Monday, August 29 - The nines market, Aomori, and the Big Buddha

A quiet morning in Misawa, settling into the routine of taking Marty for his morning walk in the neighborhood.  The days of taking Max outside in my pajamas are probably over...

After Scott and Steve got up, we got ready and then went into Misawa for the nines market.  It is an outdoor farmers/flea market that is only held on days that have a 9 in them.  Scott had never heard about it.  I'd heard about it while researching Misawa, and we had also found a cache at the site the day before.  There was light rain, so even though much of the market was under cover, the turnout of vendors was pretty light.  I did buy two secondhand shirts for 100 yen each.

Then on to our main destination:  Aomori.  About an hour and a half's drive west, through the mountains again.  Several tunnels made the drive interesting.  Our destination was Seiryu-ji Temple, home of the Big Buddha.

Seiryu-ji is a relatively new Buddhist temple founded in 1982.  There were several areas that we visited before getting to the Big Buddha.

• Kondo (main hall) - this is the center of the temple ground and various ceremonies are held here.  It is made of natural Japanese cypress produced in Aomori prefecture.  
• Five-Storied Pagoda - 120 feet high, it is the highest wooden pagoda north of Kyoto.  The central pillar hangs from the top, which helps a pagoda stay resistant to earthquakes.
• Jizo Bosatsu and pinwheels - the pinwheels are for unborn children.  Their mothers come and pray to their unborn children, offering the pinwheels along with candles and incense, sweets, stuffed animals, and clothes in hope of consoling their souls.  Jizo Bosatsu, standing on the edge of the slope, is the guardian deity of deceased children.
• Bokeyoke Kannon - it is a deity for older people who are beginning to forget things.
• Showa Daibutsu (Showa Great Buddha).  The "big" attraction.  It was built partly as a symbolic gesture to express gratitude and pray for war dead.  The second floor of the inside is a room for consoling the souls of war dead.  The guide expresses that "when we look up at the sacred Daibutsu with a backdrop of a natural halo of trees, we are wrapped in ineffable peace and tranquility

After the Big Buddha, we continued on the path back toward the beginning.  We saw:

• Ichigan Kannon - Ichigan means One Wish.  (Hmmm, then what would Michigan mean?)
• Fudo Myooh - he severs people's bad thoughts with his sword
• Kobo-Daishi - the founder of the Shingon sect of Buddhism.
• Pond, modeled after Shikoku.  It has sand from each of the 88 temples where Daishi once trained himself.  Each footmark shaped plate holds the sand from one temple.  It is suggested that you follow the footsteps of Daishi by stepping on the plates one by one, chanting his honorific name (we didn't.)

Very interesting temple, made more interesting by the excellent English guide that we were given.  We actually could figure out what each area symbolized.  

After leaving the temple, it was still pretty early in the day.  Scott wasn't as familiar with Aomori, the capital city of the prefecture.  I had some caches earmarked just in case, and one was at a temple in the downtown area of the city.  That's where we headed next.  Utoh Shrine was smaller than Seiryu-ji, of course.  Interesting to see the older structures juxtaposed with the modern offices and building surrounding it.  Walked around and enjoyed the beauty.  As far as the cache - everything was missing except for the obvious lid of the cache, still attached magnetically to the structure it was hidden on (just outside the temple.)  Others had logged it as a find so I did, too.

Looked for and found a new manhole cover, and then stopped at McDonalds for some lunch.  That was an experience.  There was a picture menu - Steve and Scott ordered Big Mac combo meals.  I wanted a cheeseburger and they said I couldn't get that as a combo meal so I wanted a small fries.  Something in the communication got garbled because they brought an extra jumbo family size package of fries out to me.  Cost 500 yen, too.  We managed most of them.  

McDonalds is where we found the fanciest bathrooms yet, surprising for a fast food place.  Deluxe functions including the noise covering function and the deodorizing function.  

We started for home, and the rain had pretty much stopped by then.  There was a full double rainbow stretching across the road - wonderful!  In the pictures you can see a faint third rainbow, too.  

A quiet evening at Scott's.  Our meal at McDonald's was late enough that we just snacked in the evening.  We are starting to hear reports that a typhoon is headed toward the area.  The base is in TCCOR 3 which means that damaging winds are predicted within 48 hours.