Tōjinbō (東尋坊)

According to legend, a Buddhist priest named Tojimbo was pushed off a cliff into the sea in Fukui prefecture.  Either he was corrupt, and the locals pushed him; or he had fallen in love with a local princess and a rival for her affections pushed him.  Either way, his ghost haunted the area, causing violent storms until another priest performed a memorial ceremony for him.  The storms abated, and the area is now a tourist destination.

Yesterday, I joined a school-sponsored trip to Tojimbo on the Sea of Japan side of the largest Japanese island, Honshu. Several students, 2 staff and a driver made the trip by car.  Here is our route.

Along the way, we stopped at a rest stop where there was a great view of the Sea of Japan. 

Here are views at Tojimbo.

The weather was nice -- it's finally starting to cool down from the 80° F weather we've had here.

A teacher and I took a sightseeing boat ride.  Everyone else wanted to climb down the cliff instead.  Here's the boat.  We took stairs down to it, so we actually climbed down, too.

 Here's the island we'll see from the boat.

 Here are the cliffs with people for scale.

Here's the inside of the boat.  It was not crowded, and we could easily switch sides to get the best view.

Here's a video from the boat ride.

And here are some more pictures.

There is a nearby island, and you can see the unusual geology on the side of the island.

 The island has a shrine on it -- the tallest structure here is a torii gate.

 We ate at a nearby restaurant.  Like many Japanese restaurants, this one had replicas of the dishes on the menu, so we all picked what we wanted and ordered before we even sat down.

For reference, I ordered the dish in the front left corner -- crab and salmon roe on rice.

The area is famous for crab, so as you can see, lots of dishes featured crab.

Someone else got a side dish that included crab roe and was served in a shell.

Here's the rest of that meal.

Here is mine.  What do you think?  Does it match the replica in the window?

It certainly was delicious!