"You bring me up there, but there's no party."

 I know Chris is recording the Don quotes, but I found that one particularly hilarious.


Temple Flowers, originally uploaded by Nurse Kate.

Anyway, after class we did more touring of Hikone. We went to a small street that we were told was reminiscent to the "old Japan," with small stores specializing in different things, like the barber, fish and meat stores, and a traditional inn. We had a special tour of the street by the dean (?) of JCMU and one of the shop owners!

Afterwards, we headed to the Buddhist temple that isn't too far away from JCMU. It was a beautiful place, full of neatly kept gardens (including a zen garden with the raked sand) and historical items mixed in with different kinds of shrines. The gardens were so relaxing, that I didn't really want to take many photographs. I sat down for a while on one of the wood porches to reflect on my journey so far, and it really renewed my energy for the day! I took this photograph as we were leaving- I'm not a huge fan of flower pictures in general, but the lighting was perfect that day.

After a short break, a couple of us headed up to another temple where you can get a spectacular view of Biwako and the sunset that day. I'm still working on processing those into panoramas and HDR photographs, so stay tuned for that!

Today is Nara. =D Get ready for the deer and the Great Buddha!