

The fellow on the left. These were actually not supposed to be photographed either, but nobody was watching anyway.

A seated fellow.

Buddhism has no explanation of how the world was created. The question just isn't considered important. Buddhas have many hands, but none of them were pierced for me, neither did Buddha love me enough to die for me.
The pastor at the church that I went to in Fukuoka on Sunday picked the passage about Elijah and the prophets of Baal as his text. God proved without a doubt that He was the real God.

It is two in the afternoon by now, and we are getting hungry and decide to drop in to a noodle shop.

There's nothing like a nice bowl of hot noodles to warm the bones, especially with that spot of ground red pepper sauce perched atop the pork. It was a bit much for me, so I replaced it with garlic!