竹生島(Tikubujima)

  I went to 竹生島(Tikubujima) this time.

竹生島 is one of a 名勝 in Japan. 名勝(meisyou) means beautiful and historical important places defined by Japanese government. 

竹生島 is located on the lake Biwa and has a famous Buddhist temple called 宝厳寺(hougonji).

When I hear the existence of it, I was surprised because of 宝厳寺’s location. It locating on a small island on lake Biwa. So I went to there by a ferry and takes 30 minute.

The scenery was beautiful and stairs were naturally assimilated to island. 

 
 Usually in Japan, Buddhist statues are kept under the roof or in a room. But this time is different. I could find Buddhist statues at outside and the color of red was shiny in nature, green color background.
Comparison between red and green was beautiful.
The color of leaves were green when i visited but, if you visit there in the height of autumn, you can see the leaves of autumn colored.
A face of statue was really cool and little scary.

 Through a main temple and keep climbing a hill, there were more old temple I could watch.

This is one of Japanese national treasure called 唐門(karamonn)
Carved design on poles and roof was really cool  and very very tiny details were carved.

http://www.kokuhoworld.com/036.html

I tasted beautiful nature. The smell of lake Biwa was somehow little salty like ocean.









Many people ware visited there though hard to access. something must be there that attract people who want to come.








Official site of 宝厳寺　http://www.chikubushima.jp/

高架下（koukasita)

This time I researched Sannomiya, Kobe.  Sannomiya has a long and narrow shopping street under the elevating structure of JR line. The reason why I chose Sannomiya shopping street is it might has some connection between culture and visual anthropology I thought.  My first impression of it was moody because of the special condition like trains are running over the roof of shops.

Train is running on the roof of shopping street.

Atmosphere was dark in a good mean. I could observe these things like pictures above. The special condition is one of the reasons that make it so. The structure of the shopping street is hard to get sunlight. I’m not sure due to I took pics at night, but exactly hard to get light from san.

Also I found many clothing stores, shoes stores accessories stores and hat stores. I wondered why there are so many similar kind of clothe stores? Almost shops for young people. For young people, it is fashionable place and shopping in there is fashionable things too. Variety is necessary. But I could find a few restaurants or eating place except fast food restaurants like DOUTOR Coffee or McDonald’s.

That place is not suitable for restaurants because bad environment for restaurants. The reason is due to the special condition I mentioned above. You can arrive China town in few minutes and find many restaurants when you across the street. The town around Koukasita(高架下、shopping street) has many restaurant in fact and people don’t need it at shopping street.

At last, I could find many bicycles in there too like Senbayashi, Osaka I researched last time. I found rare advertisements. It says “Don’t run on a sidewalk!!” That is too small to see!!

I never hard hamburger shop has delivery service by bicycles. Bicycle culture is deeply ingrained.

http://piazza-kobe.com/　official site of Kokashita
http://www.sawanotsuru.co.jp/guide/kobe/12/03.htm　　you can get some info! but in Japanese.