the tall blond guy goes to japan

Stone Buddhas

Kagoshima

One thing on the map was labelled "13 Stone Buddhas". I had to see this, and it was on the way when I was looking for something else, so I decided to drop in on the Buddhas.

It seems that a famous Buddhist teacher had made lots and lots of these little guys, and for some reason, thirteen of them ended up here.

Since then, someone has knitted nice little red caps for their little rock heads.

One stone Buddha

I counted them. There were thirteen little statues. But what's this? One of them is not like the others! It's got a cure red cap like everybody else, but it's much shorter than the others, and fatter too. It looks more like a little stone penguin than a little stone Buddha!

And a stone penguin

So it's twelve stone Buddhas and one stone penguin. Good. Maybe the directional signs were too small to get into that kind of detail.