I had a wonderful discovery today.

I rode my bicycle all the way to North “Kita” Kamakura, up a steep hill, to check out where the tearoom of the tea master for next week’s workshop of “Art of Tea” is.
It brought me on little alley ways with old Japanese style houses aligning the paths. The weather was perfect: sunny with a cool breeze.
Kamakura is surrounded by rocky hills, so, some ways tunnel through the hills to go from one place to another. And so, also the bicycle paths. I had to get of my bicycle and watch out for my head.

The inside of the tunnel. It may be carved by hand. It looked really old, but I could not find a date.

The other side of the tunnel. I see it when I pass it with the train and wanted to know already for a long time where it would lead to.So, it connects two parts of town. It is quicker to go through the hill then over it.

And this tunnel was really low.

Then on top of a hill is a neighborhood temple with a very old tree. The roots of it are grown into the old stairs.

Some slab stones were standing there with the carved out monkeys: “Hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil”.

The three monkeys are a pictorial saying of wisdom and truth.
The source that popularized this pictorial maxim is a 17th century carving over a door of the famous Tosho-gu shrine in Nikko. The maxim, however, probably originally came to Japan with a Tendai-Buddhist legend, possibly from India via China in the 8th century (Yamato Period).
In Chinese, a similar phrase exists in the Analects of Confucius: “Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety”. It may be that this phrase was shortened and simplified after it was brought into Japan.