My Life is Made Further Complete by Another Temple and Festival

Yakcheon-sa and the Cherry Blossom Festival

Yakcheon-sa (the '-sa' means temple in Korean)

My friend Mike's relatives were visiting and needed something to visit, so I suggested the Yakcheon temple. This is a temple I had been meaning to visit for awhile now because I had heard that it was one of the largest Buddhist temples in Asia. That didn't turn out to be completely accurate, but it was not disappointing.

I'll just mention the 2 highlights. Starting with the room with the 500 Buddha statues. Like the name suggests, there was a room with 500 unique, individually painted Buddhas doing various things. Apparently of these 500 statues, one was depicted in a Korean style while the rest were done in a Chinese style. Unfortunately there were no signs or information in the building ( the only information we had learned was because my friend had done a special foreign temple stay) and because the room had be re-arranged due to renovations, we could not find the special Korean Buddha. And honestly.... they all looked like they had been done in the same style.



The other highlight was the main temple prayer room. Now the temple claims that this is the largest Bhuddist prayer room. And it's not difficult to believe. I rarely see a temple/palace reach 2 floors, let alone 3 floors like this one does. In the center of the room there are 3 massive Buddhas, flanked by dragons curling up the poles supporting the temple. The temple isn't very old (I believe it was constructed sometime in the late 20th century), which means the paintings are still vibrant and in excellent condition. You're allowed to climb the first 2 floors, and the floors are filled with paintings and statues. All and all, it was a worthwhile trip down to Seogwipo!


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Cherry Blossom Festival

There isn't as much that I can say about this festival as it was rather uneventful. I don't recall the names of these trees, but despite the fact that I'm calling them they're certainly not Cherry trees. Each year these beautiful trees bloom for only about a week, and so during the weekend of the strongest bloom, they host a festival. This festival also coincides with the Rape seed festival, what today westerners would call Canola oil flowers. For some strange reason, the Koreans still insist on calling it by it's old name. I'm assuming they don't quite realize what 'rape' means in English. I didn't get out to see that festival, as I ended up choosing to sleep in to get over a cold caused by the 'Yellow Dust' in order to prepare for Malaysia. 'Yellow Dust' is something I recommend you google... I may blog about it later.

Back to the Cherry Blossom Festival, having read about the lavish festivals held in Japan for the Sakura (the same kind of tree) I was very much excited to see what Jeju would do! One fact I was aware of, was that in Korea, many couples have their wedding photos taken infront of the Cherry Blossoms.

Unfortunately this year Jeju's spring has been a pretty cold one, and so the Cherry Blossoms still had not fully blossomed by the time the festival had rolled around. In fact the entire festival was rather cold with the wind and a temperature around +10 celcius. Still, my friend Judy and I headed out to the colorful tents to see the festival. The festival wasn't too different from previous ones, but I was able to dress up in a hanbok again, create my own hanji doll (hanji is the Korean paper art, used in making doors, windows and other various things) and receive a painting made out in my name. Or least he painted my name on it.



It says something along the lines of 'Without friends, all the beautiful things in this world are meaningless'. Rather depressing, but apparently is of the Joseon Dynasty style. Either way the painting is gorgeous.

So there you have it. A quick update of 2 weekends I experienced in March (although I realize posted up very late). Next post? ~Malaysia~