Mountain Climbing

Today our friend Nanami took Laurel and I to a shrine out in Shiga-ken. Tachiki or something like that. It was for hatsumoude, the first shrine visit of the year, an important tradition in Japan. This shrine happens to be on top of a mountain...700 steps up, to be exact.

It was about an hour and a half drive out to Shiga. The mountain is right next to a river, and there were a bunch of kayakers out. We climbed the 700 steps to the top and then had some tea before going around to each part of the shrine to pray for the upcoming year.

Being a non-religious person, I still feel somewhat awkward when I go to shrines. Shinto is not really a religion the same way Christianity is. It is based much more on tradition (I am no expert on shinto, so don't hold me to that). But it is such an important part of Japanese culture and I almost feel as if I am being disrespectful when I go through the motions without really understanding or believing what it is I am doing.

Laurel and I were the only foreigners on the top of this mountain and so we were even more conspicuous. I'm used to sly stares and kids pointing, but we got a lot of....

"Papa, mite, gaijin da yo. gaijin ga kiteiru.": Dad, Look!!!! a foreigner...a foreigner is here.

But they were cute little kids, trying to count all 700 steps.
Almost as cute as the old people carrying their dogs in their backpacks up the mountain.

After the shrine visit, Nanami took us to the mall where we got some lunch and shopped for a while. The restaurant was awesome, because it had a bread buffet...all you can eat. You just took your plate up and could get all the cheesy bread, mochi bread, basil bread you could eat. mmmmmmm....bread.