Going to Chiba

chibachibachiba! We’re like… totally going on an adventure. omg.

The adventure starts on a train south to a little ferry town. The ferry, while it looks like the Seattle-Bremerton ferry, is certainly classier than our ferry.

That is, until you take into account our breakfast of local beers and curry buns. I figure… if they sell beer everywhere, it’s a shame to not drink it. We knew there was something potentially wrong with public drinking at 11am when a pair of toothless bums stopped to cheers us.

Guest starring on today’s adventure is Ross. Ross, meet teamEggers. teamEggers, this is Ross. Ross works with jon and is in town for a week. He’s a cool guy and we enjoyed hanging out with him.

And a lighthouse for jon’s mom!

Okay. So we finally get off the ferry and start the walk around the bay and to the gondola that will take us up the mountain. Keep in mind that this is a fishing village. One the road, we see a fresh-fish stand. Really, really fresh. Some of the fish were still swimming in buckets.

And of course, a lot of temples / shrines.

Some Buddhas

I think this post may just be a lot of photos, with small bits of commentary mixed in. I don’t have a lot to say, but it was an awesome experience.

Carved into the mountainside is one of the world’s largest stone Buddhas, and sprinkled throughout the surrounding the trails were some 1500 buddha and arhatt statues. To get there (described more in the post above) we took a gondola up to the top of the mountain.

We crammed in a LOT of people. Somehow I was squished into the photo-op corner. What a view!

I hate waiting for the climax of events, so I’m going to go ahead and show you the big one now.

Next to this giant buddha there was this small area that people were praying and leaving little offerings. The crazy thing was that no where else in Japan have I seen cherry trees blossom.

Goddess of Mercy. I think she was 30 meters tall

Oooookay. So. there was this hill. with “stairs”. So you know, i stumbled up them, nearly fell down them.

THEN. then I found out what i was climbing up on. And how precarious it looked.

But you know. The views were worth the extra climb.

But speaking of the climb… there was a LOT of climbing. A lot of stairs.

A lot of arhats. (An arhat is the Buddhist who has attained enlightenment and has ended the cycle of reincarnation.)

Chiba

What a day. We must have climbed a good 30 flights of stairs today. Jon was so exhausted, he went to bed before 8pm. He didn’t even say goodnight – When I realized that I was talking to myself, I peeked in the bedroom and there he was – face down with his street clothes on.

During the day, we met up with Ross, a friend and coworker of jon’s who is in town for the week, and spent a day in the Chiba prefecture looking at stone buddhas. I have about 100 photos to sift through, but i’ll definitely be posting a bunch in the morning.

Below is one of my favourites. The capitalist in me just loves this:

Well, it turns out that I have a 6am meeting tomorrow so I should probably take jon’s lead. I hope you’re all having a great weekend. We miss you.