Zenkoji

The next day we woke up in that soccer field and headed to Nagano. Our first stop was 善光寺　Zenkouji Temple. I had thought that by this time I would be sick of temples, but this one was actually pretty awesome. The signs led us to the back way, so this is what it looked like from that angle.
So we toured it backwards, starting with the main building and working our way down to the front gate. We weren't really supposed to take pictures in the main building, but Gray stood outside and zoomed in to take a picture of me rubbing this Binzuru healing statue.
There was a really active tourist info booth, where we learned that お焼き oyaki are the local snack food, basically vegetable dumplings. I naturally went for かぼちゃ kabocha pumpkin, and it was delicious.
We had missed a special once-in-five-years display of an ancient hidden Buddha statue (although Wikipedia says it's only a replica on display). The pole in this picture is attached to the statue (not sure if it's the real one or the replica) by five golden strings, so everyone likes to touch it afterwards.

Then we got waylaid by another English-speaking volunteer guide, who took us all around the temple complex. This included the main sanctuary and a pitch-black tunnel that goes under the holy of holies. Inside the tunnel is the "key to paradise," which felt like a door knocker. Having touched it, I am now guaranteed to be reincarnated in the Pure Land, where it's super easy to attain enlightenment.

After that, we participated in a tea ceremony that had been arranged by the conference that had taken up all the hotels the night before.

And then our guide took us to the museum where they have replicas of a number of the statues on site. My favorite were the three-headed Hindu-inspired ones that live in the main gate.

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Despite having an awesome morning, as we were starting our climb out of Nagano, I reached the end of my tether and decided to turn back. From my perspective now, I think it was a very good idea to give myself a full 8 days to sort everything out before moving to California. Also, three months is a very long amount of time to be travelling in a foreign country. Someday I'd like to go back, but not for a few years.