Funadera Hachimanguu Shrine
Yet another shrine in chttomatte’s blog ever growing collection.
The shrine is located in Nada-Ku, Kobe and the closest station to it is Oishi (Hanshin railway). If you are coming from Sannomiya you just have to walk a hundred or so meters back next to the railway (on the side of the sea) and you will see it.
The shrine is dedicated to Hachiman – the god of war (mainly) and protector of Japan. I learned that this the second most common type of Shinto shrine in Japan (in Nada-ku may be the most common one). You can recognize them easily by the spiral element/logo (also used by many samurai clans):
By the way the above picture is from Rokko Hachimanguu – another beautiful Shinto shrine in Nada-ku (I will post pictures from it in few days)
I would like to start with the water dragon as a first picture from Funadera Hachimanguu:
Just two more pictures of the dragon (notice the still green bamboo – the old one are burned in the new year fire):
The temple itself (notice the Hachiman’s spirals or vortexes on the curtains):
The real surprise though was the little Inari shrine behind the main temple:
You can see such small shrines in almost every Shinto shrine but this one was particular because of the saturated blue colored animals part of the decoration (one of the animals resembled shisa and the other one an elephant).
Here is a close view of the shisa (a protective spirit with head of lion and body of dog – very popular in Okinawa)
And here is a close view of the elephant which turned out to be baku – a creature capable of eating nightmares!!!
I do not think that in such company kitsune (or fox – the Inari messenger) should worry about anything:)
Just one more photo of the torii leading toward the Inari shrine:
As I like everything local in Japan I would like to finish this post with two photos from the neighborhood of Funadera Hachimanguu Shrine (it is really as local as it can get):):
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The next post will be about Rokko Hachimanguu – yet another god of the war Nada-ku Shinto shrine.
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