Seeing is Believing

Whenever I have a chance to talk to the visitors here,  I often ask them the following question.

"Did you (or are you going to) visit Lawai International Center?"

Interestingly,  most of our visitors said "Yes."

This is such a simple question,  however, from the answer "Yes",  I can tell at least one thing.  They didn't happen to come here.    From the answer yes, they intended to come here to seek for something that both Lawai and Koloa have.

This means people who enjoyed visiting Koloa Jodo Mission can appreciate visiting at Lawai International Center.  

In fact, it was not small numbers of visitors who actually asked me how to get to Lawai 88 shrines during the past 14 years of my staying here.   It was obvious much more visitors here asked me how to get to Lawai in recent years.

This was one of the reasons  why I made this YouTube video above.

Instead of explaining it in English, I thought people instantly know the location just by watching the video.

This is like a Japanese proverb,

"Hyaku-bun wa  Ikken ni  shikazu（百聞は一見に如かず）" which is usually translated into "Seeing is believing" in English.

"Hyakubun（百聞）" literally means " hearing 100 times."     Hyaku（百） means 100. 

Bun（聞）means "to hear or to listen to." 

The word "Ikken（一見）" is abbreviation of "Ichi-ken" which literally means "one view or a glance." 

"shikazu（如かず）" is a negative verb which literally means "cannot win or cannot be superior."

So "Hyakubun wa Ikken ni shikazu" literally means " Hearing 100 times cannot be better than seeing one time."     The similar saying is "A picture is worth a thousand word."

Yesterday,I had a chance to show this video to the man who came here to ask me how to get to Lawai International Center."

Instead of my explanation, I just showed the video and he knew the exact location.   The proverb sounded true.

Now I am thinking....the real reason why  I made this video was not for Lawai International Center but for me!   I can save my explanation and energy  with this video.