Name: Suwa Jinja ( 諏訪神社 )
Enshrined Deity: Takeminakata
​Address: 〒830-0037 Fukuoka-ken, Kurume-shi, Suwanomachi

Most of my information on Suwa Jinja in Kurume comes from a wonderful blog that documents shrines in Western Japan.  So if you can read Japanese, please check it out here: 産土神名帳 (republished with permission)

​~~ NOTE: As always, the pictures below often have captions, so please click on them to enlarge and see my comments. ~~

​There are around 5,000 Suwa shrines throughout Japan.  But they are all connected to the main Suwa shrine in Suwa city, Nagano prefecture - Suwa Taisha.  These shrines all worship the god Takeminakata.  Suwa Taisha is a very old shrine, dating back to at LEAST the 7th century.  But Suwa Taisha is a separate post of its own, so let's move on to the Suwa Shrine in Kurume city.

Back in January, my friend and I drove down to Hitoyoshi in southern Kumamoto Prefecture.  This is actually the first time I discovered the shrine and temple stamp book and my life was changed forever.

We made three major stops while we were there: Eikokuji, Aoi Aso Jinja, and Bukekura.

Eikoku-ji

Address: 5 Dotemachi, Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto Prefecture, 〒868-0057

All information from this temple was obtained from a blog post on Nihon Fan by Tony Mariani.  Please check out their original post here:
https://nihonehime.blogspot.com/2013/10/eikokuji-temple-hitoyoshi-kumamoto.html

Eikoku-ji is a temple of the Soto sect of Zen Buddhism and is a direct branch of the Daihonzan Sojiji temple in Yokohama City. The temple was established in 1408 by the 9th Daimyo of the Sagara clan, Daimyo Sakitsugu. The principle Buddhist images enshrined at the temple are the Shakyamuni Buddha, the Monju Bosatsu and the Fugen Bosatsu.

Eikoku-ji is most famous for a scroll painting of a ghost that hangs inside the main temple purportedly painted by the founder.  The story behind the painting is quite interesting.  When the temple was built, there was a well know samurai in a neighboring town who had a jealous mistress.  In fact, she was so jealous of his wife, that she threw herself into the Kumagawa River and died.  In Japanese mythology, it's very common for jealous or resentful women who die unnatural deaths to return to our world and haunt the living as a ghost or a demon.  And so this jealous mistress returned as a ghost and haunted the wife until she was almost driven mad.  The wife fled to Eikoku-ji to seek the powers of the temple founder, Jittei Osho.  The priest then spoke to the ghost on the tenants of Buddhism, and the jealous ghost was thereafter shocked and appalled by her own appearance.  She begged Osho to pray for her and to help her become a Buddha so that she might escape her wretched form.  And so he prayed for her and she disappeared, never to haunt the wife again.

Because of this story, the temple is sometimes called Yurei Dera, or Ghost Temple.

​Name: 太宰府天満宮​ - Dazaifu Tenman-gū
Enshrined Deity: Tenjin
​Address: 4-7-1, Saifu, Dazaifu, Fukuoka Prefecture 818-0195
Size: 350,000 Square Meters - 86.5 acres

The deity of Dazaifu Tenman-gu is Tenjin, the deified name of the real life scholar Sugawara no Michizane.​  Michizane was a government official during the Heian period.  He rose to the prominent position of Minister of the Right, an action which inspired much envy and bitterness in his rivals.  So, in 900 BCE, the powerful Fujiwara family unleashed a devious scheme against him and he was subsequently demoted and exiled to Kyushu.  Upon departing Kyoto, he composed this poem:

~~~ NOTE: I write captions on many of the photos.  Please click on them to view them in full screen to read the captions. ~~~

To celebrate the holiday, I invited one of my ALT friends to come over for a proper Japanese celebration.  We started off the night with Toshikoshi Soba and watching the NHK Kouhaku Uta Gassen.  I've also added my photos here of the zenzai soup and traditional new year's sweets that we ate on January 1st.

We woke up really early the next morning to watch the first sunrise of the new year, hatsuhinode.  Unfortunately, with the cold weather comes incredibly dense fog.  So we couldn't really see the sun at all.  So we ended up visiting a shrine that was near by where we parked.  It was a surprise first temple visit (hatsumode).

So here are pictures of Bundahachimangu (分田八幡宮), with the inshrined kami Homudawake no Mikoto (3rd century emperor Ōjin).

On October 29th, there was an international meetup for Kimono de Jack.  So, since I was already in Japan, I thought I had to go to Tokyo to represent America and KdJ Massachusetts. 

So I bought a (expensive) plane ticket and stayed in Tokyo for all of two days and one night.  Here are pictures from my adventures there.

Kimono de Jack World Meetup 2016

First there are two videos, a picture slide show, and an adorably awkward video of greetings from around the world.

In November, I went on a trip to Kyoto to visit a friend.  We visited various temples, shrines, and other attractions.  So here's a bunch of pictures from our trip!

Today I went with Arao Taishi High School to Yotsuyama Jinja in Arao.

Yotsuyama Jinja was built near an ancient burial mound made in the late 6th century. It is said that the Bodhisattva Kokūzō Bosatsu (虚空蔵菩薩) descended there.  Records say the temple was first built in 1070 C.E. Then the temple was rebuilt by the lord of Higo, Kiyomasa Kato, in the 1600's.

The enshrined deity is Ōyamatsumi, elder brother of Amaterasu, and an important god who rules mountain, sea, and war. He is also the father of Konohanasakuya-hime, the kami of Mount Fuji (from wikipedia).

So recently I went on a little one day adventure to find as many shrines or temples as I could.  Read more about that here.  I ended up going to a total of 11 and taking lots of pictures.  But before we start, here's a brief explanation of the two.

There are two main types of religious buildings in Japan, temples and shrines.  Shrines (jinja, or jinguu after a name) are for Shinto dieties, while temples (otera, or ji after a name) are Buddhist.  Japan has many of both, sometimes with them being right next to each other or even one inside of the other!  There are some general differences in construction, which you can read more about here.  But the easiest way to tell them apart is that a shinto shrine will always have a torii gate at the very entrance.

From my experience visiting these local little shrines and temples, the Shinto shrines are often overrun with nature and not very well maintained.  Most looked like they had some basic supplies for visiting priests, such as brooms and mats for sleeping.  But that was basically it, just the shrine and nature.  They're also made of an outer structure with no walls, so you can walk up to it and pray.  The first open area connects to an inner locked structure where the spirit resides. Anyone could go to these shrines and pray, even though there's no priests attending them.   The Buddhist temples, on the other hand, were often more like a complex of buildings that were very well maintained. Every single one I saw showed signs of people living in the nearby buildings (cars, air conditioners, etc).  You also couldn't walk inside any buildings, everything was closed up and there was nothing for a visitor to do.  It's not like you could just walk into a building to pray. In that sense, it's more like a Christian church.  You don't just go on a Saturday and expect to go walking around inside. 

​Okay, enough about the general characteristics, let's look at the temples and shrines I visited!

Takano Tenman-gu ​高野天満宮

​The first stop on my trip was Takano Tenmangu, a shinto shrine.  The deity of this shrine is Tenjin, a kami of scholarship and learning.  There are many famous temples dedicated to him, but this is just one of the smaller shrines.  Shrines dedicated to Tenjin are often called Tenman-gu (天満宮).  A large camphor tree next to the shrine is estimated to be over 800 years old.