Haiku

Natadera has a rock which the poet Basho (1644 -1694) carved a haiku on when he visited the Temple. The haiku reads:
Ishiyama no
ishi yori shiroshi
aki no kaze”
(“The autumn wind is whiter than the white cliffs of the stony mountain)
Basho covered a lot of ground on foot when he was older, there is even a rumour that hie was a spy for the Shogun and the haiku he wrote were coded messages.
One of Basho's most famous haiku is
furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
(an ancient pond / a frog jumps in / the splash of water)
And it so happened that sitting near a small water bowl near the stone with the haiku written by Basho was a frog happily croaking away!