The Japanese community in Montreal organizes a Fall festival with traditional Japanese food, musical and martial arts performances. The following clip is from a performance of Arashi Daiko, a taiko drum ensemble from Montreal.
For our last dinner in Japan, we had a special fest with a lot of food and a lot of beer and sake. I was very emotional because the welcome I received from the Yamamoto familly in Japan was extraordinary. I took some funny shots with Hiroaki-san as it is not the custom in Japan to have any form of body contact, even for family members. Mitsuko got her hug too on the next day before the departure.
Mitsuko really wanted me to have some fresh rice for our last meal, so we got some rice bags from the latest crop and went to the rice mill. The rice mill is a do-it-yourself automatic facility where you simply put some money to start the machine and select your preferred setting from highly refined (white rice) to coarser (brown rice). You put the rice with the shells on one side and it comes out as white rice on the other. Fresh rice tastes so good!
We enjoyed perfect weather for the visit of the Zenko-ji temple. The temple was built in the 7th century. There is a rumor that the temple would be the host to the first Buddha statue brought to Japan. This statue cannot be seen by anyone, including the chief priest.
Nagano is the capital of the Nagano prefecture. It is notably famous for being the host city of the 1998 winter olympic games but also for the Zenkō-ji temple. Downtown Nagano has a nice and quiet atmosphere (at least in comparison to Tokyo!) in the middle of magnificent mountain scenery.
