(2684) Takao-san

Many people don't know that Tokyo is so big that it includes many more things than are usually shown. One of them is Takao-san, (高尾山), a 1965 ft mountain which is in Tokyo's west side, in the city of Hachioji (八王子). Takao can be climbed but many people prefer the cable car (there's also a lift but we took the cable car.)

Besides nature, Takao-san is famous for the Yakuoin (薬王院) temple of the Shingon-shu (真言宗) sect of Buddhism which temple is in turn famous for its relationship with tengu --here are the first ones you see when entering its gate. 

Here is the temple itself with two huge tengu heads on the left and right sides of its entrance and two smaller full-body tengu statues on the left and right sides of the stairs --in the picture you can only see the right tengu head and the left statue (it was impossible to take a picture from the front.)

Going up the temple's complex there is another temple, a Shinto one (those are usually called "shrines" in English) which is called "Izuna Gongendo" (飯縄権現堂)...

...which worships the main deity of Takao-san, Izuna Daigongen (飯縄大権現). Who also has something tengu-ish about him.

Also interesting is the temple called "Daishido" (大師堂) and dedicated to the founder of the sect, Kobo Daishi (弘法大師, 774-835). The statuettes are 88 and correspond to a very famous pilgrimage of 88 temples and 745 miles (still) performed in Shikoku Island and which is also dedicated to Kobo Daishi --under each statuette there is dirt from each of Shikoku's  88 temples. The concept here is that if you go once around the temple and leave one yen on each statuette, you will have the same good fortune you'd have if you did the real pilgrimage --most people leave five yen instead of one because in Japanese "five yen" is read "go en" (五円) which is a homophone for "御縁" or "ご縁" which means something like "good fortune: at least in this context. 

And here is the top of Takao-san, after the temple. On a clear day, you can see Fuji too but that rarely happens during the summer. 

As is usually the case, I took many more pictures than I can put here. If you want to see them, they are in a separate album in Flickr named "Takao-san July 30, 2022". 

(For a bigger version of these pictures both in color and black and white, check my "Japan Arekore" set on Flickr).