S-8 Ushiku Buddha
This route(S-8) is in Area-S “Short trips". See Area-S map / See Japan map
The 1st trip of Y2022, in Jan. TTL 90km round trip from my home to Ushiku Buddha. The 120m tall Buddha(pic3), certified as the tallest Buddha in the world is located at southern area of Kasumigaura. So it may be better to plan visiting there as a part of Kasumigaura cycling, since it’s a little bore road coming from Tokyo area.
So my second purpose of this trip was eating grilled eel at Ushiku-numa(lake)(pic4). I learned that the bowl of eel and rice originated in this area and the restaurant “Iseya" is a long-established one of 120-year history(pic1,2). Though grilled eel is common all over Japan from old ear but eel on the rice bowl was made in this area. The reason is something that both rice and eel was served together for busy persons going and coming btw Edo and northern Japan to save time.. The bowl set(pic.2)was at around \3000-.
To enter in the Buddha statue and the temple, you should pay \800-. It has a observatory inside the Buddha. I didn’t enter even into the temple garden to hurry up coming back home. The days are short in Jan. It gets dark around 4:00PM.