Japan - gardens

As previously mentioned, I LOVE Japanese gardens, lanterns, statues, etc that are found around the shrines and temples. Here are some of the MANY beautiful pictures we took.

Apparently this is supposed to be this way, but it looks like the head of a decapitated statue to me. If you were to see this while you were taking a stroll one night, it would scare the begeebers out of me!

The clouds and trees parted just perfectly to permit a ray of sunshine to light up this little fellow. He's my favorite of these statues.

Gorgeous and peaceful

Classic raked rock garden

The little red bibs are a sign that these little statues are praying for the children and expecting mothers.

K&V with Kenta's mom at the Sanzen-In shrine and garden

LONG stairway to a shrine

Hopefully you enjoy a snipit of a few of the exquisite Japanese gardens we visited.

Japan - Iwami silver mine and Izumo shrine

I love going to see the beautiful temples and shrines whenever we visit Asia. Here are some pictures from a famous shrine called Izumo and a picture of us at the visitors center for a very famous, influential silver mine along the Japanese coast (Pacific side, not Sea of Japan side).

Check out this really, really LARGE rope

I also love the gardens surrounding these shrines.

I also have a thing for the torii (the shinto arch that you see all over Japan). I make Kenta take pictures of toriis everywhere we go.

This is pure spring water brought down from the mountain. The Japanese will wash themselves before entering their holy areas and drink from the pure, holy water.

K&V in front of the visitor center for an ancient and prominent Japanese silver mine.

Japan - Hiroshima and beyond

We spent part of a day visiting Hiroshima and the Peace Monument. Here are some pics of this and a couple other things.

Hiroshima Eternal Flame

Hiroshima Peace Park with the arch, the eternal flame, and one of the last surviving building from ground zero


One of the only surviving buildings from the epicenter of the atomic bomb

Kenta's mom broke her pinky finger on the first day we were traveling (that's a whole other story). With her hand casted she looked like the little Shinto cat that you see all over Japan (Maneki-neko), so we took a picture of her with the cat. :)

Kenta always has a long list of the various types of food we need to eat while we're there. Here we're eating some shabu-shabu and some sukiyaki and some blowfish tempura. It was delicious.

Japan - visiting Kenta's extended family

We were in Japan for a week in October and spent some time with Kenta's extended family. Here are some of the pictures below:

K&V with Kenta's grandma in Fukuoka

K&V with Kenta's grandma, mom, aunt, and aunt's three sons in Fukuoka

K&V at dinner with family

K&V with Kenta's dad, uncle, aunt, and cousin

Catching up

Well, it's been five months since I last wrote. We're still around. We're still traveling when we can. We apologize for our blog absence. Here are a bunch of picture oriented posts of our outside of Indy fun. When we're in Indiana we're working most of the time. We do spend some time together every evening, but it's only enough time for dinner, some conversation, Kenta watching CNBC, some reading, and a few TV shows here and there. I am still working on some crafts, but not nearly as many as I did in Rochester. We're excited for spring so that we can get outside a little bit more. Hope these last few months treated you well.