Obscura Day, 2012

April 25, 2012 12:59 PM

Atlas Obscura (seen 'round here before) has organized its third annual Obscura Day for April 28. It's "an international celebration of unusual places," from the Fairy Doors of Ann Arbor, Michigan and the Particle Accelerator at John E. Edwards Accelerator Laboratory in Athens, Ohio, to a tour of the Secrets & Oddities of the National Museum in Edinburgh, Scotland and an Expedition to the 1,553 Stone-Carved Monks of Nihon-ji in the city of Kyonan, Chiba Prefecture, Japan.
posted by filthy light thief (3 comments total)

Nihon-ji may have more statues, but Otagi Nembutsu-ji in Arashiyama, Kyoto has over a thousand layman-carved statues that are just as often irreverent as they are adorable.

Nobody ever really seems to go there, though, which is a shame, especially because it has its own bus stop.
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:51 PM on April 25, 2012 [2 favorites]

While living in NE Ohio I visited two rock-related sites from the Atlas. The glacial grooves on Kelley's Island evoke a sense of deep time, with their evidence of ice ages and millions of years old fossilized life.

Until reading the page at the Atlas, I wasn't aware of the history of the so-called "Squaw Rock," or, as the 19th century artist had originally titled his carving, "The Rape of the Indians by the White Man."
posted by audi alteram partem at 5:07 PM on April 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

For anyone around the Central Coast of California this Saturday, I am proposing a meetup at the Cambria location. Note: I am not associated with this organization or event, but saw it, and noticed there's actually something in my (semi-rural) neck of the woods.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:54 PM on April 25, 2012