I'm pretty sure Shiraishi Island was once inhabited by giants. When you look at all the boulders perched in precarious spots around the island, and piled up in certain formations, you would swear someone was saving them for ammunition.
Other evidence is the 100-year-old string of "juzu" beads up at the temple and still used for ancient Buddhist ceremonies on the island. Where normal juzu beads are small and resemble rosary beads, the wooden juzu beads at our temple are the size of tennis balls. A normal juzu strand has 108 beads, each representing one of the 108 sins of man. The juzu at our temple has three times as many beads. That's a lot of sins. Giant sins.
So it is no wonder we are constantly engaged in festivals to ward off evil and to purify ourselves. Most recently our temple held the Kobo Daishi festival to honor the founder of Shingon Buddhism. Also called Kukai (774-835), Kobo Daishi is the wandering priest who 1,000 years ago visited temples in Shikoku. He found enlightenment at 88 of them, thus creating the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage, which pilgrims still walk today.