It's been a month since I sprained my ankle while on a mountain hike. It's been feeling mostly better for a while, so I finally decided to do a short hike up to the Shogunzuka overlook just to test things out.

The hike is very simple (I've done it with a five-year-old in tow), and from home it took only 10 minutes to the trailhead, and from there 20 minutes up.

It was a splendid day, but the view from the top was hazy and dull...

The plane in the distance is Jetstar 615, half way on its run from Tokyo to Kumamoto. Flying at an altitude of 11km, it's about 34km (21 miles) away at this point.

There wasn't much else to see, so I turned around to try my luck going back down, a direction that I tend to be injury proned.

A minute into the downhill portion I came across trail signposts, and on a whim decided to take the trail down to the Chion'in Temple, a path I'd never taken.

These local signposts are much nicer than the official Kyoto City posts like the one in the lower right of the photo (like this), which indicates that the path to Chion'in doesn't even go there (or anywhere).

The sign above informs me that the trail's exit at the Chion'in Temple closes at 4pm. I had plenty of time.

Despite that I used to live about a minute's walk away from the Chion'in Temple, I've never had much interest in it, other than its famous huge wooden gate. When you walk through the gate and up the bazillion steps to the temple proper, you're greeted mostly with a vast expanse of dusty gravel and a common (but big) temple building. Not too interesting.

The temple building is currently undergoing its once-in-a-hundred-years roof repair, which made for a great photo opportunity for the three days it was open, but for the other years of the project, you get just a big ugly protection shell.

So anyway, I was curious where among this stuff the trail came out of the mountain, and with that in mind, I was a bit surprised to find the trail exit the mountain near a dilapidated and apparently-abandoned temple(ish) building I'd not known of...

There was also a mini Stonehenge of monuments, including these two massive rocks:

The carving on the one with the flowing writing is amazing...

Just off trail, spiders had set up their own monuments, with webs that reflected (refracted?) pretty colors...

Then I came across an entrance to what I assume is a sub-temple of some sort, and a graveyard:

Normally if they don't want you to go in, the sign says “Entrance Prohibited”, but this sign says “Passage Prohibited”. I took that to mean that they didn't want you using it as a shortcut path to some destination beyond, which meant that I probably could have gone in, but I didn't want to take the chance that I misunderstood, so I didn't enter. After all, I'm just a guest.

Finally I came to the gate that closes at 4pm...

And then was stunned to see the biggest bell I'd ever seen:

I was now regretting that the one lens that I brought with me (the Sigma “Bigma” 50-500mm) didn't go nearly wide enough to do this bell justice. According to the sign in the photo that leads this post, it was built in 1636 (378 years ago). It's 3.3m (~11 ft) tall, 2.8m wide at the mouth, 30cm (about a foot) thick, and about 70 metric tons (150,000 pounds).

Just wow.

The bell is a designated “Important Cultural Property of Japan”, which somehow made it more funny when a newspaper delivery guy came whizzing by on his scooter, up the steps I had just descended, and through the gate that was soon to be locked at 4pm...

He came back soon enough, so he probably didn't go up the mountain :-), but instead to the sub-temple area I'd been hesitant to enter.

From the bell area, a short path went down to the aforementioned “vast expanse of dusty gravel” main area, so by now I knew where I was, but I felt silly for not having known about the bell or the sub-temple(ish) area. (I didn't realize at the time that this was merely the start of many feeling-silly-that-I-was-so-ignorant experiences for the day.)

Rather than go down to the main area, I took another path that lead, as best I can tell, off the temple property to a very small little park that was predominantly filled with big ugly “STAY OFF THE GRASS” signs, and this little gazebo with an even uglier “CAMPING STRICTLY PROHIBITED” sign sitting squarely in the one place in the park that anyone might want to actually enjoy...

This kind of discord (a pleasant/beautiful scene is totally marred by something ugly that really doesn't need to be there) is common in Japan. It's such a shame because the Japanese sense for beauty and harmony with nature is otherwise so nice.

In their defense, though, though the ugly sign does destroy the one nice area of the park someone might want to enjoy, it's also the one area someone might want to camp in, so yeah, they have that going for them. /-:

Anyway, facing the park more or less next to the big bell area was another temple I'd not known existed:

I strolled around the area a bit and finally came across a place I'd been before, a nice set of steps set in a mossy hillside, just off a small road. I'd seen it just once, 2½ years ago, but recognized it instantly.

So with that point of reference in place, I returned to the big bell at the Chion'in Temple, and headed down to the “vast expanse of dusty gravel”... only to be surprised yet again by how much I hadn't realized existed.

Continued here...