A former student of mine, Hiroko came to visit me for the weekend. She was 11 - 13 when I taught her in Tokushima and she's 17 now. And I'm happy to say she's still a delightful, happy, appreciative, chatty girl. We had a great but exhausting time (for me not her) trying to see as many cherry trees as possible in two days. I think we did a pretty good job.
I was afraid that nothing would be blooming here but since last week was pretty warm the trees were about 50 - 70 % full here in Hikone. We were supposed to have rain on Sunday but again we were lucky and although it was overcast all day (so the pictures aren't great) it didn't rain. The sakura gods were with us.
I decided it would be best if Hiroko rented a bike for the day so we put her bag in a locker and took off on our bikes. We decided to go to a Daruma Festival first in hopes that the sun might come out later in the day (it didn't). What is a daruma you ask? These are daruma...
You are supposed to make a wish and paint/color one eye black.
When your wish has come true you paint in the other eye.
It wasn't much of a festival. In fact the only difference from normal times was that they had the extra daruma on display (the ones in the first two pictures). Otherwise the temple was just as usual. But it has a nice garden so it wasn't a wasted trip.
The road that has a few shrines and temples also had a lot of flowers blooming.
A model of the first castle which was on the mountain behind the temples. It was deconstructed and most of the pieces were used to build Hikone Castle.
On the way home we saw this road lined with sakura so we decided to go the long way.
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| Don't jump in! |
Then to the castle!!
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| Hiroko under a weeping cherry tree. |
Remember this isn't full bloom!
Next week should be even more beautiful, if rain or wind doesn't wash the blossoms away.
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| Just happened to meet a lord along the way... |
I happened to read the sign before crossing the bridge this time and it said that the right and left side of this rock wall were done in different styles. If you look carefully you can see the difference. The right side has lots of smaller rocks in between the larger ones, on the left the large rocks are fitted together very carefully with no small rocks in between.
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| View from inside the castle. |
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| The line to get into the castle. |
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| See all the white dots on the mountain? Especially on the right side of the picture? They are yamazakura - Mountain sakura. |
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| It's very good exercise getting up to the castle. |
We spent some more time riding around the grounds, actually walking our bikes since there were so many people and then we found a small, out of the way, kind of strange place for lunch.
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| Udon with seaweed, leeks, shiitake mushrooms and a couple of kinds of seaweed. |
Fueled up and ready to go back out to see more sakura.
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| Do you remember the picture from this spot 2 or 3 weeks ago? The trees were bare and it really looked like winter. |
The castle garden isn't at it's best yet.
Hiroko wanted to walk up and down the main tourist street (Old New Town / Castle Road) so we did that and then headed back to the station to return the bike. It was about 6pm by this time and we had been sightseeing since 10am so I was tired. We were just in time for Hiroko to hop on a bus and I quickly returned her bike and raced home on my bike so I could meet her at the bus stop. We went to the supermarket to pick up dinner and breakfast for the next day and we were almost home when Hiroko realized we had forgotten her bag in the locker!! Since it had her clothes and toiletries in it we had to go back! I quickly ran to put away the groceries and my bike and we were lucky to catch the next bus. Got the bag and caught the last bus home arriving around 8pm!! Made and ate dinner around 9, took baths and finally got to bed around 12! I was so tired!!!! Hiroko was okay though - aaah the energy of youth....
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