Despite everyone at Tohoku University telling me it’s stupid to go, I had to see this beautiful monstrosity of a statue in Sendai: The Sendai Daikannon (仙台大観音 or 仙台天道白衣大観音). This is currently the 9th tallest statue in the world and portrays a Buddhist goddess: the bodhisattva Byakue Kannon.
Everyone I talked to thought it was scary or creepy. Honestly, I love this sort of stuff and this was my favorite thing in Sendai. It was only 500 yen to enter. The statue itself is somewhere in the outskirts of town. The surrounding area was honestly one of the worst taken care of that I saw during my trip to Japan. But, the statue itself was immaculately taken care of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendai_Daikannon
imagine this you’re an American hanging out in Northern Japan Saturday afternoon just bought some groceries some Hello Kitty some cutesy little things and then you step out and you see oh my God it’s Godzilla that’s coming to kill me this is the Sendai Dion the ninth tallest statue in the world and it’s a statue of a goddess and we’re going to go check it out and see what this actually is when we start getting closer to it like even in person it almost looks like it’s photoshopped and I looked on my phone just kind of Googling send Dion and the first thing that comes up is the Sendai diacon real so I can kind of see why people said that I called my friend Matt he also said it looked like his Photoshop when he looked it up and I just called my dad and he said it look like a giant middle finger if you can’t see the face so I don’t know apparently when you look this up in Japanese people talk about how terrifying it is and I can imagine you know imagine you just like live in this neighborhood around here every morning you come up you see the Sendai diacon looking at you with that face up [Music] there and I’m starting to like the syai diacon I think it’s uh she’s a bit more like me cuz look at her what do you think what do you guys think she’s looking down on something beautiful some Majestic Temple not at all you got ruins and uh rubble and uh I I don’t know some sort of sketchy ass pool over there with who knows what got a torn up wasted wood and like metal and it’s kind of kind of like a Bill’s Aftermath video that’s a sort of place I would go half the time right next to it’s a hotel and there’s like a golf course nearby talked to locals and people they either think it’s terrifying or they think it’s just kind of like ridiculous and out of place you know all of my contacts at the math department so we’re just kind of like yeah I’m not going there that’s stupid and I don’t know I think it’s kind of cool um also I want to say like this was made in 1991 at the time it was made it was the tallest Jesus sorry not tallest Jesus tallest statue in the world um it was surpassed by this one year at sucuba which is now the fifth tallest which is a Buddha statue um so the current Wikipedia ranking is ninth tallest in the world and you might think okay well ninth tallest no big deal it should be the tallest to be something cool and let me just point out the Statue of Liberty it’s like half the height of this I think the tallest in North America is something like number 40 in Mexico I’ll put it in the subtitles is exactly what it is so you really got to go to Asia for something of the scale like there is a number 11 in Russia and then I think number two in Europe is this motherland statue and ke but they’re still much much much shorter than this I think I’m going to explore the illustrious grounds before we actually go inside and of course we have a vending machine I don’t know is this enough a pocari sweat for the suai DiCon to drink I’m not really sure I don’t like the idea of drinking sweat is this for the sundai diacon to go to the bathroom I mean I’m kind of curious yeah so we’ve done this before other places let’s go and see what sort of bathrooms are in here we already have kind of a little some worries about how this might be taken care of and uh yep there’s no soap this kind of reminds me of the ke zoo I wonder what we’re going to find when we go in the toilet well these are a little better at least than they were in the keev zoo and yep similar to the keev zoo not quite as dirty um but yeah instructions on how to squat they do at least have some toilet paper so yeah I don’t know um I kind of feel like such a grand place should have you know the warming and singing Japanese toilets and all that but they just have are basically you know these squatty potties this is really rough I mean look how torn up this is like it really gives me the feeling that no one’s really taking good care of this place the cost of Entry is 500 yen and maybe they should up it a little bit more and uh actually fix the stuff around the grounds I wish I could explain all the Buddhist stuff here but I don’t really understand it all that well um I mean this is a temple here I think uh I don’t know if you’re supposed to donate 300 Yen and do something I’m not sure how it works EX exactly it does actually smell really nice that incense is great big cat [Laughter] big name name no no name no name I think that’s the golf course over there and right over here’s the cemetery and as was reading on the website of the Cai DiCon who is not looking at the graves that you can be buried here regardless of whatever Faith or denomination or anything like that and the reason that’s actually kind of interesting to me is that they actually allow you to be buried with your pets so you know I have my two cats that I love very much and I actually really would like to be buried with them so I kind of actually wouldn’t mind to be uh buried here I mean I’ll probably find somewhere else and that’s uh hopefully years in the future to think about that but yeah these are these are different you know everybody who sees knows my channel knows that I like going to cemeteries in different countries I don’t know what uh these things are here for if anyone can explain that yeah the style here is very uh different than the style in Poland like there’s some some actual water in here I don’t know if that’s from the rain or that’s intentional or oh I guess yeah there’s none there I don’t know what the purpose of that is so yeah and just right over there you have some sort of store again so I think it’s time to actually go inside this you know we only have so much before uh before it closes [Music] it’s time to go in I got my 500 yen which I guess now is a little bit more than $3 okay we got to do it like uh like that and this entrance is really cool this is like the mouth of a Dragon yeah look at that So the plan is I guess we can take this elevator to the 12th floor it’s uh 68 m above so like I don’t know 2/3 of the way up roughly 3/4 and then I think we’re going to walk down there’s no toilet in the Statue well that’s okay we have one outside and yes this is good so this is uh vlogging