A photo blog, since we finally got our photos uploaded, yay!
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| Oooh, lanterns. An ugly grumpy woman tries to sell me useless maps, and a not-so-ugly friendly woman gives me a free useful map and list of free accommodation along the route. Now we're on our way. |
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| A typical temple interior. The black bowl produces a very clear tone when struck. |
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| Busloads of tourists are shuttled from temple to temple and led in prayer by their guides. |
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| Big feet. |
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A nice rock.
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| Seasonal engravings. |
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| Nice garden. |
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| Bus tourists attempt to photograph something holy pointed out by their tour guide, mutter and grumble as they are unable to get a good shot. |
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| A more elegant shrine than most. |
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| A geniune pilgrim. On his 96th circuit by foot. Made his first circuit at age 17, and at the time the picture was taken was cheerfully waiting for his camping gear to dry out after the previous day's rain. |
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| A garden with zen aspirations. |
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| A crapload of steps led up to this temple. One flight of many. |
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| The start of the mountain pass to the next temple - a 12 hour hike. |
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6 comments:
I'm guessing this has either been explained already or is some cultural nuance I'm not familiar with, but I have to ask: why the fingers?
It's simpler than you think. We just decided to count off the temples a picture at a time, with the fingers to remind us which picture was taken where. A full gallery printed out from 1 to 88 would have looked pretty cool, I think.
Ah, that makes sense: I guess counting off on fingers is pretty universal, culturally speaking?
Ayup, although I find it interesting how the specifics differ. Which fingers are used for 1 to 4, and how 6 and above are shown.
Note how Hozumi counts off temples 6 to 8 (9 and 10 would normally be done the same way)
I really like the Chinese single-hand approach: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_number_gestures
Oh yeah: hadn't noticed that. Economical. :)
Also, the number six for Chinese is interesting, as that looks like the shaka, which I see in BJJ a lot (originally a Hawaiian thing which moved into surfing, I think). I wonder if there's any connection?
The Chinese count is derived from 六 (6), so it seems unlikely there's any connection.
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