Daienji Temple

Here are some pictures of the Daienji temple. In 1772, the people who ran the temple blundered (spelling word Mr. Fletcher) by leaving a lantern on, which caused a fire. After the fire they rebuilt the temple except they added some mini statues of buddhas, one for each death.

Above on the upper right hand corner are pictures (the one dragon spitting out water, or Forrest washing his hands) of tsukubai. A tsukubai is a sink-ish-thing where you wash your hands to purify yourself before you talk to the gods. They only have these in or at buddha temples. Here is the processes of washing your hands at a tsukubai:

• First, you wash your left or right hand by picking up the little cup, and pouring the water over the opposite hand.
• Do the same with the opposite hand.
• Next, you pick up the cup and tilt it towards you, so that the water runs down the handle and onto your hand. You do this because if you touch the unwashed handle after washing your hands, your just getting them dirty again.
• Finally, you take a sip of water and spit it out, not in the place where you wash your hands, but normally there is a 2nd ring around the tsukubai, otherwise, if their is not a 2nd ring, don't cleanse your mouth.