The road much less travelled - Tahoin

From Kimimachi park we drove about ten minutes or so so Taho-in, (多宝院)  a Soto Zen temple with orgins that go back to 1492, but seems to have anything in English about it on the web at all.   It's not far from the Futatsui interchange on the expressway, but it takes ones own transport and either detailed local knowledge or a detailed map to find it.  It's a pretty temple in a secluded valley, and has weeping sakura out the front.  The buildings were all shut however and I wondered how active the temple actually is.

A wander up the stairs into the well maintained cemetery with a number of new plots suggested the temple's influence almost certainly extended beyond the village.  New plots don't necessarily mean someone has died recently, it's quite common for people to make a better grave for ancestors if they have the means to do so. (That's at least true for Akita, perhaps less so in major cities.)

Tahou in

Weeping cherry

Looking down from the temple - food stalls at the bottom left

The cemetery up the hill

This family plot has gathered old grave markers / memorial stones
of the family and put them on top of the newly built one.

A very touching reconstruction of a jizo.

Very old jizo... how old I have no idea.

http://www.akitabi.com/bohi/tahouin.html  Some information about tahouin in Japanese here