Temples

One of my favorite times of the year in South Korea is during the Buddha’s Birthday celebrations. It is a time where you get to see people celebrating something that is not commercialized or tacky. Everything is decorated with a sort of quiet charm and for the most part everything is sort of quiet.

Over the past few weeks I have visited several temples in the area to get footage for an upcoming cinemagraph video project. I must admit that I really did enjoy getting out and shooting at these great temples. I learned a lot from these past few week and I hope that you can get something out of what I learned as well.

This is my final Asian blog past for the foreseeable future. I can’t say I won’t be returning, it has been an incredible journey of learning, adventure and self-discovery for the last four and-a-half years, and I scarcely believe that it has been that long, neither that it is over. I mentioned in my last post what I will be moving onto so I won’t repeat myself here, but it is safe to say that I only plan to continue the recent themes of my life, just in a different part of the world.

In three words:  clean, orderly, delicious.

Definitely not Korea.

Ric and I spent a long weekend in Fukuoka, Japan, a large-ish city about a thirty minute plane ride from Busan.  After some intense haggling with Immigration at the airport (apparently, they frown upon you not making hotel reservations before arrival), we spent three long summer days wandering the city.  Here are our observations.

1)  Immigration was right.  We should have made a hotel reservation.  The weekend we chose to come to Fukuoka was also the weekend the city hosts a countrywide youth soccer tournament.  Finding a hotel was challenging, though we did end up at a great place that served free ramen and had a spa on site.  But it didn’t come cheap.

2)  The country (like Korea) is a startling mix of ultramodern and practically ancient.  It made for some beautiful photos.

I went to Gakwonsa Temple (각원사) in Cheonan. Everything at this temple seems to be done on a grandiose scale, including the massive, bronze Buddha. Foreigners refer to it as “giant Buddha” or “big Buddha).