Sugamo Walking / Tokyo SC, Roku Jizou

I always get up late on weekends normally, however, now in the summer, I have to get up early like weekdays because Lee can not walk outside in the daytime. Currently air temperature has been raised around 30-35 degrees C, and the road surface become hotter than that. It is too hot to walk with his bare feet, and also might be a cause of the heat stroke.
Of cause I like early morning walk. That is fun. There is no exhaust gas and no crowd. Let me introduce the scenes which were taken during our recent walking.

Tokyo Swimming Center (Tokyo SC)

One of the oldest swimming school in Tokyo. This is the home ground (home pool?) of Kosuke Kitajima; the Gold Medalist of 100m and 200m breaststroke in Athen(2004) and Beijing(this week!) Olympic games. Kitajima started swimming here when he was just 5 years old, and even now, he belongs to this SC.

This picture was taken just before the Beijing Olympic. There are the messages for the Olympic swimmers here on the window.

It says "Go in and win! / Kosuke Kitajima / Reiko Nakamura / Haruka Ueda / 2008 Beijing Olympic Game".

And this is the current picture.

“Congratulations! / Reiko Nakamura _ 100m back _ Bronze Medal _ Japan record./ Kosuke Kitajima _ 100m and 200m breast _ Gold Medals, two consecutive win _ World record of 100m breast: 58.91sec.”

Tokyo SC is located in the north east side of the JR Sugamo station. It takes about 10min on foot. Go and see the lesson If you want your kids to become Olympic swimmers!

Rokujizou / Shinsho-ji temple

Go out the JR Sugamo station, cross the multilane roadway(Hakusan-dori), and turn to the right. Walk through the pavement several minutes, then, you will see a big Jizou statue on your left side.

Jizou is a kind of buddha. I explained about it simplistically in the previous post, so please check here for further infomation.

In Tokyo area, there are famous six big Jizou statues, and they are called “Edo Roku Jizou”. And this is the 3rd one of these six(roku) Jizou. They are in Shinagawa(#1), Asakusa(#2), Sugamo(#3), Shinjuku(#4), Fukagawa(#5) and Ueno(#6).

According to the guideboard, this statue was built in the year 1714.
Actually, Sugamo is famous nationwide for "Togenuki-jizou". So, sometime people who watch this statue are confused this statue with togeniki-jizou. Togenuki-jizou and this roku-jizou are different Jizou in different temple.

Urgent Information!!
I was surprised when I walked by the Sugamo Roku Jizou this morning, because there were no Jizou statue. Actually, he was here when I saw him in the end of July. Where has he gone?!

The sign board said:

“The Jizou statue was built 294 years ago and there are some corrosion damage in his body now. He needs some fixing. So Jizou has gone to Kyoto for repair since August 2008 until May 2010.”

A new miniature sized Jizou was there on behalf of him.