Cherry Blossom Season at Mt. Shosha!

I decided that, since I've figured my camera out a bit, that I should properly try to take photos of all of the Buddha statues lining one of the main trails on Mt. Shosha. All but two of them ended up having their portraits come out nicely, so I'll just have an excuse to do this again sometime!

There weren't as many cherry trees at the top of the mountain as other parts of Himeji, but the ones that were in bloom stood out the more because of this. I have yet to be tired of looking at these beautiful blossoms! It's a shame they last only a couple of weeks, but I suppose that forces us to admire them more closely during their brief blooming time.

While visiting the main three-temple complex from The Last Samurai film, I came upon a (secret) film set for a Japanese period movie. There were so many actors and actresses in traditional clothing! They looked amazing! I wasn't able to fully understand all of the information about the movie, but here were the facts I did get:

It's a movie, not a serial drama.
It's not by NHK (the equivalent of the BBC of Japan), but by some broadcasting group that sounds like "shikoku." (I, unfortunately, cannot remember it fully).
It has a really long title that I cannot remember; it went in one ear, and out the other.
It features some of the same actors from The Last Samurai. (Japanese ones, I imagine. I didn't see Tom Cruise anywhere!)
They don't like tourists with cameras. I got shooed away pretty quickly, even after I asked if it was okay if I took a few photos of their set...

The only shot I was able to get of their set. The actors were standing (or kneeling) on both main temples' terraces.

During the lunch break, they opened things up temporarily for all of us tourists to be able to get a closer look at the temples--even if they did leave all of their equipment scattered about.

I hope to find out more about this movie at some point or another. It was definitely pretty cool to trip on a secret filming set (they tend to keep things secret, due to the sometimes-intense idol worship that can happen here). Some of the actors I saw were probably very famous here, but since I'm an ignorant gaijin I didn't recognize them.

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Autumn Leaves and Castle Cats

Here's a bunch of long overdue photos from the last two weeks! The autumn leaves have been absolutely stunning! The mountainsides are turning all sorts of colors, which makes them even more stunning than usual. I did my best to photograph the one that you can see from Shirasagi's garden, which is right outside of my apartment. The leaves are finally starting to fall from most of the trees these days, but the colors were beautiful while they lasted! Below are a bunch of photos of the bike paths next to the Himeji Castle Moat, which were surrounded by trees in stunning shades of red and gold. This is definitely the scenic route to get to downtown in Himeji! Unfortunately, I'm still not quite sure of all of the twists and turns through neighborhoods that it involves to get to the back entrance of this pathway, but once I'm on it I can orient myself via the castle. This area is always full of joggers, bikers, and... cats. Stray cats, for t...

Scarecrows and Swordsmen Make for an Exciting Weekend!

This weekend I had two consecutive day trips! On Saturday, November 9th, I went to Aioi to watch a swordsmith make a katana and viewed the Scarecrow Festival; I also went on a bit of a hike, and visited an art museum! Aioi was about an hour away from Shirasagi by car. It was at a higher altitude, so it was a bit chilly in the morning. Once the sun came out, though, it got much more comfortable! The autumn leaves were absolutely stunning; there's nothing quite like seeing mountainsides dotted with colorful trees! The entrance to a main area of Aioi. The view from the window of the smithy. The swordsmith at work! He was a junior apprentice, which meant he had to do all the work himself, using this machine to pound the steel. Apparently the grand masters are allowed to have apprentices pound the steel manually for them. A pond outside the smithy! A watermill fed into it. An ivy-covered house! Starting a hike to view a shrine in ...

SPring-8 and Warm Weather!

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Daley-sensei's Adventures in Himeji, Japan.

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