It is the custom, on the return of the Dutch, when they reach Miyako, to take them to see some of the principal temples. The first one visited by Kämpfer was the Buddhist temple and convent, where the emperor lodges when he comes to visit the Dairi. The approach to this temple was a broad, level, gravel walk, half a mile in length, lined on both sides with the stately dwellings of the ecclesiastics attached to it. Having alighted and passed a lofty gateway, the visitors ascended to a large terrace, finely gravelled and planted with trees and shrubs. Passing two handsome structures, they ascended a beautiful stairway to a magnificent building, with a front superior to that of the imperial palace at Yedo. In the middle of the outermost hall was a chapel containing a large idol with curled hair, surrounded with smaller idols. On both sides were some smaller and less elaborate chapels; behind were two apartments for the emperor’s use, opening upon a small pleasure-garden at the foot of a mountain, clothed with a beautiful variety of trees and shrubs. Behind this garden, and on the ascent of the mountain, was a chapel dedicated to the predecessor of the reigning emperor, who had been deified under the name of _Genyūin_. “The visitors were next conducted across a square to another temple, of the size of an ordinary European church, supported on thirty pillars, or rather fifty-six, including those of the gallery which surrounded it. These pillars were, however, but nine feet high, and of wood, and, with the beams and cornices, were painted some red, some yellow. The most striking feature of this building, which was entirely empty within, was its bended roofs, four in number, one over the other, of which the lowest and largest jutted over the gallery. There were said to be not less than twenty-seven temples within the enclosure of this monastery. “Up the hill, near a quarter of a mile distant, was a large bell, which Kämpfer describes as rather superior in size to the smaller of the two great Moscow bells (which he had seen), rough, ill-cast, and ill-shaped. It was struck on the outside by a large wooden stick. The prior who, with a number of the monks, received and entertained the Dutch visitors was an old gentleman, of an agreeable countenance and good complexion, clad in a violet or dark purple-colored gown, with an alms bag in his hand richly embroidered with gold.