Sunday, May 20, 2018

Saga Festival and Mifune Festival

We had two festivals in Saga Arashiyama today, May 20. One was Saga Festival and the other was Mifune Festival.
Saga Festival is the festival of Atago Shrine
and Nonomiya Shrine.Today’s event was the former festival and they will have the latter one next Sunday.
I went to Otagi-Nenbutsuji to see Gohyaku-rakan(500 stone figures of Rakan, the apprentice of Buddha). Along the path to go there long bamboo sticks were erected by
volunteer people for the festival.

Before I went to Otagi Nenbutsuji temple, I visited Danrinji Temple near Nison-in Temple. Danrinji Temple is a small temple now, but it was a very large temple in 
9 century when it was founded. So it has a very long history and historical treasure.

In its garden, we can find the eggs of Moriao-gaeru(Moriao frog) on the tree.
Moriao frog is a unique frog which bears its eggs on the trees. I heard that we can see the frogs in the pond under the tree in summer.


After visiting Danrinji Temple, I went to OtagiNenbutsuji Temple, where you can find 1200 stone statues. The temple is located at the foot of the Atago Mountain and it takes 30 minutes walk, but It's worth walking there because you can meet many unique stone statues.


On the way to come home, I visited the old Japanese style cafe and had green tea and sweets.


The cafe was very comfortable and sweets were very tasty.

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