Oya Town

About 20 minutes West of Utsunomiya is a small town called Oya. Despite the fact that this is a tiny town, there are many cultural things here. As it turns out, Noriko-San's family comes from Oya and she knows it well. The thing that Oya is best known for is Oya Stone. It is a limestone-like rock that is used here for many things, mostly to build ornamental walls and farmhouse storage structures. It is only found in and around Oya town, kind of like Hokie stone is only found near Blacksburg.
The first place we went to in Oya was to the Oya Stone Museum. This museum used to be a working quarry, but is no longer used to mine Oya stone. There were displays showing showing how they used to mine the stone, basically they cut the stone into 50kg slabs (about 110 pounds!) and a person climbed up a ladder carrying one slab on his back. Talk about literally backbreaking work! This place was a huge underground set of cavern like excavated rooms. Apparently the total indoor space is as large as the entire interior of the Tokyo Dome! During the World War II these caverns were used to build and store airplanes so that they were not visible from the air. Now there are concerts and weddings held within the excavated area. The kids are sitting on what they use as a stage. If you look on the wall behind them you can see the cut marks in the walls from the excavations. The older excavated areas had more rough hewn marks because everything was done by hand. These ones were obviously newer since they are deep straight cuts.

All in all, a really cool and interesting place.

Next we headed to Tage-San, or Mt. Tage. We didn't know what we were heading to but our Mapple (which is a quite detailed Map Book of Tochigi Prefecture) showed that there was a Temple nearby, so we decided to go take a look. Boy were we happy that we did. We drove up a lantern lined road and parked at the entrance to Taga-San ji (Not the real name, Must find out correct name) This turned out to be quite a nice collection on small shrines and temples set on the side of Mt. Tage.

There was a long set of new polished shiny marble stairs, but we decided to go up the older path within the trees. I thought it was nicer than the temple complex in Nikko, only because it was not crowded, was quiet, not as grandiose, but had nearly as many interesting things.The first shrine up this path was this one:This picture only shows about half of the scarlet clad statues here. There were hundreds of them, apparently dedicated to children who died in-utero, either by natural causes or by abortion. There were toys, kids drinks, and other objects set around the statues. Next to the statues was a peaceful waterfall, and a small shrine. After that we continued up the stairs in the serene setting. Tall Japanese Cedar trees, a peaceful stream and waterfall, quite relaxing. Then we came to the temple. Since we didn't climb the stairs, we came up to it from the side, but it was still interesting. There was some kind of ceremony, or several small ones, going on inside. It included clacking sticks together, and some kind of drumming. Again, it was peaceful. Then at one point, one of the monks from the temple came out carrying a horn. He walked around the side of the temple which faced out over the valley and began blowing the horn. He was answered by at least one other horn from somewhere else. It was really cool. On our way to the temple we had passed another trail that led up to the mountain. So, we headed back that way, to see where that path led. As it turns out, it was to the top of Mt. Tage. We followed the trail through the trees and up the stairs. It was fun, but we were not sure how far, or how long it would take. Well, I guess that's what adventure is, and why we are here. So, finally after about 30 minutes, we reached this: A wide open meadow and a small picnic table in the building. That was all.....accept we followed another path into the trees, and found the exact spot that was the top of the mountain!!! Our first successful mountain climbing expedition!!!On the way down, Patrick and Kevin counted the stairs.....a total of 2500. Nice job boys.
Then we walked back past the temple again, and climbed down the marble stairs. All in all, another interesting place.
We left the temple and headed to Oyaji Temple. This is one of the oldest shrines in Tochigi prefecture. Actually, the temple was founded in 810!! On the outside this shrine was not that impressive, it had your typical entrance gate with large statues guarding it.

The shrine was basically built to enclose some large, old carvings on the side of this rock face. There were several small ones on the outside of the shrine as well. On the inside, where pictures were not allowed, there was a carving of a thousand armed Kannon, and 3 large Buddha's. The detail was amazing. The thousand armed Kannon was somewhat weather-worn, but still it was interesting. On the shrine grounds there was also a small museum which held several artifacts which were uncovered in this area, including a skeletal remains, there were things found dating back several thousand years.There was also a pond and some other small shrines, a small temple and an interesting graveyard. There was also another path up into the woods, but we had already had enough hiking for this day!!!
Finally, across the street from the temple was another area that had been carved out of stone. There was a large Kannon statue, dedicated to peace, which was carved after the second world war. It stands over 27 meters tall (that's about 90 feet). It was huge! There was a staircase to the top and you could look back at the face of the statue. There were some other statues sculpted out of the rock here, but none as interesting as the big one.
Another interesting day, more things learned, more things not understood, but all in all, we had quite an enjoyable day in Oya.