Cherry Blossom Season at Nagoyama Temple!

I haven't been to Nagoyama Temple in awhile, but today was a beautiful sunny day, and since it's about 10 minutes away by bicycle, I couldn't resist! Nagoyama is absolutely stunning during cherry blossom season! I know everyone crowds into Himeji Castle for cherry blossom viewing, but I definitely think Nagoyama's cherry trees are of comparable beauty; perhaps some might find the idea of flower viewing in a cemetery depressing, but wow, this is probably the most beautiful cemetery I have ever seen!

Also, there were cats everywhere. Would they be considered temple cats or graveyard cats?

Can you spot Himeji Castle (in its scaffolding)?

The cemetery extends for quite a ways around the main temple, and there were cherry trees everywhere!

A small garden nestled between the hills of graves. You can see the city stretching out behind it!

I love how, at certain angles, the main temple seems to float above a sea of cherry trees.

This cat really wanted his rump photographed. Can you see him?

This kitten kept running off every time I got close; I think it became a game for him. He briefly stopped to let me get one quick photo of him, though.

This statue was serenely sitting under a tree.

I loved the effect of the fallen flowers in this rain gutter, they looked beautiful!

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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

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Typhoons, Sports Day, and Elementary Schools: One Week Condensed Into a Single Blog Post

It's been awhile since my last post, for which I apologize! Things got rather hectic after I made my last blog post, and it's really taken me until now to feel settled down--and to acquire some videos to share with you all! Let's start with a picture: the entrance to Hirohata Junior High School. I'll have more photos coming soon! First off, let's recap a bit of what happened last week. I wrote about how on Wednesday, I'd be having my first lesson. That was a lie. Instead, I had my first day where the weather was "bad enough" for even teachers to have to leave school early. We had something of a "super storm" that day, with a typhoon making landfall at the same time as a storm front was moving through the area--and rather like Hurricane Sandy, but on a (fortunately) smaller scale, a hybrid super-storm was born. Thankfully, this typhoon had downgraded to a tropical depression by the time it hit Himeji. The weather was still pheno

Daley-sensei's Adventures in Himeji, Japan.

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