Kitchen and Dining Hall (Daidokoro)
The Kitchen and Dining Hall is a nearly 500-square-meter hall housing the kitchen where the priests prepared meals and the dining hall where they would eat with visiting pilgrims. The hall dates from 1863. It has clay-plastered walls and a high, open ceiling supported by thick wooden beams.
At the entrance to the hall is a cooking area with an earthen floor, complete with three wood-fired cookstoves (kamado) and space for food storage. The rest of the kitchen has a raised wooden floor with a hearth (irori) and a dining area. The Kitchen and Dining Hall is built over a well that supplies water from a spring some 18 meters underground.
The hall was built to replace an earlier structure to meet the needs of the growing temple community. Around the time of the building’s completion, meals would have been prepared for up to 100 priests and pilgrims. The Kitchen and Dining Hall is designated an Important Cultural Property.