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| Electric car Keifuku MoBo 26 of the MoBo 21 series stands at Arashiyama station |
Adashino is known as an ancient place for funeral in Kyoyo City. It used to be an aerial sepulture where the dead body was exposed to the wind until it was eroded completely. In 811, Kukai, a Buddhist monk, founded Nenbutsu-ji temple in Adashino to bury remains of the dead, which had been left unattended. Some eight thousand stone Buddhist statuettes, which had been scattered around Adashino, were then collected, and memorialized the souls of the dead.
To visit Nenbutsu-ji temple, the nearest station is Arashiyama on the Arashiyama main line of Keifuku Electric Railway. Legally, the Arashiyama main line is not a railway but a tramway. Connecting Arashiyama and Shijo-Omiya stations, its route length is 7.2 kilometers. The gauge size is 1,435 millimeters. The electric system is 600 V DC overhead. The train is single or composed of 2 cars, and operated every 10 minutes in the daytime.
The retro designed electric car, MoBo 21 series, is popular among sightseers. It has a brown colored 15 meter-long steel body. Its classic double roof, large Z-shaped pantograph and large rounded front lights are definitely my favorite. Two cars, namely MoBo 26 and 27 of the MoBo 21 series, were built in 1994 commemorating the 1200th anniversary of the transfer of the national capital to Kyoto. The technical specification of the MoBo 21 series is rather old, as its travelling apparatus such as the traditional camshaft type rheostatic electric control system was taken from the old retired electric cars.
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| Stone Buddhist statuettes in Nenbutsu-ji temple |