This was the menu for the dinner on our second evening in Kyoto. It was delicious. It was about 15 courses. We loved every one of them too. We drank way too much sake and had a wonderful time. We have to thank Tomoko's father, Tatsuhiro-san for giving us this opportunity to experience this (he arranged for the hotel and the special dinner and paid for it too!).
This is a photo (courtesy of Sanjusangendo hall) of a number of the 1000 Juichi-men-Senju-Kannon, or simply Kannon, in their temple. Each of them is hand-carved. A Kannon has eleven faces on the head and a thousand arms. Anyone who looks carefully can see that there aren't nearly 1000 arms. The tour guide explained that there are actually 40 arms, but each arm has a hand holding a different image and arm represents 25 things. With this type of representation, they claim there are actually 1000 arms. Furthermore, Buddhists believe that each Kannon can transform himself into 33 different figures, so the total 1001 Kannon images actually represent 33,033 different Kannon images. The name Sanjusangendo means "a hall with 33 bays".
A better view of the 1001 or so Buddhas at Sanjusangendo Hall. Once again, because we weren't allowed to take photos in this area, we must give credit to the brochure that was given to us at the Sanjusangendo Hall. This photo comes from their brochure. The Sanjusangendo building that we see today is very long and narrow and was built in 1266 AD after the original structure (built in 1164 AD) burned down in 1246 AD.
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