The Urasa Bus Tour

Last Sunday, some students and faculty went on a bus tour of the local area.  We visited 3 spots, the Hakkai mountain shrine and Buddhist temple, the winery and produce market, and Bishamondo, the old shrine downtown.

Here are all the bus passengers as we got out at our first stop near Hakkai-san.

I am the only person not pictured.

The entrance to the shrine

Getting closer to the shrine

Prayer tiles

View from the shrine to the valley below

Adjacent to the Hakkai-san shrine was a lake created by damming a mountain river

A hiking trail along the lake

Down on the pier, you can see Richard and some students feeding the hungry carp.

Now we are the entrance of the Bishamondo shrine in downtown Urasa.

In the bottom right corner were our tour guides, two high school students.

Bishamondo shrine is approximately 1200 years old.

This is the "dunk tank" where the main event of the Naked Man Festival takes place.
Here's another video of IUJ students participating in the 2009 festival.

Water pours from the dragon's mouth.

Apparently there are a lot of dragon's mouths in this area where clean water springs forth.

Although we got to see some great places, it was the hottest and most humid day of the year to date.  So most of us were not in the best of moods.  Luckily nobody got into arguments.  The coolest part of the trip was not captured on camera, but it was the basement level of the winery where the wine was cooled by snow captured from the winter.  No air conditioning needed.