Friday was Sports Day at my school. Since most of the activities would be at other locations, I was offered a day off. I'll work on materials for my classes this weekend -- I have to do 3 communication lessons for one of the 2nd year classes. One lesson will on body parts. So, Friday the weather was nice so I went to Utsunomiya to find the Oya Kannon. It's a 30 minute bus ride from the JR Utsunomiya station. (There is a Tobu Utsunomiya station as well as a Japan Rail Utsunomiya station -- two different rail companies).
When I got close, I just followed the sound of lots of kids -- there was a group of elementary school kids on a trip there.
Basically, it's what you'd expect -- a large Kannon statue carved from oya stone. Kannon is the Japanese version of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin, who is the Chinese version of the
Boddhisatva Avalokiteshvara. Oya stone is the material that Frank Lloyd Wright made the original Imperial Hotel from.You can see the stairs that take you up behind her head in the picture.
There is also a temple, and some very old reliefs carved in the stone. You're not allowed to photograph them, though. They are enclosed in the part of the building to the left in the picture. Stone carving are pretty unusual in Japan. Usually statues are made of wood or metal.
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3 comments:
Those kids are adorable in their uniforms. Mind you, any group of small American children will also look as if they're wearing uniforms of a sort: the girls are all in hot pink with pictures of Disney princesses (except for the occasional rebel wearing hot pink with a picture of Barbie or Hello Kitty) and the boys are all in dark colors with pictures of dinosaurs, robots, or Spider-Man.
How tall is the Oya Kannon? Do the tourist stands sell likenesses, or is that not allowed to reproduce and sell--you know Americans would. (We'll settle for the online photo, thanks). ktucson
The Oya Kannon statue is 27 meters tall. That's about 88.5 feet.
There was a shop that sold stone statues. The smallest ones were frogs with a smaller frog on it's back. I'm not sure about the meaning of that. They weren't attractive enough to lug home.
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