Hayashizaki Iaido Shrine, Murayama town, Yamagata

Here are those pictures I was promisin'.

This is the small outlying shrine that, I think, marks the original location of the site where Hayashizaki Jinsuke Shigenobu prayed for divine inspiration and came up with the idea for iaido.

Here's a stone erected by the "True 20th Headmaster" (that's what it says, I think) of Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu, Kawano Sensei.

Here's the shrine building itself. Note the snow. This was in late March!

A couple of other things stuck out in my mind. The first was a very out-of-place building which was located smack dab in the middle of an onsen town. There, in the middle of this town that I swear didn't have a single building over 3 or 4 stories, was this 30-floor monstrosity. Imagine if someone said, "Hey, let's build an office tower in the middle of this farmer's wheat field". It was so out-of-place that I, and some other tourists on the train, just started laughing and pointing. I think we all ended up taking pictures of it too, for some reason. I'll spare you the bandwidth.

The other rather odd thing was a bilingual sign for the Iai Shrine, in English and ... Russian (?) Kind of strange. I didn't think we were THAT far north ...