historical walk

so... what would you do if it was 11 degrees, pouring with rain and no clue when the rain was going to stop... answer... sit in front of the tv and watch tapes of when the crows were good... or the final day from Amazing Adelaide... well, in Japan, you get on your bike and ride into town and join a historical walk, or at least that's what we did!

Armed with a 200yen umbrella, a backpack and good looks we headed to meet the tour at Himeji Sataion. We were taken by a local historian around the sites of "Castle Town", the area that was inside the walls of the castle... Who would have thought there was so much to do... There were temples (some more impressive than others), monuments, statues, stories around what is now the back streets of Himeji... turns out Himeji is famous for quite a few things... cotton... lollies (we had these things borrowed from the dutch now called Japanese, really good!)... seafood...

One of the more interesting points of the tour was a visit to the local shop that made shrines people keep in their houses... the art of the thing was quite impressive... delicate, intricate sculpting... the cost... more than most peoples houses! up to 50 million yen! That's about 500, 000 dollars... the one you see in this picture is about 35 million yen!

We also saw the chariot type thingamebob being made... also impressive! amazing what they do... apparently the roof of such a thingamebob takes 3 or 4 months to make! Now that's attention to detail, as really it looks like just a curved bit of

wood!

Despite the rain, and being a little over temples and shrines by the end of the walk a good time was had by all... we were given a nice local feed, although wasn't too keen on raw octopus... a nice way to spend a rainy saturday (although debateable whether better than watching when the crows were good or Amazing Adelaide)...

If only we could remember where any of the stuff actually was!