With Julie’s visit this week, I have been very busy doing all sorts of fun tourist type activities! One of the best trips we did was heading off to Nanzoin Temple, which features The Reclining Buddha (more on this later).

Rather than bore you with lots of hyper-descriptive prose, I think a visual tour would be much more fun. So let’s get started!

Getting there was pretty easy, just a 30 minute train ride from Hakata station. Once we got off the train and started trekking up towards the temple grounds, we found this family of turtles with their own mini-shrine. They were kind enough to let me take way too many photos as I over-enthusiastically snapped shots from various exciting angles.

Look who came to greet us!

Clearly turtles weren’t the only photogenic fauna around, as this rather large dragonfly posed long enough for me to get a fairly zoomed in photo.

Posed for the photo and flew off as soon as I was done…

One of the first statues to be seen was of this chap with his flames and sword. We originally thought he was some bad guy, but Julie did some research and we discovered he is actually Fudoumyouou who is a Buddhist deity who protects worshippers from harm.

Later learnt this angry looking guy is a protective deity

As we spotted more of the classic Buddha style statues, we noticed they were usually wearing some sort of clothing, be that a hat, a cardigan or the like.  It turns out the reason behind this is fairly involved, so check out this post for details.

Lots of little statues, all wearing the cutest clothes

After a bit more walking, we finally made our way to the star attraction, The Reclining Buddha himself!  I must say, the statue really is impressive and quite something else to behold.  He is the world’s largest bronze statue and is the same size as the Statue of Liberty. He is so large I had to use the panorama mode of the phone to get him fully in the frame.

Even more impressive in person…

You can walk around to his feet and I think the following image really gives you a good idea of the scale of the statue…

Buddha foot with Julie touching the thousand spoke wheel symbol

Once we had seen the Buddha and enjoyed some well timed ice-creams, it was time for some exploring!

The path upwards…

After following a (very steep) trail up and out of the temple grounds, we found ourselves in some beautiful back-country, surrounded by bamboo forest. I love the sound they make as they rustle in the breeze. It was truly a magical part of the day for me.

I love bamboo forests

From the trail, we were able to visit a number of smaller temples and shrines. At one temple, we even had the Buddhist monk come out and offer us watermelon to eat! It was unexpected and very much appreciated on a very warm day. We ventured on each time and were treated to some great views through the trees.

Fabulous views over the countryside

As we wound our way back down the mountain towards the station again, we found many more statues, but the following set were really quite something else. Such a riot of colour and clothing on each of the little stone statues!

Someone likes playing dress up…

Here you can see some up close… adorable!

So dang cute…

Overall it was a brilliant day and even the photos can’t do justice to the adventure we had. If you ever get a chance, I’d highly recommend a visit!