Nagano 15 Zenkoji Temple (Buddhist Temple)

Have you ever seen prettier onions? Wow. It turns out that Nagano is an important area for agriculture, I did manage to buy an apple before I left, it was the size of a softball.

This is a random walkway on the way to the temple.

I am happy to be here as the leaves are changing.

How beautiful is this?

Getting closer....

The Zenkoji Map

Past the giant incense burner, people bathe themselves in the smoke from the incense. It is thought to  purify the body of the people visiting the temple. Similar to the American Indians smudging practice.

This is where it all happened, my enlightenment.

The temple contains an inner prayer chamber, accessible to visitors. Currently, a daily morning ritual is held there by the high priest or priestess. From the inner chamber, a narrow staircase leads down to a completely dark corridor. In this corridor worshippers try to touch a metal key hanging on the wall, in order to gain enlightenment. The key represents the Key to the Western Paradise of the Amida Buddha.

I entered the chamber, touched the key, and am enlightened, but for good measure, there was something else you can do here for enlightenment.

There is a giant octagon which weighs 5 tons, it is balanced on it's ends and the idea is to make a full revolution, which I did (with a little help).  The Zenkoji temple octagon is a large revolving cabinet that stores a complete set of Buddhist sutras.  If you achieve a full revolution it is believed to be equivalent to reading all of the sutras.

So much better than Buddha's nostril.

The view from the pagoda

On my way out, I head over to the Yawatayaisogoro / Hachimanya Isogoro pepper shop.

This is a spice shop that features a chili that I have found on almost every restaurant table.  It's good over rice, and raman, not too spicy, very flavorful.  You can design your own mix at this location or rely on their prepackaged seasoning which I did, because the selection was overwhelming.

You can read about them here..,

https://www.yawataya.co.jp/en/about/history/

I was so hungry by now,  I had some street food, which included a deep fried chicken nugget covered in this pepper, which was difficult to eat without getting it all over me.  It was tasty though.... no more dawdling, it's time to head back to Tokyo...