What a Friend We Have in Jizōs 35

At the top of the path was another large rust and white temple, with roofline corners that arched into the sky. Inside was a thirty-foot high gilded camphor wood statue with eleven heads, each one representing a different phase in the search for enlightenment.
“She’s huge.” Robyn said.
“One of the largest wooden statues in Japan.” I said. “Kannon, Goddess of Mercy, and despite her size, very much like Jizō- both protect the Six Realms of Karmic Rebirth, both are patrons of motherhood and children, and both protect the souls of aborted children. She resides in every grain of rice. Her original name, Guanyin, means ‘Observing the Cries of the World.’ When a believer dies, Guanyin placed them in the heart of a lotus, and sent them off to the western Pure Land Sukhāvatī paradise.”
“Uniquely beautiful.” She said.
“Not quite.” I said. “In 721 a monk named Tokudo Shonin discovered a large camphor tree in the mountain forests near the village of Hase in the Nara region. He realized the trunk was large enough to provide enough material for carving two Kannon statues. One was sculpted from the lower trunk and enshrined in the Hasedera Temple near Nara; the carved larger upper half was set adrift into the sea, to find a place of karmic connection, with a prayer that it would reappear to save the people. The image drifted for 300 miles before washing up on shore, but its first stop brought bad luck or illness to everyone who touched it. They threw it back into the sea.
Fifteen years later, in 736, on the night of June 18, the statue washed ashore at Nagai Beach, sending out rays of light as it did. It was immediately brought to Kamakura, and the temple constructed to honor it.”
Next door was the Amida-do, that hall that held the ten-foot tall golden statue of Amida Buddha.
“It was commissioned by Yoritomo on his forty-second birthday.” I said. “Normally an unlucky year for most men, but unluckier that year for Yoshitune, who he forced to kill himself.”

                                ‘Oh! My hips hurt so!
                                 My shoulders ache!
                                 Where can I give my legs a rest?
                                 I know! I’ll move Amida Buddha
                                 And lie down at his side.’
                                       Rice planting song from Aomori

In 2004, soil samples from Sagami Bay were found to contain radioactive contamination from the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests. Our views of Sagami Bay, from the observation deck at the top, were brilliant in the sun. A small restaurant served small mitarashi dango rice flour dumplings covered with sweet soy sauce. Beside a sign. Beware of Kites...They’ll aim for your food from behind and come to take it. Their sharp claws will injure you. Please be careful! 
Samurai children were raised like that. Soy sauce. No sauce.




                                      ‘A kite breeding a hawk.’
                                                            Ninja proverb