It’s been weeks since I updated, and this is the best photo I’ve got. Sorry. Peter says raising your hand up in the air keeps gnats away from your head. We were waiting around for Tets to catch some butterflies, and after a while we started having caveman sports. We’d try to throw a big rock as far as possible, try to hit a tree with a rock, or try to throw a rock over a tree. It was pretty primal.
The Japanese are getting pretty excited what with the World Cup going on here now, but the most enthusiastic by far is the giant animatronic crab population.
Down by the river near the place where we stayed for the weekend. Clear water, lots of falls, and plenty of really dangerous rocks to climb around on and fall off. Sorry for ending that sentence with a preposition; I don’t know what state of mind I was in.
Deep down in these caves you find all sorts of little shrines and things. Here’s a spot where people use the mud to stick famously light one-yen coins to the ceiling and walls. Of course, I climbed up and stuck one on there, too. Hiroko was not impressed. There was also another little shrine where some famous monk set up chimes to sound when water dripped on them, and another where people piled up hundreds of flat rocks like the danged are supposedly made to do in Japanese hell.
