Okay...So this shot is with the back side of the banner showing. Can't be helped. It's at the end of the bridge and trying to take a shot of it from the other side would involve defying gravity.
I did make it out to Uesugi Jinja (shrine) on New Year's day. I had caught a cold earlier in the week and still hadn't really recovered from it. But after a conversation with one of my local acquaintances I decided that going on a subsequent day just wasn't in the spirit of things.
The visit to the jinja was very different from my one previous memory of New Years in Japan. That happened back in the 1970s and for whatever reason I believe our family went to the Kawasaki Daishi temple. That within itself is a bit odd because it's a Nichiren temple and we're not members of that sect. What I remember from that day are the crowds, the large number of monks chanting "Namu Myo Horenkyo" and a couple of men who looked like WWII Japanese Army vets seated by the side of the road. I couldn't read the signs they had placed before themselves and my dad wasn't interested in explaining them to me. All in all the experience was a fair bit different from what I had this year in Yonezawa (without having to mention there wasn't an iota of snow in Kawasaki that day).
PS: The kanji on the banner can be read as "Bi" or "Bin". It represents the name "Bishamonten" (毘沙門天), the Japanese Buddhist god of warfare. In Buddhist mythology he is known as Vaiśravaṇa, the chief of the Four Heavenly Gods. Uesugi Kenshin, a daimyo lord of the Uesugi clan prior to their arrival in Yonezawa, was a fierce samurai and Buddhist who was believed by some to be an avatar of the god.
Enjoy your pop rocks, sir.
15 years ago
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