nara, day three

we took a back route through more fields and rice paddies to a nearby train station, which was small and mostly empty, and caught a southbound train to Yanagimoto station. our destination was a walking route called Yamanobe-no-Michi: an interconnected series of dirt trails, paved pathways, and parts of roads marked by occasional red signposts that runs along an ancient road from the Edo period.

the route goes past farms, orchards, houses, and temples, as well as a number of "mausoleums" of former Emperors in the form of keyhole-shaped mounds of earth now covered in grass and trees. B was most excited about the occasional honour-system farm stands selling random vegetables. (we got some green beans.) there were songbirds and skinks, turtles and chickens, plus a few fish and some stray cats.

not long after we'd turned off the trail back towards the train line, we came upon what looked like an enormous temple, like four connected regular-sized temples facing a central point in the middle of a wide gravel lot (see photo below). curious, we removed our shoes and went inside to find that the four buildings were mostly empty and that they all opened onto one another, forming a huge tatami room the size of an airplane hangar. there seemed to be a sunken area in the middle, but we didn't get close enough to see what was there. there were about a hundred people scattered all around the place, kneeling and facing the center, all doing strange hand gestures we'd never seen before.

we googled it afterwards, and it turns out it's the headquarters of a religion called Tenrikyo, which according to their website, "came into existence on October 26, 1838, when God the Parent, Tenri-O-no-Mikoto, became revealed through Oyasama, Miki Nakayama, to save all humankind. [...] Tenrikyo teaches that any thoughts that differ from God’s intention can be regarded as mistaken. Comparing such thoughts to dust, Tenrikyo encourages us to sweep away any accumulated dust daily."

anyway, we'd finally worn ourselves ragged after walking 10 km on a very hot day, so we went back to the house and had another quiet, relaxing evening that may have involved some of the remaining sake samplers.