1,000 Armed Kannon - Well, I say 40

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October 25th 2007

Published: October 25th 2007

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Jessica Wyn

Along the Path

Heading up from Kibune to Kurama

I have never been a big city type of a person and for the past month I have been trapped in a city, albeit a beautiful one. Kyoto is surrounded by “mountains” - I would actually use the term foothills - but no one I have come into contact with knows of any hiking trails. To cure my itching need to get out of the city and into the woods I headed off to Kurama which has a temple in the mountains.

Kibune and Kurama are actually two valleys separated by a mountain with the Kurama temple on the top. I got off the train in Kibune and headed up the road until I got to the back entrance of the Kurama temple. I headed up the trail and there were several shrines/temples along the way. It was so nice to be in the woods and not be surrounded by thousands of people. One thing I learned about Japan on this journey is that their insects are on steroids. I have never seen such large spiders or bees in my life. Besides the bugs I encountered along the way, I had a wonderful day. All of the buildings in Kurama

A Shrine along the way

were painted orange and there were lanterns everywhere along the way. I realized when I was reviewing my pictures afterwards that I was a little too obsessed with the lanterns based on the number of pictures I took of them.

After walking from Kibune to Kurama, I headed to the Kurama Onsen, or hot springs. It was an outdoor onsen that over looked the surrounding mountains. Life doesn’t get much better than a day like that! It was probably the best day I have had in Japan so far.

On Thursday, I headed off for Sanjusangen-do. This is the temple where they have one thousand and one of the 1000-armed Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy. Actually, as a math major I counted that each Kannon only has 40 arms, but a Buddhist mathematical formula states that 40 arms are the equivalent of 1000 arms, because each saves 25 worlds. Nonetheless, no matter how you calculate the number of arms it was still quite impressive.

The building that housed the Kannon’s was quite long. Back in the old days they used to have archery competitions in the building. One of the competitions was for 24 hours. The

This Logger loves trees :)

record holder shot 9 arrows a minute for the duration of the competition. That’s amazing. They no longer hold the competitions in the building; there was an original piece of the building that had been replaced on display which was torn to shreds from all of the arrows going through it.

Following Sanjusangen-do I took a long walk up the Kamo river and headed to the Emperial Palace Park. It is a really nice park for just wandering around aimlessly like I did. I stopped and watched a few different baseball practices and then headed towards the palace to see if I could get a view. It was closed so I couldn’t see anything unfortunately.

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