Oya!

Today I decided to stay closer to home and explore things around here rather than heading to Tokyo again. For today's adventure, I chose the oya stone museum in Utsunomiya - just five miles from the train station. Oya stone is this porous rock formed from lava and ash - Frank Lloyd Wright used it when he designed and built the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Around here, it is used in the building of walls and some smaller homes.

This is a picture of a shrine near the museum. This shrine was built in 810 AD right up against the overhanging rock. Inside there's this awesome carving of a god with numerous hands - each with an eye, I was told. I couldn't take a picture of this magnificent sculpture, as no photos were allowed in the shrine:
This second picture gives you an idea of what oya stone looks like. It's pretty cool - rock climbers like my sis would find this a pretty amazing spot:
Here are some little carved statues of family members passed on:
And here, a mini shrine in their honor - some of them were missing heads:
A close up of some of the carvings:
These next two pictures were taken illegally. You remember I told you I couldn't take any pictures inside the shrine right? Well, just to the side of the shrine were these amazing carvings of family gods. I didn't see a sign here saying I couldn't take pictures, and I remembered to turn off my flash, so I thought it would be okay. After snapping these, an old man who worked there came over shouting "No photograph!" He looked at my camera and said "Delete!" and then took off. I made like I was deleting the pictures, but of course did nothing of the kind. Here they are:

Behind the shrine was a little park with a tiny brook and pond. I wanted to see this little red shrine that was across the brook and so I began to walk across the carved oya stones that served as a path there. When I looked down, all these carp - no doubt used to being fed - swam up to the edge of the rock and started puckering up like they were going to suction cup me to death:
Here's the little shrine - inside were gifts of sake and what looked like various soft drinks for the family member:
Next I headed to the Oya Stone Museum which is basically a tour of a no longer used area where mining once took place. You go down a long staircase about 90 feet into the mine into a space, I read, is about as big as a baseball stadium. I've never been in anything like this, but it's what I imagine it would be like to be in a huge pyramid. This is a fairly blurry photo since I had to use the night setting which is always a bit more tricky as you need to hold the camera super-still. It doesn't look as big in the picture as it actually was, but to give you an idea of size, if you look on the left and follow the staircase midway down, you can just make out a man standing by some lights:
One of the big sights here is a statue, made again of oya stone, that was carved just after World War II. It is a depiction of a goddess of peace I think. She looked pretty cool when the top of her would peak out over a ridge of trees above the buildings. This will sound dumb but seeing it like this was like nights driving home from Mankato to Burnsville at dusk - I would always catch just the silhouette of the Jolly Green Giant and it would startle me. This statue in Utsunomiya startled me a bit more with its impassive face:
Here she is in all her glory. They were building what looks like a park around the statue so there was a bunch of tarp and building supplies everywhere. But it was pretty amazing anyway:
All in all, a very good day. Not sure what I'll do tomorrow, but stay tuned, as I have a video of my apartment here to show y'all.