As many of you may know, in Japan Xmas is a rather minor holiday. Perhaps the young embrace it more than the old, and those who think Western things are better than Japanese, but on the whole it isn’t that important. What is important, however, is New Years, or oshogatsu (oh-sho-gah-tsu).
Unlike the drunken parties of the West, it is more of a family occasion. One of the events during the holiday is the striking of the temple bell. At midnight, temples bells all over Japan are struct 108 times, one time for every sin that Buddhism tells us we have.
The bell photoed below is from Toyokawa Inari. I know I’ve spoken about this place as a Shinto Shrine before, but actually the complex houses both shrines and temples. According to the sign board below this bell, this is the one featured on NHK every New Year1.
I had a lot of fun processing this photo. Again pushing reality. I go back and forth on my processing technique: usually I lean towards processing my HDRs in a very realistic way, but this past week I have been pushing things a bit. Don’t worry (or enjoy it while you can, depending on your taste), I’ll likely swing back the other way soon enough.
What’s it sound like? Sound after the photo, so stick around.
More from Toyokawa Inari.
Show Me Japan, issue 7
Another weekend, another Show Me Japan. This one — a special New Years Edition! I bet this week’s photos will be even better than usual! You should go look at them.
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- Happy New Year!
- Or has been before at any rate… my Japanese is a little fuzzy about that, and my translator had wandered off so couldn’t help me. Such is life. ↩
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Love this shot Dave! Great colors and details!
Thanks
you know I prefer the more natural HDRs, but this one is almost manga-like
Very pretty!
Are you going to visit a shrine at midnight?
Happy New Year to you!
Happy New year
No midnight visits this year, instead just a relaxing evening at home. We’ve head over to the shrine sometime today and get our new rabbit good luck charms and protection
I missed the yearly temple visit today. Had some sweet sushi instead. Yeah!
Hmm.. freezing your butt off at a temple, or eating good sushi.… I’d take the sushi too!!
I tend to like the more natural looking HDR pics, but I really like the colours in this one. Happy New Year!
No worries — as I said, I’ll head back that way soon enough. I’d like to say it depends on the image, but it it is probably more that after awhile I start to get sick of surreal and bounce back to realistic.. and so on so forth, swinging from one to the other like a pendulum. Anyways, glad you could find something you liked in this one
Happy New Year
In the past, we used to have shrine and temple buildings in the same complex. Toyokawa Inari is one of the very few example existing. Since we don’t have a TV, I did not know that this is the place NHK is featuring. Thanks for sharing with a fantastic HDR photo!!! Yoshi
Thanks, Yoshi! I always appreciate your insight about this stuff.