May 16, 2012
Jesse's May web post
Hey it is Jesse, with my first official post!
During Golden Week my host family and I went to Takayama, in Gunma prefecture, and spent time at a Japanese farm.
Me with my host family, looking at some awesome goats at Takayama.
We also went to Nikko, where there is a very famous shrine, along with the almost universally known “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” monkeys [The shrine is Nikko Tōshō-gū, which is dedicated to the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu and contains his remains, and these monkeys are the famous ‘Sanzaru’, called ‘Mizaru’, ‘Kikazaru’ and ‘Iwazaru’- Peter]. We headed through the temple and saw the three gigantic gods of mercy statues; we should be pretty glad that these are gods of mercy, because you can certainly cause a lot of harm with one thousand hands!
We then headed up the incredibly steep steps to the shrine. Inside there was a tour guide who explained the whole place, its history, and also the protocols of the time. Afterwards you could go around and look at all the ancient architecture, which was fairly amazing. Having survived the mysterious and scary Oni as we entered and left the shrine I felt pretty holy, and had a pretty awesome time.