Mountain Shrines Autumn Foliage

 

Route 34 runs roughly East-West along the lower slopes of the southern side of the conically-shaped Kunisaki Peninsula in Oita, Kyushu.

At the end of November, 2012, I was walking along on the 5th, and final, day of my walk exploring the peninsula and was on my way towards the road that heads directly north to the central high point of the area.

Along the way I stopped in at any shrines, temples, or roadside  altars, and as this is an area with a particularly rich religious landscape, there were many of them.

Curiously the first group were all called Yama Shrine, which simply means Mountain Shrine.

A lot of the shrines in the Kunisaki Peninsula are connected to a religious system called Rokugo Manzan which is very much a Buddhist-Shinto hybrid, and so many of the shrines here have Buddhist Nio guardian statues, but this group of shrines did not.

I was also unable to find out anything about any of the shrines.

However it was a glorious morning and once the early morning sun penetrated the narrow valley there was a lot of autumn colour, esecially the golden ginko....

The previous post was of the frosty flora I encountered in the shadows....