Nihon-ji Revisited

It has been a long time since I blogged, so I have lots to catch up on. A few weeks ago we took our friends Mike, Justin and Susan, back to Chiba to check out the giant Buddha. We blogged about our first trip here.

This time we were determined to hike up (instead of taking the cable car). Hiking up was definitely an adventure, and we may have gotten a tiny bit lost. After a few wrong turns, we did, however, make it to Nihon-ji.

The Chiba Daibutsu (Giant Buddha) is three times as large as the Buddha in Kamakura, but he is so big it is hard to capture his huge-ness.

That's our friend, Mike, in front - for scale.

We also swung by the Hyakushaku-Kannon, a standing Buddha carved in relief into the cliff....

and Michael and Mike ventured out onto the terrifying cliff.

We had forgotten how many steps there are at Nihon-ji. There are hundreds of steps between each area of the temple. You can definitely skip the stairmaster for a while after this trip.

After a long day of hiking and stair climbing, we grabbed some local beer at the ferry station and had a relaxing ride back home. Thanks for a great day, guys!