Steffi in Japan: Summer vacation 14

Today's target was Yurihonjo, a town just south of Akita, wher I want to visit a famous mazuri tomorrow. On the way I wanted to stop by in two of the three shrines of the Dewa-Sanzan. First challenge: how to set the car navigation. In Japan cars navigation systems have a great feature. You enter a telephone number and the system guides you there. As my car has at least an English voice, some Latin characters on the maps and the most important points in the menue in English, I was able to do the simple navigation, knowing the numbers of my hotels. Yesterday I found out, that I can even create a route with a waypoint, so I know, what the travel time to the final destination will be (at least the max time). This time it was estimating more than 7 hours for the 300 km. OK, let's assume, this is pessimistic, as always... Only challenge: what ist the phone number of a shrine? Google helps finding a hotel or so right by the first one. For the second we care later. So off I go,passing through some incredible mountains, tunnel followed by tunnel, lots of cedars, not much traffic. The next valley seems to be good for wine, besides rice of course.

Reaching Yudono-san via a toll road you first see the huge tori

From the tori a small road leads up to the temple area.

I tried to find a small path along the river but it was overgrown. So I walked up along the road, a shuttle bus takes. At the bus stop you find the next purification station ( the first was at the tori). It shows a dragon (more to come. Seems to be the favorite figure of this order).

From there on no more pictures allowed. Close to the main area you have to take your shoes off, bow your head and get purified by a priest before you are allowed to enter. Inside is an orange brownish hill, wher hot water bubbles out. You can walk up on the side and it is really hot! Over the centuries and more something in the water has built up this hill. It looks like sinter just not white.

Next stop is Haguro-san. This time I could not find a phone number. So I tried the next feature: click on a point in the map and there. With some zoom and scroll actions I had my next waypoint added.

This temple has some 2000 steps in the approach. I wanted to walk up and go down by bicycle. But it was too late for the logistics. So I took the next toll road up the mountain, walked around there, got again purified and finally checked out the starting point on my way back.

Some more dragons (not sure, who is protected by this 'cage'?).