Narita-San

Last weekend (it seems impossible to be any less than a week behind,) my friend Iris, another ALT hailing from the Claremont Colleges, came up from Kagoshima to stay a night with me in Kurume. While we weren't able to try out El Sol, Kurume's sole proprietor of Mexican food because it was reserved for a private wedding party, we did make it to Narita-San, the hulking white statue that towers over western Kurume.

Narita-san is primarily a destination for those suffering from health issues, but according to the nice English flyer we got, it is also a place to go for "blessings for traffic safety, fortune increase, business success, family well-being, the salvation of aborted babies, the gratification of all wishes and protection from evil." How could one expect any less from the tallest shrine on Kyushu (standing 62 meters high. Just on Kyushu? That means there's an even bigger one somewhere else!)

Narita-san is visible from the end of my street and since Iris didn't have a bike to ride, we decided to walk. It was a lovely hot, humid morning. The walk only took about 20 minutes, but the trip hardly seemed worth it without climbing up inside of the statue. We paid our 500 yen, and walked around to the back of the statue into a room with a life-size diorama of people from all walks of life gathered around a huge Buddha. There was even a blonde woman in lacy-petticoats from the 19th century among the worshipers! The hall leading from the room was soon just a staircase that lead up, up, up into Narita-san's insides. The walls were off white, and the stairs were grey. The monotony of the colorscheme was broken up a bit by small photos in old frames showing the construction of Narita-san during the 1950's and there were a few landings with paintings and other Buddhist parphenalia. Every so often, there was a tiny window that looked out on some rice fields, a bunch of houses and the other trappings of suburbia (shopping centers, fast food restaurants and the like). While the steps weren't very steep, there was little to no air conditioning, and I think both Iris and I emerged about 10 lbs lighter thanks to the copious amount of sweating we did inside. And that's about all we gained from our climb. The top was basically a wall that prevented the stairs from going any further, half a dozen more tiny windows and a very plain Buddha statue with a small box underneath for money. All those stairs for that? I should mention that Iris and I were the only people crazy enough to climb inside an un-air conditioned statue in the middle of August. I am sure all of the locals know better.

At the end of our desecent, we followed the signs to the "Place of Heaven and Hell" which led us down a nice cool underground corridor to a little museum of sorts with nice displays and beautiful mosaics. In one corner however, there was a black archway decorated with plastic skulls...the doorway to hell could not have been made clearer. The path through the archway did a tight little circle through a small room, lit in reds and greens complete with animatronic demons tourturing and devouring less than devout human beings. I thought it was pretty funny in the midst of other rather serious looking religious iconography. I also enjoyed that hell was air conditioned; scenery aside, it was much more pleasant than outside.

Satisfied with our visit to Narita-san, Iris and I then conquered the bus system and ate at an Indian restaurant near the train station before she caught the train back to Fukuoka where she then caught her bus back to Kagoshima. I walked around the Ichibangai shopping area for a while and took the bus back to the apartment, where I recovered from the morning's adventures by sitting under the A/C, eating a popsicle and watched 5 episodes of Prison Break back to back to back on Fox.