Sasaguri

Ena and I took a ride to what is fast-becoming my favorite place in Japan: Sasaguri.

I think this marked my fifth time to come to this little town south of Fukuoka (see previous trips here, you have to scroll down). It is the one with the 88 temple pilgrimage route that runs through the mountains surrounding the town. It is still my mission to visit all 88 temples before we leave Fukuoka. Today we got to visit 5 more. The first we got to visit was Akashiji, which was where we parked our bikes and where we could put our hands on Buddha's:
There was also this big statue:
That little door under the statue is the door to hell. Actually there is just a long, completely unlit tunnel that you are supposed to walk through in the darkness. Which we did. Ena got a bit lost behind me but otherwise we got through hell OK.

After that we walked for a few minutes and the main part of our journey started at what is without doubt the ugliest site in Sasaguri, its big dam:
As an aside I should note that I don't have anything against dams per se. They obviously serve a number of useful purposes that we all benefit from. What kind of bothers me though - and I think this is a problem specific to dams in Japan - is when the people who build them try to "improve" them by turning them into some sort of tourist attraction in their own right. They always end up just making the whole thing even uglier than it need be. Like in the above picture you'll notice that the mountain at the other end of the dam has had all the trees cut down and huge concrete retaining walls built on parts of it. All of that was done to support a little road to the top where there is a little observation deck from which you can get a better view of the dam. In other words, they ruined an attractive mountain in order to give people the opportunity to get a better view of an ugly dam. I write all this because about 8 years ago I went to a similar dam that they had tried to turn into a tourist attraction and I ended up putting up a big rant about it here.

Anyway, back to today's adventure. We started by just skipping the dam "park" and walked straight to the far end of the reservoir, which according to my map was where the road to some of the temples began.

The road began (or really continued) at the end of the reservoir and followed the mountain river that fed it. This is where the scenery turned quite nice and we saw this temple nestled in the woods above the river:
Eventually the road turned into a hiking trail into the woods that followed the river, which by that point was really more of a long waterfall:
We came across some really beautiful waterfalls, the best I have seen in Japan, along this stretch of trail. There was this one:
And this one:
And this one:
And this stretch, with some wysteria in full bloom:
After a while the trail finished and we were back on a road. By this time we had hiked several kilometres from the dam and were quite high in the mountains. We walked along the road for a while and came across a mountain farming village:
We walked through the town and came across some actual pilgrims. These are people who make the 88 temple route circuit for religious purposes, as opposed to just for fun like us. You can tell the pilgrims ("henro san") because they wear special clothing, basically its an all-white outfit. They were pretty nice and we chatted for a while at one of the temples and they gave us some directions. We also met this interesting 80 year old woman who flagged us down on the road and wanted to talk to us. She told us most of her life story, how she had wanted to be a teacher when she was young but ended up marrying into the family that owned some of this farmland at her father's direction. She could speak some English and sang "Somewhere over the rainbow" for us. You meet some interesting people in the mountains.

Anyway, we continued up and up into the far recesses of the mountains, past the mountain village and onto a rough trail:
We were aiming for a group of temples that were REALLY deep in the mountains, but unfortunately it was getting late and we had a long hike back to our bikes (followed by a long bike ride home) so we decided to turn around. I took a ceremonial photo of the two of us at the furthest point we reached:

The Last Bike Trip

In addition to seeing the destruction of Sasaguri, we also had a really great day yesterday with everyone. The weather was perfect and we had a lot of fun. These are some pics of our little adventure:

Destruction in Sasaguri

Back in March when I was cycling around I stumbled on Sasaguri, a little town with a bunch of quaint temples that at the time I described as one of the most enjoyable places in Japan I had ever visited (you can see my earlier blog posts about Sasaguri by clicking the "Sasaguri" link on the right).

Yesterday I finally got the chance to take my friends on a group bike trip there - the last bike trip that we'll be able to take together as they are all going home at the end of this week.

