An owl shrine

How was your weekend? My friend "J" seemed to enjoy Halloween. ( Oh, not weekend, it was yesterday.)
For Yuki and me this weekend was a usual weekend "finally". We didn't care for our daughter or grandchild, our mothers and didn't need to discard and organize our room harder than usual (Refurbishing will start in 10 days)

This season many people enjoy to see autumn leaves. Here in Tochigi Niko is a very famous spot it means it is very crowded. So we gave up going to Nikko, we drove to enjoy just autumn.

The other day this owl shrine was introduced on the newspaper. So we went there.
Can you see a big statue of an owl?
It takes about one hour from here by car. It's in a rural area, and unfortunately there are not so many colorful leaves, though it's in a forest. Most of the trees are conifer trees which don't change the colors.

 

 

However we saw some colorful trees.

An owl is called FUKUROU in Japanese.
FUKUROU has another meaning, it's a kind of pivot word (for me it is a new English word).
Fu means in- or, did-, Kurou means difficulty or hardship. So Fu-Kurou means without difficulty.
Or
Fuku means happiness, and Rou means senile or elder, so Fuku-Rou means wonderful elder life (probably).

In this shrine, there are lots of Fukrou statues here and there, probably there are more than 70 statues. Each Fukurou has an original character.
This is a music Fukurou. Of course we love music, so I rubbed it hoping that my piano skill will be more improved. Or we hope we will hold music concerts at home in our retirement life.

 

This is a pumpkin Fukurou. We wish our wellness robbing them.

 

Though it's an old shrine, it's a kind of theme park for free.

Oh, not free, though it 's a Japanese custom, to put some coin for praying.

We put 1 yen coins or 10 yen coins in front of each Fukurou. And after we used up the coins, we-- put 100 yen coins. When we go there next time, I must take lots of 1 yen coin.

===== is it stingy?

 

On the way home, we dropped by at a famous river-fish shop (Finally)

And -- we bought Shirayaki-eels, which means grilled eels without sauce.

 

It's a little bit expensive, but it's inexpensive compared to buying grilled KABAYAKI eels.

Moreover we don't get these Shirayaki eels easily.

 

Anyway to eat them delectably we need to cook.

We boiled them and after that we stew for a while with sauce. 

Perfect dinner!!