Otawara · JP

Horin-ji

Tucked into the old Yuzukami countryside of Otawara in northern Tochigi, Hōrin-ji — known to locals simply as “Komarusan” (光丸山) — is a Tendai mountain temple with a thousand years behind it and a distinctly unusual face. Founded, tradition says, in 860 by the great pilgrim-priest Jikaku Daishi Ennin, it keeps a strange and lovable mix of Buddhist halls, Shinto torii gates and a wooden tengu mask the size of a small car, all wrapped around a garden celebrated as one of the “flower temples” of eastern Japan. It is a place that rewards a slow wander: climb the wooded approach past a torii that stands in the stream, peer up at a one-ton tengu grin, find the weeping cherry the poet-monk Saigyo was said to have sung to, and — if you come on the right December Sunday — watch a portable shrine led by masked tengu parade through the fields. Admission is free, the grounds are open year-round, and it sits just minutes from the Nakagawa aquarium, making an easy half-day stop on a Tochigi or Nasu road trip.