During past weekend's trip to Miyajima Island, the impending typhoon brought back memories of my first trip to the island, in 1989 after having been in Japan for only a month. A friend at work (Andy Krantz) had a nice trip planned for the week-long Obon holidays the country takes every August, and kindly invited me along. On this trip we stopped by Miyajima Island, which I knew nothing about (at the time I knew nothing about Japan except Perl Harbor and Sony).

On that visit I certainly would have seen the famous shrine gate, but I don't remember it at all. My only memory of that visit 25+ years ago is of a small gazebo at a temple where one can shake a rope to jingle bells to awaken the gods' attention to your petitions, I guess (as described here). During the visit, we had the island to ourselves because it was nonstop torrential rain... just amazing amounts of water descending from the sky in nonstop torrents. I remember the little gazebo because it provided a short respite from the rain. We shook the rope. It was probably my first visit to a temple of any kind.

So with this memory in mind this past weekend, I wondered where that gazebo was. I don't recall having seen it on any subsequent trip to the island (here and here), so I kept more of an active eye out this time.

Part of my wanderings brought to the Daisho-in Temple, tucked in the mountains 15 minutes from the famous shrine gate. With buildings sprinkled all up the side of a mountain, there are many levels and stairways. Every time I came to the top of a stairway I thought I might find my gazebo, but I reached the top without finding it...

I didn't know it at the time, but it turns out that my gazebo is in front of the hall at right in the photo above. Descending back down to where the stairs to the hall starts...

The idea is that you spin them as you go by, as the person in the photo above is doing. According to the note written down the first support for the wheels, it's believed that spinning a wheel once around provides the same benefits as reading one scroll of sutras. Whatever that means.

At the top of the stairs is Maniden Hall, fronted by a gazebo with the rope and bells...

I seem to remember more distance between the gazebo and the building proper, but it was immediately clear that this is the place I remembered. I was happy to have found it.

I don't recall the Hall itself on that trip 25 years ago. It was probably shuttered up for the storm. Peeking inside this time...

Following the veranda down the side and to the back, you come to a red-velvet steep stairway...

It leads to the upper level of the two-story pagoda, which was mostly empty...

The ceiling was pretty, though less symmetrical than I would have imagined...

You can see the five-story pagoda in the distance.