Yomeiji temple in Tsuwano

Yomeiji temple used to be the center of Soutou sect in this region and held 200 monks practicing Zen there, but now, only a aged couple lives and keeps this temple.

experience of cooking Mochi

The other day, before we go to see the Cherryblossoms, we dropped in a small festival.

Fresh cooked rice cake is very soft and yummy!!

Yabusame field in Tsuwano

This is the Yabusame field in Tsuwano.
This side is for the Forward and Shooting, and there is the other way for backward to the starting point.
This is the perfect style.

Tsuwano horseback archery 2

The riders shout "Yin Yang" when he shoot the arrow.

Tsuwano town's Yabusame belongs to the Ogasawara school.

Only Tsuwano town preserve the original Yabusame field, so the head of Ogasawara school come to this ceremony from Kamakura.

Tsuwano Horseback archery1

Tsuwano town people have been preserved the traditional horseback archery for more than 400 years. The Load of Tsuwano brought the Yabusame(Horseback archery) to his land from the capital Kamakura.

Washibara Tenmangu Shrine in Tsuwano

Washibara Hachimangu was established in Kamakura period(1185-1333) . It is located in the South-West of the Tsuwano mountain castle and protects that castle.It holds the horseback archery field, only one archery field which has been preserved the original style since Kamakura period.

Kanetani jouzan sakura April 2008

580 years ago, a young cherry tree was planted beside a mountain castle.

Long time later, only the tree is still alive on this hill top.

Drooping Cherryblossom in Ikoji temple

Sesshu Toyo, the founder of ink-painting in Japan, designed this garden about 450 years ago.

He was also the main priest of Ikoji temple (Rinzai sect), he tried to discribe the Buddhist pure land in this zen garden. You can practice Zen at this temple.

I took this video in the late March, 2008.

Ohira-Sakura

This big Sakura tree is very old....and she is almost dying...

Her flowers are 1/3 of before and she will have a surgery this year.

I hope she will be better sooner. I want to see full of Sakura flowers on her branches.

Drooping Cherry-blossom at Manyouji temple

March 29th, 2009

We went to see some beautiful Sakura (Cherry-blossom) trees in my town.

Fortunately there is a ceremony at temple and the priest came out to ring the bell....