An Extract From my Travel Journal…
“Probably one of the most fascinating things I found in Japan was the secret beneath Tamagawashi Daishi. This temple, unlike some shrines in Japan, was Buddhist and when you entered, an old woman and her son instructed you to walk around the back of the altar and ask to be able to do the pilgrimage that lay beneath the temple. Then you put on black little slippers with rubber soles and descended a very steep staircase into the darkness. You are in pitch blackness with only your hands to guide you by feeling along the walls of a winding narrow corridor that wound further and further underground, turn upon turn until you stumble finally into a candlelit chamber filled with 88 statues of the Buddha. This represents the 88 temples on the island of Shikoku that make up a traditional pilgrimage route that can take several weeks to complete. But here under the earth, you can do it in a matter of a few hundred steps.”
View the Virtual Exhibitions
