Lyla D.
Yelp
On our second full day of sightseeing in Kyoto, Japan, we visited Sanjūsangendo, a Buddhist temple just a short drive from our hotel. During our last year's visit to Kyoto, we visited another Buddhist temple, the Dera, and a Zen-Buddhist temple, Kinkaku-ji or Rokuon-ji (Golden Pavilion), so we looked forward to a new experience at Sanjūsangen-dō.
Just as with all of our visits to Japanese temples and shrines, we were reminded to be respectful of worshippers. They kindly requested quiet or silence and enforced restrictions for photography, video, cellphone use, smoking, or eating within the temple. Because it was raining during our visit, we carefully placed our wet umbrellas in the umbrella caddy, removed our shoes, and placed them on the designated racks for our group. We could feel the cold air and outside temperature coming up through the lightly carpeted wooden floors through our socks.
As we followed the hallway leading to the worship hall, the heady scent of burning incense tickled my throat and immediately reminded me of childhood visits to my paternal grandparents home in Honolulu's old Chinatown. We noticed many parts of the worship hall and statues were blackened from the soot of centuries of burning incense.
We were aware of the hugeness of this temple since it is Japan's longest wooden main hall (hōndo) structure measuring at 120 meters or slightly more than 390 feet. Its name (Sanjūsangen-dō) means "33 intervals" which comes from the number of intervals between the building's support columns or the traditional method of building size measurement. Our guide told us this temple hosts an archery competition called "Ōmato" or "Coming of Age" along 60 meters of the length of the hōndo. The competition brings in thousands of 20 year-old male and female contestants from all-around Japan. Shucks, we missed seeing the competition as it was held in January.
As soon as we rounded the first right turn into the worship hall, we were amazed by the sight of a of the 1001 standing statues of the Thousand-armed Buddhist deity, Kannon (goddess of Mercy) and at its center, a gigantic seated statue of Kannon. At each side of the hall of statues, there were dynamic and powerful statues of the Wind God and Thunder God. All of the statues were carved from Japanese cypress, and most date back to the mid-12th Century. We also found the statues interesting to look at because each facial expression of the standing deity, Kannon, was different and not duplicated.
Our amazement and excitement to the 12th Century carved wood Kannon statues nearly matched our mid-90s travel experience to view X'ian, China's terracotta warriors.
We'd love to return to witness the Ōmato National Archery Competition and feel the sense of peace and calm from walking through Sanjūsangen-dō.