A cat was completely at home on the railing of a hall dedicated to Budai

Cat relaxing in Taiso-ji Temple — Cat relaxing in a hall

When you enter Taiso-ji Temple in Shinjuku 2-Chome district, you will find a concrete schoolyard-like precinct surrounded by a number of halls and Jizo statues. The main hall is quite modern in design, giving the temple the feel of a school built in the middle of the city. However, this temple is unexpectedly old. It was built in 1668, before the Tokugawa Shogunate allowed Asakusa merchants to establish a new post station. The temple is like a living witness to the history of Naito Shinjuku, a post station connected to today's Shinjuku, since its birth.

Although the temple grounds are small, with such a long history, one of the Edo Roku Jizo, enshrined at the entrance to each of the six highways into Edo, sits in a braided hat on a sunny or rainy day, and there is a salt-covered Jizo so covered in salt that at first glance one might think he had been lost on a snowy mountain. There is also a statue of King Enma, the largest in Tokyo, and a statue of his wife, Datsueba.

In contrast to me, who came here on a whim and was busily going here and there in the narrow temple grounds, the cat was spending his time leisurely on the railing of the hall enshrining Budai.

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