One of my students/friends invited me to Ise Shrine last weekend. It’s about an hour or two from Nagoya and is pretty historical. I don’t actually know much about it, but here’s a link to the wikipedia page if you want to read up on history and things like that.
It was a really rainy day, but the place was still very beautiful. This is the main gate to the shrine.
Here’s George chilling on the bridge. Which was very beautiful, even in the rain.
We stopped at this Koi pond for a little bit just to watch them swim around, some of them are 3 feet long or more! They’re huge. They will also eat anything, including paper.
While we were on our way out of the shrine we saw a couple all dressed up. Turned out they were taking pictures for their wedding! I thought they looked great and I asked them for a picture. They looked at me for a second, realized a was a foreigner, and got kind of excited for the picture. It was really great!
We went into town and got lunch at a restaurant. Ise has a special Udon noodle (it’s super thick), so we tried that and a sushi rice bowl. It was soooo good!
Then we stopped for the sweet snack that Ise is known for. It’s basically a mocchi ball in reverse (it has sweet red bean paste on the outside and mocchi on the inside). It was pretty good and I brought a box back to the office as a gift.
After that, we went to the aquarium nearby. There are aquariums everywhere. It makes sense since Japan is an island, but coming from Colorado I’m always surprised at how many aquariums there are.
A nipply starfish.
A ginormous goldfish (not an actual goldfish). It was 2 feet long.
A blue lobster. I have no idea why it’s blue. I think it’s natural. I don’t think it’s from Fukushima;)
Capybara: the largest rodent in the world. Kind of adorable, really.
Anyway, it was an excellent trip and I had a great time. My student was an excellent host and the company was great! I’d recommend checking it out if you’re ever in the Aichi area. From Nagoya it takes about 2 hours and costs 1,400-2,700 yen each way.
