The day after Chuseok we planned another day trip, heading up Tohsmsan Mountain to visit Bulguksa Temple. We took the bus (11) up the mountain, relieved that we had decided to do so since on our first day we thought everything was in walking distance. It took a little over an hour before we were [...]
On our party bus to Yangyang we stopped by Baekdamsa, a Buddhist temple in Inje. Baekdamsa temple is open from sunrise to sunset all year round and offers temple stays. The temple was built between 590-658 and has burned down several times. It's a pretty but long hike up the mountain with plenty of hiking trails, everything from [...]
Kinkaku-ji also known as the Golden Temple was our last stop on our rather intense sightseeing day. We managed to make it in right before they stopped letting people in which was quite awhile before their 5pm closing time. Kinkaku-ji is a Zen temple and the retirement villa of shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. It inspired the [...]
While I was in Tokyo one of the things I wanted to see was the lantern festival taking place near Asakusa for Obon. First we got there early enough to explore Asakusa, or what we thought was early enough. We started off at Kaminarimon gate (thunder gate) and went down the Nakamise shopping street to the [...]
조계사 is a Zen Buddhist temple in Seoul that was established in 1395. It's surrounded with 500 year old Locust and Baeksong trees (Korean White pines), one of the locust tress is over 85 feet (26 meters). One of the white pines (Baeksong trees) is a natural monument. Around the temple are also a lot of buddhist [...]
A friend of mine had a project for class that required her to go to the Bahá'i House of Worship in Wilmette and asked me to go with her since it was so far away. Her parents ended up driving us there, otherwise we would have had to take the red line and the purple line out [...]
One of the events that one of our teachers told us about while we were in Prague was Noc Kostelu, Night of Churches. On this night many churches throughout the city are open for free. Usually the churches cost money to go into and look around. So Noc Kostelu is a great way to get [...]
Last year during late summer I had a friend invite me to hang out with her while she worked at a Ginza Holiday festival at the Midwest Buddhist Temple. It was their 56th annual japanese holiday festival. It was a fundraiser for the temple and tons of fun. For a small donation of about $10 [...]
