9th August 2012
Nakatsu has many Buddhist temples, and every year on 9th of August, the temple committee will organise a
lantern festival in Teramachi 寺町 (temples street). Along the street and inside the participating temples, small cute lanterns will be exhibited.
I went to the Lantern Festival with my colleagues, we prayed in the temples around Teramachi too. When night falls, the view was very breathtaking! There were lantern making competition and the sea of lanterns made me speechless. The funny thing was that once finished praying, the committee member would give sweets, junk food or can water to the devotees. In the last temple that we prayed, the monks chanted prayers to bless us.
There is another saying that if one prays in all the seven temples, one will be lucky for the next three year. Like what my colleague said, " san nen kan happy 三年間ハッピー!" (^^♪
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| a temple in Teramachi |
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| temples in Nakatsu |
Well, there's a special temple called Goganji 合元寺 with red wall. According to history, long long time ago, there's a war erupted near the temple, so blood was spattered on the temple's war. After that, the wall was re-painted with white colour paint, however, it couldn't cover the red marks, everytime after repainted, the red marks would resurface, so, the solution was to paint the wall in red colour. My colleague told me that when she was a small girl, she had to pass by the temple to go for class, since she was scared, she would walk on the farthest opposite side of the road every time she passed by the temple. Well, when I first saw the temple, I didn't feel anything, the day was still bright.
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| 合元寺 (red wall temple) |
Another temple has a place to worship kappa, a water creature from Japanese folklore. Legend has it that long long time ago a fire broke out in that temple, so the kappa helped to put out the fire. To appreciate the help, a pool was dedicated to the kappa in the temple. Interesting!!
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| kappa 河童 |
Then, we went to the centre of the Lantern Festival near the former home of Fukuzawa Yukichi 福沢諭吉 (the man on the 10000 yen note), there were many performances.
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| Lantern Festival とうろうまつり 灯篭祭り |
One of the performances was very 'special'! The musical instruments were not very recent, quite ancient. The music was kind of like funeral song, well, I wouldn't say that it was pleasing to the ears, just not bad.
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| performances with very traditional music instruments |
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| the mascot of Nakatsu, おっくん |
Next, we continued to enjoy the beautiful lanterns. When we reached there, some still preparing the lanterns. So, I could see the preparation work, not easy!
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| people preparing the lantern |
When the day turned dark, the lanterns were so awesome! Totally different from the day view. Below are photos of the lanterns, quite special, especially the square lanterns.
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| night view (Lantern Festival) |
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| night view (Lantern Festival) |
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| paper umbrella art (Lantern Festival) |
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| night view (Lantern Festival) |
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| night view (Lantern Festival) |
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| night view (Lantern Festival) |
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| night view (Lantern Festival) |
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| a temple in Teramachi |
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| night view (Lantern Festival) |
After admiring the lanterns and prayed in all seven temples, we called it a day. We passed by the 合元寺 (red wall temple), well, during the night, this temple gave a eerie feeling, kind of scary! Luckily I was not alone.
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| 合元寺 at night (quite scary!) |
Back home, I took out all the food gotten from the temples. Haha, it's the first time after praying, I got something physical back. One of the special things was a Japanese traditional sweets, I didn't how to eat it, so I actually just bit it and found out that it's very hard. So, it ended up in a rubbish bin. After that, when I mentioned this to my colleague, they told me the first layer is plastic, have to peel that off first. Ahhhhhhh! So blur!
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| gains from the temples after praying |
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| a traditional Japanese sweets (the surface is wrapped with plastic) |
Ah, I had a beautiful night!
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