This one is notable because I've literally been walking all around it for almost two years (!) and didn't know it was there until this weekend. It's sandwiched between one of the cemeteries I toured a little while back and our local 7-Eleven. I was really excited when I came across it, I think because it gave me hope that maybe one day I'll go around a corner and discover a Target I didn't know was there.
It could happen, right?
Anyways, the entrance pictured below has a lovely statue and kind of candle holder box next to it. I wondered what the candle-holder box was as it was the first time I had seen one exactly like this.
You, however, may be wondering why on earth there's a swastika on it.
One of the odder things you notice when you move to Japan is that Buddhist temples are denoted on maps by left-facing swastikas. This is common to all East Asian countries. The swastika symbol is much older than Nazism and has been used for a variety of different purposes by different cultures and religions. In Chinese and Japanese it more or less translates to mean "eternity" and is common in Buddhist texts.
This temple also has a shrine and torii within it which led me to go back and look some more into the relationship between shrines and temples. Long story short, some Buddhist temples have their very own Shinto shrines called "chinjusha".
1- some particularly well sculpted trees at the entrance
2- a nice manhole cover on the road in front of the temple
3- the temple's chinjusha
4- the temple
5- this building has a gong!
6- the entrance
7- scaly rooftops and walls
8- statue close-up
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