On Sunday I took a car trip to Iima's hometown Takamatsu, Shikoku, across the Inland Sea from Okayama by the Seto Ohashi bridge (formerly the longest suspension bridge on Earth). I went with Iima, our Korean friend Minhee, Xiao's childhood friend from Kyushu "Hime" (Princess; I don't know her real name), and Erik Hansen, a new JET from Virginia who studied Japanese at UVA, likes Carbon Leaf and folk music.
We went to Yashima Terra (屋島寺), 84th of the 88 temples on Shikoku's pilgrimage. The pilgrimage was founded by Kobo Daishi, or Kukai ("Sky Sea", 774-835AD), a saint who apparently invented the hiragana writing system and founded the only sect of Buddhism that believes enlightenment can be reached in this lifetime.
Yashima was one of the prettiest and most unique temples I've seen. Kannon, the thousand-armed goddess of mercy, is the temple's patron deity, and there's a pretty statue of her, gesturing Buddha's peace sign with one of her right arms. According to legend, when Kodo arrived at this temple, he met an old man on the hill who guided him to the place, then disappeared. The man was apparently the metamorphosis of the temple's guardian animal, Kannon's messenger the "Yashima badger", or tanuki (タヌキ). There are a few giant tanuki sculptures here-- Sleepy eyed, drunken-looking rodents sitting on gigantic testicles, wearing wide hats that look like sombreros, and holding bottles of sake. The statues are very kawaii-cute and unique, especially for a temple. There's an especially interesting pair of htem flanking an orange archway of toriis (temple gates), where we took a few photos. Iima came up with the idea to take a photo of me in front and all our arms out to our sides, so I look like the thousand-armed kannon.
Since the tanuki is a monogamous rodent, it is the patron spirit of families, and the restaurant business. This explains the charming tanuki in front of Hiroe's family's Odazushi sushi restaurant, and the reason for the tanukis' oversized, saggy scrotums: They're fertility gods, of course.
On our way to the temple, Iima took us by his house to meet his parents and his dog, Choco (for chocolate). Choco is a friendly Yorkshire terrier, like the "data dog" on Cowboy Bebop. He jumped on us and licked us a lot, made me miss home. Iima took us to three of his favorite restaurants-- a cheap, tasty udon place where you could get hiya- or atsu- (cool or hot) broth and noodle combinations; a gorgeous garden-restaurant where we ate the local udon specialty (egg, soysauce, ginger, chives, and spices over thick, deliciously hot noodles) for our second lunch. Then, after watching a beautiful sunset over Takamatsu and the Hershey-kiss shaped islands of the Seto Inland Sea, we went to a chicken restaurant where I ate the most tasty, juicy, spicy roast chicken that I've eaten in Japan. Eaten by hand, holding the drippy, juicy, greasy bone wrapped in napkins. Mm.
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