Multilingual AI audio guide exhibit on WOUDiO (PWA). WOUDiO pioneered the world’s first audio guide platform with built-in donation: listeners can support the cultural venue without leaving the listening experience. The text below is the localized description, details, and narration script for this audio guide stop.
Deep in a narrow valley in Kita-Kamakura stands a small temple. Meigetsu-in. It survived as one of the sub-temples of a great Zen temple that once stood in this valley.
In early summer, both sides of the approach fill with blue hydrangeas. Nearly all of them are a Japanese variety called hime-ajisai. A clear blue, neither too deep nor too pale. At some point it came to be called Meigetsu-in Blue.
These hydrangeas were not always famous. It is said that the people of the temple planted them little by little in the years after the war. The slopes of the valley crumble easily, and the hydrangeas, sending down their roots, also help hold the soil in place. Today, every year, many people walk the damp paths of the rainy season in search of this blue.
In the main hall, a large round window opens onto the garden. It is called the Window of Enlightenment. In Zen, the circle has long stood for a mind with nothing lacking. Beyond the window spreads the rear garden, and with each season, the colors held within the circle of the window change.
In autumn, the red of the maples; in winter, the shadows of bare branches. Within the same circle, the year flows slowly by.
The approach, lined with blue hydrangeas, stretches on deeper into the valley, as if melting into the hills.
