These guys look pretty deep in thought. Tons of these statues all over the temple grounds.

Are they Buddhas, you may ask. Not quite. It may look like a number of Buddhas deep in thought. But they are actually bodhisattvas, which are something like Buddhist saints. I think all of these are Kannon, a multi-armed fella who is sometimes depicted as a guy, sometimes a girl, sometimes both, and is much loved in Japan. She is a she more often than a he, so I'll stick with that pronoun for this post.

Trivia: The camera company with a similar name was actually named after the bodhisattva.

You may notice that several of the statues have multiple arms. What's up with that?

The story goes that way back when Kannon was so distressed about saving people that her head split into eleven pieces, giving new meaning to the phrase "I've got a splitting headache". Amida Buddha saw this problem and so gave her eleven heads. Nice guy, that Amida Buddha. Always on top of things.

All good, right? With the aid of these new heads, she now understood how to help the people, but... new problem: when she tried to reach out and help them, her arms shattered. Doesn't rain but it pours, eh?

Amida Buddha to the rescue again. He gave her a thousand arms to aid people with. Heck of a good guy, that Amida Buddha.

	David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.

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