120m Buddha gets bath

High-pressure water guns blast dust, bird droppings off statue in Japan.

- Ushiku

Emerging from the head of the world's tallest bronze Buddha and climbing down to its right ear, two specialist cleaners gave the imposing Japanese statue an annual spruce up yesterday to help it look its gleaming best.

Using high-pressure water guns, the pair blasted dust and bird droppings off the Ushiku Daibutsu monument, which soars skywards over Ushiku city, northeast of Tokyo.

The 120m structure is spruced up once a year by the two men, who have been entrusted with the job for nearly a quarter of a century.

"It's a very unusual task," one of the veteran cleaners, 54-yearold Kazuyoshi Taguchi, said.