Golden Week II - Giant Buddha

Not just giant, but, according to Guinness, the world's tallest. That's not the beer, it's the book, so you know it's official.

I finally took off my snow tires this morning, and to celebrate, I drove the 2 hours and 100 or so kilometers down to Ushiku to see the famous Ushiku Daibutsu. It's a 120 meter tall statue of the Buddha Amida. I couldn't really picture 120 meter tall statue going in, but when I saw it over the trees coming in, I was surprised how big it is. FYI, the statue of liberty, with pedestal, is 93 meters. I parked and walked in and managed to not trip over anything while staring up at the Buddha.

After buying a ticket for the full show, including a ride up to chest level, I walked into the park around the Buddha. First thing I noticed was this smaller statue out front.

I think it was a Buddha poo, but who knows? Once I recovered from that shock, I moved around back, where there's a small animal park. They have squirrels and chipmunks that kids can feed, but I think the star attraction was the monkey show. Awwww, aren't they cute?

The ride up the Buddha was really trippy. They herd everyone (in this case, 6 of us) into a huge elevator for the first stage of the ride. When the doors close, the lights go out, and you're standing in this pitch black box listening to something that might have been a description of the statue. A minute later, you step out on the 1st floor, or as the pamphlet says "The World of Infinite Light and Life". It was like some 70's nightclub, with little clear plastic Buddhas with colored lights shining through them. Then it's stairs to the next floor, where they have a bunch of pictures of the construction and stuff, before taking the elevator to chest-high. The windows were too small, and the day too cloudy, to really see much, but it was high up. Of course, there was a gift shop up there.

There's not enough pictures of me on here, and I'm pretty vain, so here's a picture I took of myself in front of the Buddha. The one I got someone else to take didn't come out good enough.

On the way home, I stopped at Toys R Us. Here's a special, election-year version of the Game of Life that probably won't be sold in the U.S. Funny, but I didn't think it was $35 funny, so all I got was a picture.