Zenkoji Temple

Here are a few pictures of Zenkoji Temple in Nagano. There are two gates to enter into the temple. This is one side of the first gate:
The second gate is under construction, so it isn't visible to the public right now.



One temple had a museum in the basement. Some of the Buddha images on display show a remarkable similarity to Christian symbols. There were several that showed pictures of a man, woman and baby kneeling before an "angel". The only difference is that the "angel" was Buddha. There were also three paintings of a Buddha in a field of flowers. I was mesmerized by these. They were beautiful. I looked for the remainder of my trip hoping to find a poster or postcards or something with those pictures, but to no avail.

In the main temple, we went down stairs into a dark corridor. There is a brass door that you move and a string is supposed to be attached to the pinky of the Buddha. Once we moved the latch, Beth wanted to turn around and go back the way we came rather than going forward. Rather than be left in the dark alone, I turned around too. Not fun. Later, Beth confessed that she thought that there was a door that we had to open and that it wasn't. She thought we would be trapped down there. Ooh, that wouldn't have been fun.