Do It Yourself Buddhist Temple

Hi all,

Been super busy this past week. I’ve been doing lots of things, meeting friends and blog readers, and generally getting lots of good photos, pamphlets and such. For this reason, I have totally fallen behind on the travel adventures, and I am heading back to Seattle tomorrow. So, I will have to finish typing them up when I get back and settled.

In the meantime, I wanted to share something amusing. My daughter comes with me on a lot of Buddhist temple visits, and she loves to put coins in the donation boxes or saisen bako (賽銭箱). They typically look like so:

So my daughter thought it would be fun to make one of her own:

This is a stool at my in-laws’ house with a Disney bucket underneath to collect the money. She called this her otera (お寺) or Buddhist temple. She insisted we put money in there because the Buddha was cold and needed a new jacket. Otherwise, he would get covered in snow. I think that idea was inspired by the famous story of “Hats for Jizo Bodhisattva” mentioned in this old post.

It’s funny how children perceive religion.

Update: my daughter already received ¥3000 in donations, mostly from her grandparents.