The first image was taken at a nearby temple (tera in Japanese), about a ten-minute bike ride from where we live. Water pours out of the dragon's mouth, and visitors may cleanse their hands if they choose before approaching the shrine (jinja) for a prayer. Sorry for the trite ancient Japanese iconography, but it stood out to me that over 1,500 years ago nearly halfway around the world the Japanese imagined identical mystical creatures as the Europeans. I wonder if there were cultural crossovers before the exploration explosion later in history where some of these ideas were exchanged between East and West. (Just as a warning, I'm only beginning my comparisons between England and Japan. Both are insular monarchies, have similar terrain, although Japan is considerably colder in the winter due to being on a higher latitude. For those interested there will be many more to come; for everyone else, just be prepared to use your clicker to scroll ahead when my musings become dense or stretched :-)

The second picture is of a gravel path leading up to a different shrine. There are seriously more shrines per square kilometer than cars, which for me is like heaven (tengoku) with my own army of bats––don't lie, you know how awesome it would be! (Actually, because we live next to rice fields, bats emerge and patrol outside of our balcony to feast on the gnats and other bugs (mushi) that are attracted to the rice plants. So I figure in about three months I'll have trained a regiment large enough to begin taking over the country. Excuse the digression.) This shrine is only also within ten minutes of our apartment.

The flowers (hana) are merely my attempt and capturing beauty. Those are Katie's legs in the background so bite your tongue––and keep dreaming!