There are many temples with the same name, Hōzenji, throughout Japan, but the most famous is the Hōzenji in Osaka, which houses the Mizukake Fudo Myoo (Water-Pouring Fudo Myoo). Because worshippers all pour water on the statue with ladles, the statue of Fudo Myoo is covered in moss.
Now, this blog post is about Hozenji Temple in Chichibu. Weeping cherry blossoms bloom earlier than Somei Yoshino cherry blossoms, so I had given up on seeing them, thinking they would have already fallen. However, the station attendant at Ohanabatake Station on the Chichibu Railway gave a detailed announcement of the day’s highlights, and he said that the weeping cherry blossoms at Hozenji Temple were still beautiful, although slightly past their peak. Since he said he had seen it before going to work, I believed his words and walked 2.5 kilometers down Kita-Sakura Street, then continued walking silently towards Hozenji Temple.
Indeed, even from a distance, the vast cluster of weeping cherry trees looked like a small hill. If we had come a little earlier, we might have been able to see the weeping cherry trees in full bloom, their branches covered in blossoms, stretching up the cliff behind the temple, but the white weeping cherry trees covering the area around the temple were simply magnificent. They are said to be 100 years old.
