Hofu Tenmangu

I have been wanting to visit Hofu Tenmangu since I first saw it in an advertisement in Shin-Yamaguchi Station. It was a shame about the rain, but it was still colourful enough to enjoy it. We started off with learning the correct way to clean your hands before entering the temple. It seemed that noone knew how, but after my travels all around Japan, It was definitely a skill I had picked up. Even if I am not Shinto or Buddhist, it is just respectful to behave a certain way when you go to the temples to photograph them. So the temple actually wasn't as big as I thought it would be, I really expected it to be much bigger! But after learning
that was one of the last 3 remaining Tenmangu shrines left in the entire country. Aparently, at one time, there was one built in every major city in every single prefecture.
Maybe at the time, there weren't that many cities, but if Hofu was a city, then there probably were a lot! So we wandered around the shrine a little, learnt how to pray correctly, and then Brad and Kerri bought some new "safe driving" charmsfor their car.
And we learnt about a lot of the signs which turn up in the temples, like if you were born a certain year, then it is beneficial to pray, or to go and cleanse your self. Very interesting, and I really enjoyed learning so much without any prejudice, or anything. After visiting the temple, we had a really nice lunch in this large wooden building. I cant remember what it was called, but it was
intentionally built to be a 5 story pagoda, like the one in Yamaguchi City, but instead, it ended up being just a large, flat, one storied room, with open walls. It gave us great views over the city, which was sadly a little....cloudy and rainy, but it was a great place to have a nice picnic lunch. So we enjoyed our bento, and spent time introducing ourselves and talking to the lovely Japanese people who had brought us on the tour.