Unfortunately what I didn't know was that during the torrential rainfall that happened here a couple months ago a number of powerful landslides struck Sasaguri and devastated some of the most picturesque temples that I had visited in March.

This is a picture I took of one of the temples back in March, note the little statue of a seated Buddha behind the red thing:


This is that same statue yesterday, fished from the rubble. All the temple buildings that had surrounded it were completely destroyed:

These are 3 more pictures of the same temple that I took in March, it was a really beautiful little place:
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And three more pictures of what it looks like today:



This is another temple that was hit badly by the landslides:




This was really quite tragic as this little road into the mountains was one of the prettiest places I've found in my travels. Actually, I should say that it was quite tragic as two people were killed in that landslide which, in addition to wiping out the temple buildings, also destroyed a house. I hope they'll be able to rebuild.

Return to Sasaguri

On Monday it was a nice sunny day so Ena and I biked down to Sasaguri to do a bit more exploring. This was the place that I had stumbled onto while cycling around on my own a couple months ago, its got an 88 temple pilgrimage route through the mountains and thousands upon thousands of little statues that are absolutely fantastic to look at. Just walking around the mountain trails between each of these little temples (none of them except the first one are particularly large) is a really fun experience.

The most famous site at Sasaguri is its reclining Buddha statue, which according to the pamphlet they provide is the largest bronze statue in the world:
Personally I think its a bit garish but given the fact that they don't charge admission I certainly can't complain. Its only about 15 years old and thus not of any historical interest so its not in any guide books. This is Ena with Buddha's toes:



Much more enjoyable though are the mountain trails and country roads that run between the smaller temples on the route. We took one that ran up the mountain to temples #58 and 88 on the route (the numbers of the temples bear absolutely no relation to their location relative to each other). It took us through a beautiful bamboo forest:

There are thousands of Jizo, or small buddhist statues, to be found all over the place in Sasaguri. They are quite cute and photogenic:
We also got to see a lot of cherry trees that were in full bloom:

We got around to about 10 of the temples on the route and I've decided to make it my mission to do the whole 88 by the time we leave. These are some pictures of the typical small Sasaguri temple:

Stairways leading up to Temple #13:

Ena in front of Temple #13:
The alter in Temple #31:
Inside Temple #58:
A little statue with some pilgrim's sandals at Temple #72:

Sasaguri

I had another sunny day off today so once again I got on my bike and went for a ride. Ena had a meeting, her last day of work so I was solo today. This time I headed south-east towards the mountains. Usually I stick to the coast but I thought I'd take a chance this time. It paid off pretty well. A couple kilometres outside of town I came across these fields of yellow flowers which were quite photogenic and smelled nice:
A few kilometres later I saw this big white thing on the top of a mountain in the distance and decided to head for that. Turned out to be Hisayama, with a big South-Asian style pagoda on top of it:
It was pretty exhausting getting to the top of that mountain but it was still only 3:30 in the afternoon so I plugged on a bit further. I passed through the town of Sasaguri and came to a little place called Chikuzenyamate, which is the site of an 88 temple pilgrimage route. It is without a doubt the most interesting place I've been to since we came to Kyushu and one of the most enjoyable in Japan. Frustratingly I got there pretty late so I could only spend half an hour exploring. Basically the temples are scattered along these back roads into the mountains that are surrounded by some fantastic scenery. It reminded me of Koya san (which isn't coincidental as the temples are from the same buddhist sect). I only got to see maybe a dozen of them and they were all quite cute. It was just an enjoyable walk in the mountains away from the crowds (hardly saw anybody the whole time I was there). These are a couple of pictures:

Probably the most interesting aspect of the route is the thousands of statues that are everywhere. I didn't realize it at the time but after looking it up on google I realized that the world's largest reclining buddha statue is actually at one of the temples I didn't have time to get to (more frustration!). This one though was by far my favorite:
One thing Japanese religion has going for it is that it is not shy about the subject matter of religious statuary.