Day 12: Ushiku

Today we wanted to do some more sightseeing and thought it would be a good idea to include a Daibutsu (large Buddha statue) for some culture. Last time I was on holiday here we spent a day at Nokogiriyama which included an interesting mountain walk and a beautiful Diabutsu so it would have been pointless going there again. Kamakura is a popular tourist destination in Tokyo with a 20m high Diabutsu but last week when we were googling the sky tree we also found a Diabutsu at Ushiku that was listed as one of the tallest structures in Japan at 120m. And because size does matter we made the decision to go to Ushiku!

On a normal journey Ushiku is about an hour and a half from Tokyo but we made a mistake 'forgetting' to get off a train on a certain line that magically changes into another line. We only found this out about half an hour of travelling down the wrong line so that added another hour to the journey, but we had a adventure.

In Ushiku the Diabutsu is a fair old journey from the station, there is a bus that runs but we just missed one and the next one wasn't for another hour and 20, luckily we found a very nice Indian curry place and managed to fill our faces for 1000¥ with some of the best curry I've had in a while.

We made it to the bus in time and were starting to wonder wether all this hassle was worth it. After about 20 minutes or so we saw the Buddha on the horizon, it was bloody massive!




Instantly we could see the journey was definitely worth the hassle! It took another 10 minutes or so to get there, when we did we found out that the last bus back was in 23 minutes which makes no sense as the site was open for another 90!

After paying our admission and picking up a taxi number we entered the beautifully crafted gardens that the Diabutsu sits in. The figure of Buddha was enormous and and awe inspiring, it's difficult to describe the size of the figure ands it's difficult to gauge because it's in open surrounds but it is chuffing massive!








After admiring the the statue from the outside we made our way to visit the inside, just as well as the heavens opened! There were prayer areas and lots of information about the Daibutsu all through the inside, including a massive room full of little golden Buddha's.




We then took the lift all the way to the top of the statue to get some great views of the surrounding countryside.




Once we'd taken in all the Buddha sites and info we called our cab back to the station and went back to Tokyo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushiku_Daibutsu

Location:Tokyo