The white ox—blessed at Dazaifu Tenmangu shrine I was digging through a box of old travel mementos the other day when I found them again—two small cow figurines I bought in Japan over a decade ago. One white, one black. At the time, I didn’t think much about them beyond “these look nice.” But finding them again made me curious. Why cows? Why these two? So I started digging. The white one, I now know, came from Dazaifu Tenmangu—a shrine in Fukuoka I’d visited on that trip. It’s a sacred place, famous for its ox statues scattered throughout the grounds. The legend says an ox stopped pulling a funeral cart…