friendly so I recommend everyone come here hello one ticket one tickets yeah thank you thank you this is my ticket and near the elevator this is I guess a time capsule from 1992 I think I forget how many years maybe it was 20 years later they opened it and I guess a lot of magazines and things so like this uh this looks pretty interesting right here dime what the hell is this person dressed as I have I I don’t know this is confusing um this thing looks pretty cool like I just don’t know like I’ve see these sorts of things it’s a little different than it just looks like it’s full of like advertisements and Like Comics and things like that some guy doing something I don’t know like something about the Olympics was that in bar Barcelona ’92 I’m not sure I think I saw oh yeah there’s some VHS here too I wonder what this is it’s like Dragon Ball GT maybe I can’t I can’t read it old calculator all being guarded by this scary guy right here think I have a Goku hair after all the uh being outside with the wet hair and all the wind and being cold and everything I found something kind of cool here this is uh right your wishes and name on The Wooden sticks so I’m not sure exactly how this fits with the Buddhist religion I heard of this before so in addition to the 500 entry we’re going to pay uh 200 and we’re going to go here and honestly the best thing that could happen to me now is just to make this trip go well I’m going to Kyoto next it’s going to be really really complicated so um oh God I got it right vertically and I really hope the syai Dion understands English so how is this I want the rest of my trip in Japan to go well it’s a vertical and horizontal so I don’t know where to put the stick maybe there’s a the rest of them down here I guess we’re 68 M up the statue and like the reason I’m not sure exactly how far that is is because there’s I think like an 8 m base or something like that um so there’s a 108 Buddhas I don’t know why exactly 108 maybe someone who knows more about Buddhism could tell me and I think this is like in the chest of the Cai diacon I’m not really sure and this is really really bright you can probably tell that like how white the statue is and it looks like there’s a CD ROM out here I don’t know what that’s doing uh but yeah you can watch the baseball game from up here that’s pretty cool yeah look out this one we got a pin wheel blowing showing the the wind right now and that’s the golf course and we have a very badly taken care of parking lot down there as well okay yeah this shows where we are it’s right in the middle of the chest the dragon on the bottom I do wonder if there’s any way to go to the actual top of it so you’re supposed to rub his belly or how does this work like what they were doing like uh like they’re rubbing his cheek maybe someone can explain it to me going down the stairs to see the 108 Buddha and this is just like some Death Star thing from the original Star Wars series where Vader sent Emperor Palpatine to his [Music] death and I don’t really uh take this episode 9 sort of nonsense about Palpatine still being alive that’s a whole bunch of to be honest but um this is where the 108 Buddhas are I guess I don’t know what all the different ones are um I wish I could give some more background on that um but we got to go all the way down I guess that’s uh 68 M seems like you can donate and pray to each one so there’s some uh Japanese and the coins here and every single one of them maybe do these have like a different meaning like the Saints in the Catholic religion I’m not really sure they all look they mostly look pretty similar there’s some little differences people are definitely donating to the ones on top first and then just kind of getting tired of it we’re only one floor down that one has no donations yeah this one’s a little scary with a whole bunch of heads on the top and only 2 Yen donated right there kind of feel a little sorry for this one it doesn’t have any donations so I guess we’ll put it right over here right there he is go there does seem to be some information if you go on Google translate like the kinzo bodit saava for good luck success in Life Financial luck so I guess there is an explanation I don’t think I know uh which is which maybe there’s a label on each of these like is this translate so yeah so there is that’s a key boat heat sof I don’t know this is all overwhelming to there just so many of [Music] these got down all the stairs of this Death Star type shaft and I think that this guy up here was the guy that was in charge of um building their or maybe put up I think it was 4 billion yen or something I’m not sure what the cost was and so these are these 12 Warriors that are set off uh for like protecting the teachings of Buddha and they reach based on the Japanese zodiac I think I read a side saying like this one is Dragon uh I don’t know how the Japanese zodiac differs I guess it’s yeah rabbit hair so that’s different than the standard you know what’s your sign sort of thing these look a bit scarier than saying like Oh I’m a Scorpio I like whatever or something yeah there’s a tiger and I have absolutely no idea what this is here and there’s no explanation so if anyone can uh give me some hint as to what the the deal with that is and so my understanding as well is that this is a temple people are actually coming here you know to pray and that’s you know getting ready to head out and buy some souvenirs but I noticed uh something back here it looks like there’s a whole bunch of statues or whatever and it’s uh some pin wheels and it is roped off so I guess I can’t figure out what that is exactly so let’s go and get some souvenirs we’re going to need to get a postcard to mail to the hatchet man cuz he needs more threatening postcards so this looks like this is I think a 100 yen maybe I’ll get two one not two is better than one and a little sundai Dion clip I think these are 500 yen so I guess it’s like like this right here hello over here okay over okay well that’s the Sendai diacon and so apparently it’s actually real so I answered that question from Google and unless you think it’s part of a conspiracy theory that I made the video then you know here it is right over here in all of his glory so there’s nothing Kawaii about this you know they’re just some Warriors and some huge scale things and so I think it’s time for cute Kawaii Bill to come back and exploring the rubble so it wouldn’t be a Bill’s Aftermath video if we didn’t have rubble and abandoned weird sketchy areas so I think that’s uh it for now so you know the usual like comments subscribe all this sort of stuff I’m going to go to Kyoto next share the video all this helps the channel and we’ll see maybe they’ll be something crazy like this in Kyoto but this was really cool though like I actually really like this even if the locals may make fun of it I think it’s really nice to have something like this so I’m out