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Description
After following the path up the side of the mountain, it levels off into a clearing that houses many smaller statues, presided over by this beautiful Buddha figure.

You can see more images on my Flickr here!

We visited Mt. Hachiman, which is south of where we live. It's a notable mountain, because it looks the same from most angles (or so I have been told) and is one of the taller peaks in our area of Kyushu. Students regularly take trips to hike it, and the view from further up is rather astounding - you can see all of Nakatsu, including where we live!

Anyways, on our trip up the mountain, I of course got distracted by shrines and temples. This was a huge complex of literally hundreds of statues of Buddha and Bodhisattva. Everywhere you looked, there were small stone statues, and some rather large ones as well. The most notable one is, of course, Hachiman, who is a Bodhisattva himself, in addition to being a Shinto kami (it all goes back to that fun period in Japanese history when Buddhism and Shinto were pretty much worshiped together, and a lot of intermingling went on, until Shinbutsu Bunri (separation of Buddha and Kami) was enacted in the Meji period ).

Mt. Hachiman 「八面山」 : February 9, 2013
Nakatsu-shi, Oita-ken, Kyushu, Japan
　　中津市　　　大分県　　　九州　　日本

Description
After following the path up the side of the mountain, it levels off into a clearing that houses many smaller statues, presided over by this beautiful Buddha figure.

You can see more images on my Flickr here!

We visited Mt. Hachiman, which is south of where we live. It's a notable mountain, because it looks the same from most angles (or so I have been told) and is one of the taller peaks in our area of Kyushu. Students regularly take trips to hike it, and the view from further up is rather astounding - you can see all of Nakatsu, including where we live!

Anyways, on our trip up the mountain, I of course got distracted by shrines and temples. This was a huge complex of literally hundreds of statues of Buddha and Bodhisattva. Everywhere you looked, there were small stone statues, and some rather large ones as well. The most notable one is, of course, Hachiman, who is a Bodhisattva himself, in addition to being a Shinto kami (it all goes back to that fun period in Japanese history when Buddhism and Shinto were pretty much worshiped together, and a lot of intermingling went on, until Shinbutsu Bunri (separation of Buddha and Kami) was enacted in the Meji period ).

Mt. Hachiman 「八面山」 : February 9, 2013
Nakatsu-shi, Oita-ken, Kyushu, Japan
　　中津市　　　大分県　　　九州　　日本