Nanzoin Temple and Buddha Statue

Today my wife and I went to Nanzoin temple here in Fukuoka, we rode the train to Yoshizuka and then took a train that went past Yusa to a train stop that I couldn’t properly pronounce very well, all I knew was that it had the kanji for previous at the end of it (Mae), but the area is called Sasaguri. I found out that this large span of small shrines all intertwined each other to make a very large temple compound. The pictures we took were of a lot of tiny very detailed statues, some REALLY big statues and of course the grand prize of them all, the reclining Buddha statue. (update) A few people debate on if it really is the biggest bronze statue in the world, but it comes down to no one else being able to find a bigger one to trump the current master piece (If anyone has any proof otherwise please share it). This statue was built back in 1995 and supposedly the temple has a good connect with Myanmar and some kind of organization there help fund this statue. There are 3 different states of a Buddha statue, standing, sitting and reclining. The sitting is the most popular to show the Buddha meditating, but the reclining is the state of “death” in a way, it’s preparation for entering nirvana or nehan in Japanese.

While we were at the compound we entered into a cave that had a really low ceiling walking into it, no one would come in because there was chanting coming from inside, but we braved it any how and found an older lady chanting and going about her ritual/meditation, she waved us in and attempted to tell us what to do to properly pray/meditate to the shrine inside. So we did, and it was interesting to see her continue on, then get up and leave. We saw here a couple other places around the shrine doing the same thing to practically ever shrine that the temple had (which was a lot). We then also did some hiking up into the mountain which passed the temple grounds and came to a road, there were loan shrines littered throughout the area and on the side of the road, we also stumbled across a well hidden Shinto shrine which was an interesting find. Through these walk we ran into (saw) two different tanuki, which was rather fun to see being I’ve heard they’re very skittish creatures and it’s a sign of good fortune to see them.

-Nihon Scope