Gifu

Got the chance to go to Gifu a few weekends ago. Gifu-city is about an hour north of Kariya by densha, in the Gifu Prefecture, adjoining Aichi Prefecture. The main tourist attraction is Gifu Castle, a reconstructed castle at the top of Mount Kinka (just barely visible in the picture below).

 

Gifu Park stands at the base of the mountain and serves as a sort of gateway to the paths leading up to Gifu Castle as well as a few gardens and temples.

There are two methods of getting to Gifu Castle, one is the 'ropeway' a scenic gondola that costs a little over a thousand yen ($10) roundtrip fare and takes about three minutes to ride up.

The second method is to climb. There are a few different paths leading up the mountain, and it takes about 45 minutes to climb up. We decided to climb, to get some exercise and fresh air given how pretty it was outside. The path begins with a staircase which leads to clearly marked slightly inclined path for the majority of the walk. Towards the top, the path turns into more of a hike, with large stone steps to step on and angled walking paths chiseled directly into the mountain.

 

Rather difficult signboard to follow.

We saw people of literally all ages on the climb. Little kids around 3 or 4 years old with little backpacks and water bottles hiking with their parents, middle aged people in track suits running up the mountain - probably training for a race of some sort, elderly men and women with walking poles, huffing and puffing, but always smiling.

Gifu Castle

The view from the top

After climbing we walked around Gifu Park a bit, seeing a Buddhist temple, the Gifu China-Japan friendship garden, and a Great Buddha statue. All in all, it was a nice little day trip from Kariya.

 

 

 

**A Brown Bear in Sri Lanka**

Special Post for this weekend as promised. Part of the delay in my updates was because I traveled to Sri Lanka for two weeks during Japan's 'Golden Week' holiday. Besides getting to spend some quality time with my family, I got the opportunity to get a little tour of Colombo, the capital city of the country. Below are some snaps taken as we zoomed and zigzaged in and out of traffic around the city

I've labelled the ones I know, but some of the other pictures are just of pretty buildings I got a glance of as we sped past. I hope you enjoy a little change of scenery.

New Parliament Building

 

"Nelum Pokuna" (Performance Center)

Town Hall Building

Tower Hall

Old Parliament Building

Galle Face

 

 

Old Dutch Hospital (Shopping Complex)

Ganga Rama Maha Viharaya

The National Museum

 

Independence Square

 

Nara

More apologies for another late post but I just got back from a two week long vacation. For your patience though I'll try and make it up with a two-fer this weekend. But before I get ahead of myself, let's get to Nara.

Traveling to Nara gave me my first opportunity to ride the Shinkansen, the bullet train. The inside of the train is set up very much like an airplane with aisle and seat numbers and tray tables and such.

From Nagoya station, we hopped a forty minute Shinkansen ride to Kyoto and from Kyoto was an hour long densha ride to Nara. We made the mistake of taking the local train, but if we had taken a rapid we probably would have made up about fifteen minutes of that ride.

The ancient city of Nara is in Nara Prefecture. Nara was the capital of Japan for a very short while from 710 to 784. One of the coolest things in the city is the presence of deer...just everywhere. Derived from an old myth, the deer are thought to be sacred animals who protect the city. The roam freely mostly around Nara Park but also in the adjacent streets and temples.

Street vendors sells 'deer cookies' little packages of round wafers of healthy goodness for the deer that tourists will buy to get up close and personal with the deer. They seem rather tame but I've heard many a story about biting deer on trips to Nara, presumably when the tourists had run out of cookies before the deer were quite done eating.

One of the focal points of the city is the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) at Toda-ji Temple. It is the world's largest bronze statue. These pictures really don't accurately how how big the statue actually is. It's just, ginormous...

View of Toda-ji Temple

There was a hill overlooking the city that we were able to climb up. They had built a winding wooden staircase that lead about halfway up the mountain.

View from the top

And a selection of other pictures of this beautiful city.

 

 

 

Stay tuned for another update this weekend. Cheers.