BG Report: Japanese-Indian “bad eyesight” gods at Tsubosaka Temple

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In central Nara Prefecture, Japan, there’s an out-of-the-way temple on a lonely mountaintop called Tsubosaka. I went there one day, via an infrequent bus up a short winding road. The temple is dedicated to problems of the eye.

Hardly any other people were there on this day, a cold and snowy (but sunny) day in December. Before leaving Osaka this morning, my blood sugar had been 199. After breakfast I rode the train down to Tsubosakayama station and caught the (time-synchronized) little bus.

The guy at the entrance was very warm and welcoming; I paid him the small entrance fee, and he explained that if I collected all the little red-ink stamps around the sprawling complex on a piece of paper he gave me, I would get a free postcard from him. Sounded good to me!

I wandered the grounds, collecting stamps and admiring the scene. Tsubosaka Temple has very strong Indian influences, unlike other Japanese temples. The story is that hundreds of years ago, a monk was praying here and saw a blue light coming from the ground.

He dug in that spot and found a large jar (“tsubo”); inside the jar was a majestic thousand-armed statue. The Japanese empress at the time heard of this and invited the guy to her palace to help her eye problems. He did, and so she had this temple built in thanks.

Nowadays, the temple is a place for people to come and pray for better eyesight. There is even, sort of whimsically I thought, a large wooden pair of eyeglasses on the ground beside one of the ancient pagodas.

There are also amazing statues and an impressive stone mural depicting the life of Buddha; this may have been my favorite touch.

There is also an octagonal building housing the original majestic statue found by the monk. Photography is often not permitted in places like this in Japan, but the guy at the entrance emphasized that photos are ok here.

Here, I checked my BG was it was low: 65. I had some juice and a piece of chocolate, and sat in the frigid cold room and waited to be back in range.

My self-guided tour ended at a pair of large Buddha figures, one standing (20 meters tall) and one reclining, an unusual thing to see in Japan. I’d collected all my stamps and got my free postcard from the guy, then caught the bus back to the station.

The evening was spent down in the city of Wakayama; when I checked into my hotel there, I was still on the lowish side, 78. Dinner was from a local Lawson convenience store – a meal I always look forward to when traveling around Japan.

It doesn’t always agree with me though – before bed I was 265, too high. Oh well. I had a couple units of Humalog and went to sleep, dreaming of thousand-armed Buddhas and giant, mutant pairs of eyeglasses. And the lovely snow flurries.

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