Kyoto is the city in Japan with all the major temples, but Nagano has one of the best ones and it was well worth a visit. It was huge.
We even went back the next day to view it again and to go underground to touch 'The key of .........' which is in pitch, pitch darkness under the temple, through a tunnel.
Needless to say, we are now well-.......
This is the gateway to Zenkoji. A lot of the bigger temples had these gateways in the old days which you would walk through - maybe they were surrounded by walls back then?
This is Cath and I at the actual temple... it was still day so the lanrens only lit up a bit later...
Before one enters a temple, you're supposed to cleanse yourself with the smoke from the incense burner. Here I am trying to waft some smoke onto my cool hawaii-like self. Of course, I didn't need to do this, what with my already being as pure and clean as is humanly possible.
Zenkoji again - the actual temple from the front. Madz loved this photie so it's in primarily for her. But we are cute aren't we?
And speaking of cute... Cath found this lil old lady on the walk down from Zenkoji.
You're not actually allowed to take photos of the insides of temples, but on the way up to Zenkoji (before we learnt this) we stumbled upon another smaller temple, with no-one around. So we snapped this photie - which is pretty much what many of them look like...
And so after a few days of running around like mad things, it was time to unwind, eat a bit ... and then head off to a few hours of karaeoke???. Now Cath and the girls might not be as good at singing as me, but I tried not to outclass them too much as i passionately sang some Alanis Morisette number...
They were pretty into the Westlife numbers though....my ears! my ears!
Seeing as the girls looked like models, why not act like them. This was taken on one of our nights out with the girls. Thank God Cath doesn't normally wear shades that huge - I would have to seriously have words with her about her fashion sense - some people may like glasses that big, but then again, some people like Crocs - and they're generally eejits with no taste what-so-ever. Feckin stoopid glasses!
And what group of photies of Japan would be complete without a photie in a rice-paddy?
So here i squad, across the road from where Madz lived, in a neighbour's bread and butter.
Japan is full of paddy-fields - there are no spots of empty grass around - it's always rice fields.
On one of our days while staying with Madz, we went off to see Matsumoto castle - probably the nicest Jap castle we saw - we got to Matsumoto station and decided to hire bikes for the day. Was a pretty cool way of getting around - and it was free - the Japs really know how to treat the tourists.
This is Matsumoto castle, surrounded by moat. There were koi in the moat about the length of my arm - bloody huge buggers that would come up for bread crumbs, etc. Only thing is, the fish i'm used to would nibble the bread to be able to get a piece down. These monsters would swallow slices of bread whole! Okay, that was an exageration - but they were still bloody big!
This was us on the bridge to go into the castle. This was set up using our new tripod and put on auto-timer. Note: there's also a crane in the background that we were trying to block out so this was actually a pretty complicated shot. Set up Cath ("That's perfect, don't move honey"), push button, tell foreigners and Japs to get the hell away, run around behind her, smile.
And so we eventually had to say goodbye to Madz and head off to Kyoto. After finding a place to stay for a couple of nights, we got up early the next morning and made our way to Fushimi-Inari - the path of a thousand Torii gates (or a few thousand probably). Each gate is made of wood and has a Jap blessing of some sort written on it. The one on the pole on the left post says "He who is good-looking and strong stands here". Okay I made that part up.
Torii again - what a lot of effort
And that's part 3. Be sure to join us next week for another exciting episode.
No comments:
Post a Comment