This day started off not horrible, but got super super rainy just before we got to the shrine. Like, gonna drown kind of rain. The guys had umbrellas, but I eschew such nonsense…until I’m going to drown, at which point I huddle under the nearest umbrella like it’s going to rain until the end of days.
Lots of graves on this walk.
Afterwards we discovered that Nik had waypointed us towards the wrong shrine. He thought it was super close. It wasn’t, so this was a really long walking day. That’s ok, because both of the place we saw this day were super cool.
Nik says this thing is too orange. He’s watched Amadeus recently, so I quoted “too many notes” at him.
There was a huge parade of girls in kimonos at this shrine. We later found out that there is a rental place down the hill. Absolutely beautiful colours!
Sean asked, in Japanese, if we could take this girls photo. (unlike the above photo, which was not taken with permission…). She responded that she was Thai! Goes to show you that if you wear a kimono in Japan, you’re gonna get Japanese spoken at you.
The shrine across the way.
The way…from the shrine across the way. As in, we walked to that orange thing in the distance and took a photo across the gorge. 🙂
As I think noted way back when, I’ve really gotten into the cleansing. It’s nice. It’s a simple ritual, and I feel slightly more peaceful afterwards. So I couldn’t pass up the chance to get into Cleansing Xtreme Edition!
There was a line up…
Just some random garden photos.
After the shrine, we walked the other direction away from it. There is a street with a ton of tourist things on it. I like this photo of Nik in the street!
After we left this place, we walked for a bit to try to find a good place to see the sunset. We had a plan to get to another big shrine area that I’d been really wanting to see. I was a bit annoyed that we were hitting it near sundown, but we really made up for it! (as you’ll see in part 3!) We ended up catching a cab to the next place because we thought it would help made sunset…it didn’t, but that was ok.
I spent most of this evening babysitting the last post, so I’m really hoping that this one uploads all the photos successfully while I sleep! Good night, Pacific Standard Time! 🙂
We walked through that temple complex starting at the street and did a loop around the complex and back to the street. The orange shrine was under renovation when we were there and was under wraps. Ming cleansed herself at that particular spot as well. Did you notice the small gatherings of stone statues in the woods throughout the complex?
We did notice those, but didn’t stop to look to closely as it was raining cats and dogs at the time – we were trying to stay out of the rain.