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Soft ice cream is a real treat in Japan, and
nowhere better to try it than Hokkaido, the centre
of excellence in the Japanese dairy industry.
Many of the old warehouses along the canals in
Otaru have been converted to restaurants and snack
bars, such as this lovely old building now selling
soft ice cream, and other snacks.
The Pontocho area of Kyoto is special, taking
visitors back to the old Kyoto of geishas, and
tiny wooden doored restaurants serving all kinds
of Kyoto delicacies, and quiet drinking places
where you can sip delicate, exquisite sake.
This small area is a must for contemporary visitors,
and should be experienced before old Japan finally
disappears.
This building is well worth a visit, if you want to see
a part of Tokyo that not many tourists visit. It is a truly
stunning building, used to stage art exhibitions, concerts
and plays.
Otaru, only 35 minutes from Sapporo by express train,
is famous for its European style canals, lined with warehouses
built after the Meiji restoration from the 1860's.
Many of the warehouses have been preserved, and are now
home to restaurants, bars, craft shops and souvenir stalls.
These beautiful glass art nouveau doors are very typical
of the buildings. Otaru is well worth a visit, if you find yourself
in Sapporo with half a day to spare.
This average size schoolboy is just able to fit under this
doorway at Himeji castle. This gives you some idea how
much the average height of Japanese children, and people,
has increased over the years. Many young Japanese adults,
and most Westerners, would bang their heads here, and on
many other doorways and stairwells throughout this medieval
castle.
Most Japanese people tend to use two religions throughout their lives.
They get taken to the Shinto shrine to be blessed for a good life
when they are children, pray at the Shinto shrine for good marks at
junior high school abd high school, get married Shinto, or sometimes
psuedo Christian, and they mostly get buried, or cremated and
buried, Buddhist.
This lovely new gate adorns one of the newer Buddhist cemetaries attached
to a new temple in Saga.
Although Halloween is not celebrated in any traditional sense in
Japan, it does provide another marketing exercise, and gives
a nice theme to autumn sales. These pumpkins at Canal City
can be purchased (donation to charity), a wish written on
them, and then cast into the canal. A little gentler than
trick or treat. This photo was taken last Japanese autumn.
A family posing in front of the big boar, the symbol
for the New Year of 2007, at Saga shrine.
It is a local attraction, and many families go there
for a photograph at this time of the year.
Bicylces rule in Japan, even in Tokyo. This is a two
story bicycle parking station adjacent to the Ikebukuro station.
The woman has just retrieved her bicycle after a train journey,
and is transporting her child home in the common fashion here.
I don't know whether it is a hangover from the
night before's revelling, or the prospect of another
day at the office, but these two salarymen do not
look happy about their lot, this early in the morning
outside Sapporo station.
