This is my last full day in Japan for awhile and I really wanted to see some spring blossoms before I left.  Springtime is supposed to be beautiful here.  We left the house and biked down to old Iwakuni.  Our route took us along the river by our house, then over a small dam

and across a bridge

where we saw lots of small farms/gardens.

Our destination was the Kintai Bridge.  This is such a cool and amazing bridge.

No blossoms yet.  But in May it should be incredible.  These are all cherry trees.

After I took the above picture, I turned to my right and took this picture of a bamboo forest.

 

 

As we wandered around the town we came upon these little dolls.

And then saw some steps which we climbed, first to this small shrine

and then climbed a lot more steps to this big shrine at the top of the hill.

 

Here’s a cool statue.  He was guarding the entrance to the shrine.

Here are a couple more pictures of this shrine.

From here we biked back across town to meet friends at the most amazing Ramen shop ever. It’s really tiny.  Only about 10 stools at the counter and just the owner doing all the cooking.

First we had some amazing gyoza.

Then incredible fried rice.

And the best ramen ever.  Yum

On our way home, as we crossed our little bike/walking bridge across the river to our house we saw the fisherman working his net.

This is a pretty incredible place to live and an amazing experience.  We are really loving this adventure together.

Tomorrow I head back to Coronado.  So I’ll leave you with this picture of a sake jug we purchased at a second hand store on our way home.  Should make for a great growler down the road.

Sayonara