More damp and drizzle, less of the selfie-stick crowd — although I wonder often if in an ultimate sense I am any better than them (and thus less of a meiwaku gaikokujin) just because I know my Amidabutsu from my Birushanabutsu — as well as some basic rules of Japanese grammar.

In any case, within the Daibutsuden there were also fewer visitors, nuisance foreigners or not, and so I had plenty of opportunity to circumambulate clockwise (with camera in hand, not a rosary) the Vairocana and his attendant double golden Kannons. 

But much as with moksha and relief from the grinding of the Great Wheel, I do not understand how the odd scale-lessness in the hall is achieved. Is it the dimness in combination with the repetitive, seemingly-endless framework of column and beam, a permanent scaffolding alternately obscuring and revealing the Mahayana divinities? A suggestion of infinity? Or some other phenomenon entirely?

The face of the much-restored great Buddha (which always seems slightly out-of-focus) is twice the height of a tall man, and the many lesser Enlightened Ones seated in lotus position within the golden emanations of His nimbus are actually life-sized. 

But unless a monastic attendant happened within your sight to walk past Vairocana’s petalled throne on the platform behind the altar, you would never realize that.