A really soggy day – nonstop rain but our intrepid group of 20 said – no worries! Fairly moderate temperature and no wind – who cares if you squish when you walk and your pants are so wet the water has wicked up to your knees? We didn’t!
Sunpu Castle – 600 years old. If you get over the moat and through the gate, you’ll find yourself completely surrounded by another set of high walls with soldiers shooting arrows and dropping rocks on your head. Not only that, but you still have another gate to breach. Apparently, this was a successful design because our guide, Hiro, told us that it was a common layout for castles. Aside from all that, the architecture is beautiful and the castle has a typical stunning garden on the premises, highly manicured and careful designed to take advantage of sight lines no matter where you are in your meandering contemplative walk.
And, another Shinto shrine – which, in the rain, really stands out. Again, the input from our guide is always interesting. You can make a donation and from a box, pull out a slip of paper with a fortune. If you don’t like the fortune, you can tie it to a fence type structure. I’d initially thought that they were prayers, but no, Hiro said no one wants to take home a bad fortune so they leave it at the shrine.
Finally, a trip to Miho no Matsubara, a viewing site for Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji, an active volcano, is and always has been revered. It stands out in the landscape because there are no other mountains around it, it’s symmetrical, 12,000 feet, covered with snow half the year and insists upon disappearing regularly, as she did with us. The viewing site, which inspired the famous artist, Hokusai, is a 7 kilometer strip along the peninsula of pine tree forest, some are hundreds of years old that were planted as protection from the wind and tides.
Although when I lived there, I never did climb Fuji, I did see it regularly since I took as much advantage to travel around the country as I could. I also gamely agreed to join a group of friends who went skiing on the mountain. I’d never skied before, had no idea what I was doing but managed not to break anything. What I remember most was being surrounded by a busload of 6 year olds who clearly did know what they were doing as they flowed like water around me.
