Hidden Shrines

Today was a beautiful day out (cool, not too humid, and a nice breeze, clear sky!) so I thought instead of sitting in the house moping or doing something like laundry or dishes *pft* I would head out and get some pictures (along with lunch!). I pulled up Google Maps, searched for 社 -- "ja" or じゃ, the second kanji in temple/shrine -- "jinja" or じんじゃ that appears in the names of both Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Set my marker to the closest one that I hadn't been to before, and headed off (after grabbing some hand rolls to eat for lunch, of course).

This one was hard to get to. It is surrounded by some houses and a crap ton of rice fields. There isn't a road leading to it, at least that I saw, so I had to park my bike off to the side and walk along the pounded dirt on the outskirts of a rice field to even find the entrance. The big stone torii appeared out of nowhere, surrounded by trees.

On a side note, I'll never get sick of finding places like this. I guess since we don't have anything like this in the US, it's still a bit of a shock to me to be biking past houses, a fields, a factory type thing (they were cutting down lumber into boards) and then, boom, stone shrine entrance, just... there! I think this is why I'm liking being not in a big city - things like this are just nestled away. I saw a whole whopping one other person for the hour or two I was there, and he was going to meet his granddaughter after she got out of elementary school. So crazy to me.

You can see more images on my Flickr here!

This temple is just a tiny one in our town, not much more to say about it. I believe the name translates into "Pine tree hill temple" or something similar, but I could be insanely wrong, as my Japanese is very poor still.

Matsuo Jinja 「松尾神社」 : September 26, 2013
Nakatsu-shi, Oita-ken, Kyushu, Japan
　　中津市　　　大分県　　　九州　　日本