Tsuwano

Looking to get away for a couple of days, Bill, Marie and I headed to the town of Tsuwano. About as touristy a town as I have ever seen, hundreds of people flock here on a daily basis to see the HUGE carp that's ancestors are said to have been bred hundreds of years ago in case of a food shortage. These carp run throughout the entire town in large gutter like troughs that funnel the mountain water through the city. They were impressive and beautiful.

On a mountain ridge line over looking the valley that Tsuwano lies in are the ruins of a castle constructed in 1295. There was a chair lift that took us up the really steep part. As a lover of skiing it was odd to ride something so similar to the winter lifts yet when in comparison this chairlift never really took us more than 10 feet away from the ground. Bill like myself is also 6'3" so there was a mutual chuckle we were both told repeatedly to mind our heads as we boarded and deboarded the lift. From there we then hoofed it. There are nothing more than stone walls filled in with earth and grass now to show for the castle, but lying and staring the blue sky one could only wonder what life was like as a resident in said castle.

Before that we had also checked out a very cool Shinto (ancient Japanese religion) shrine that is very often photographed and visited. The big catch for this particular shrine is that the steps leading up to it are "framed" with a 1100 brilliantly red painted gates called tori. The view from here as well was awesome and provided yet another, "I'm in Japan moment" as we were fortunate to catch some sort of Shinto ceremony that none of us could even guess at what was taking place.


Next blog....high school girls making a traditional Mexican meal and me on ice skates.