Mt Shosha Anniversary Trip

 To celebrate our 17 years of wedded bliss, Dan and I went on a trip.  A day trip.  A touristy little day trip.  We signed up for the Mt. Shosha trip. It was an all day trip to Himeji to see a bunch of Japanese temples and shrines.  Because I want to sound cool, I will tell you that one of the structures there on Mt Shosha was used in the movie "The Last Samurai".

It was a 4 hour bus ride up (and back!) and they showed the movie on the drive.  The tour guide was nice enough to pause the movie and post out the temple that we would be seeing in real life.  When we got to the mountain, we got to take a gondola ride up the ropeway to the middle of the mountain.  Then we spent 2.5 hours hiking all over the mountain to see a bunch of different shrines and temples.

It was so beautiful there.  Japan is such a gorgeous country!

Getting started on our hike up the mountain to see cool stuff.

(Yeah, I'm wearing my glasses.  I have an eye issue and my contacts are not working right now.)

All the cement posts have writing on them, but i can't read Kanji. 

The start of the trail to the really cool stuff.   It gets steep right around that corner.

So much random! Japan is just the coolest. 

This is the main temple. You can't tell, but it is built on a steep hill and surrounded by thick trees. this was about the only open space.

There were neat things everywhere. 

Lots of detailed stuff. 

And we ended up on this little trail for a bit.  I can't believe none of my pictures show how steep some of the paths were! This one was a little crazy and a lot of work.  A lot of fun too.

 Check it out!  I'm at the Engyoji Temple, the one they used in the movie. I feel so famous.

A better view of the entire temple area. Probably the largest flat space on the entire mountain.

Look!  I'm on top of the world!  This is how high up we were!  Crazy!