So, I guess basketball is out.
Working on photos and logging my travels in the morning.
12:30 rolls around, and Jason mentions a few places to eat, and we decide on a place called Yama's. It's actually called Yama's Fish Market, a tiny place that looks like part warehouse, part supermarket, and part restaurant inside. It's on Young's street, which is nearby Jimbo's noodles, where we ate yesterday.
This place is known for their poke apparently (woohoo, poke!) and I see big batches of it in the display. There are different kinds too, one with more onions and a bunch of twiggy seaweed, one that appears darker and heavier on the shoyu (soy sauce), and one that looks like salsa. I pick the combo that has lomi lomi salmon, kalua pork, poke (woohoo) and haupia, which is a kind of sweet coconut pudding-like substance. No matter how odd it sounds, it's delicious, as is the kind of poke that Jason suggested, the one with the twig-like seaweed called lima. All of that for about $8.25, nice. We took it to go since we're headed out to the Valley of the Temples Memorial Park.
The Valley of the Temples is up on the east side of the island, a giant cemetary of sorts that has different areas with differing denominations. We arrive there and turn into the park, driving slowly around to see different parts of it. The park really is surrounded by a large swath of mountains and trees, true to its name. We stop by one of the temples to grab a map, and the guy asks Jason if he was there to buy some plots. 10 of them, to be exact.
Who the heck buys 10 plots? Benevolent assassins? Maybe a family member thinking of life insurance money. But you know Detective Robert Goren would eventually find out.
After grabbing a map of the place, we head out and after driving around a bit more, end up near the top in front of the Byodo-In temple, where we devour lunch. As I said, I had some lomi lomi salmon, which is small cubes of salmon mixed with chopped tomatoes, onions, and green onions. Basically like pico de gallo, with salmon in it, light and refreshing in comaparison to the kalua pork, which is nice and tender and this time without any cabbage. As I said, I also have some poke, which is basically cubes of raw ahi tuna mixed with garlic, onions, green onions and a special kind of seaweed, marinated in soy sauce. It's freaking delicious. At the end, there's haupia, the buttery coconut concoction that's excellent mostly because it's not too sweet. You can really taste the coconut, the aroma of which is intoxicating.
We finish up, and get out to head to the Byodo-In Temple. A tour bus arrives, pouring a bunch of mostly old tourists to the place. Damn tourists! Now they'll get in my photos. Oh well. Walk up, pay the $2 admission, and cross the bridge to the place.
The Byodo-In Temple was built in 1968 to commemorate the first Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. It apparently doesn't use any nails. It's name translates to "Temple of equality - not to discriminate".
I finish crossing the bridge and notice a small building on the side, called the Bell House. It's probably because there's a giant 5 foot, 3 ton brass bell there.
It comes with a giant log of wood hung on strings so you can whack it.
Yes, as you probably guessed, EVERYBODY whacks it. Now I can't get a steady photo of the bell detail.
Gonggggggggggg.
*faints*
You'll want to see a more detailed photo of this bell.
The sound is a deep low tone, a message of deep calm and peace which cleanses the mind of evil and temptation. It creates an atmosphere of tranquility for meditation that travels throughout the grounds and is customarily rung before one enters the temple to spread the eternal teachings of Buddha.
Wow, I sound smart. Only because I'm copying this stuff from a pamphlet that admissions guy gave me. Cause really, there's no way I'd be able to remember all that.
Walking toward the temple, I walk into the side house and peer over the little lake around the place, noticing tons of koi and ducks. Aside from the yammering of all the lame tourists and my loudass shutter bitchslapping silence, it's really quite tranquil up here.
I get to this doorway which says to take off my shoes, so I do, and I walk inside. Hi, Buddha.
The Byodo-In Temple is home to Amida, a giant 18-foot golden Buddha, an original work of art by the Japanese sculptor Masuzo Inui.
Here's the golden Buddha.
Surrounding him in that halo you see are these guys here. There's a ton of em, but I'll just show you a few.
I like his hands. They're so zen.
Spending some time with Buddha and shooting way too many photos, I pick up my shoes and get to the other side where Jason tries to flag me down for something. He points in front of him, so I jog over there and find...
Duck duck duck duck duck duck duck
But wait, what's that behind the duck duck duck duck duck?
Babies!
Fuzzball.
After snapping a bunch more photos, it starts to rain. Hard. Then pour. Like angels in the clouds were having a beerfest, and they all decided to piss on Hawaii. At the same time.
Sweet! Torrents of rain are nature's tourist spray. They scatter and vanish from the scene like the shiesty cockroaches they are.
At this point, you're probably thinking, "Hey, you're a tourist too!"
Like a baby in a blender, you're wrong.
I'm a photographic ninja. Like all photographic ninjas, we work best when shiesty cockroach tourists are assassinated. With rain. It lets us get gems like this:
Byodo-In Temple
HDR!
You totally want to see it large!
After we finish with the temple, we head back to the car and take off. On the way back, we pass by a Kyoto temple where lots of people are buried, and decide to try and find it. After turning down three wrong streets, we finally get to the right street, but there are trespassing signs everywhere. So we park and head down to the temple. It's run down, and abandoned at this point. Jason said that he used to go there when he was a little kid and get his fortune told. Since it was all boarded up, I decide to just take off, and call it a day.
