Tanigumi City

On November 18, we were invited to go to lunch with our Japanese teacher (yes...we're taking Japanese lessons!), Steve, Zelie, and 2 other Japanese women. They drove us about 45 minutes away from Gifu City to Tanigumi City. We ate at a really nice restaurant in the countryside that overlooked the city. The restaurant had all glass windows and only sat 10 people at a bar that faced the cook and the windows. Our teacher is the woman next to Frank. Her name is Mami and she comes to our apartment every Wednesday for a 1 hour lesson. She teaches us basic Japanese, like how to say greetings and order at a restaurant. We really enjoy it!



Outside the restaurant, there were miles and miles of green tea fields.

After lunch we drove to visit the Kegonji Temple. This is a picture of us at the temple entrance.

Once we entered, we had to climb a ton of stairs to get to the actual temple where the worshiping takes place. At the top of the stairs, there were several Buddha statues and lots of incense. One picture below is of Melissa putting smoke on her hands. This belief is to waft the smoke over your ailing body part. We also were able to go into a tunnel of enlightenment. This is common at many of the larger temples. First, you pay about a dollar to go into a very narrow, pitch black cave underground. Then you walk single file, while touching the walls to find a key hole. If you find and touch the key hole, then it will bring you good luck. It was kind of creepy down there, but we were able to find it after about 5 minutes...a guy behind us brought out his lighter, so I guess we cheated!


We then went up even more stairs to see about 25 tanuki (raccoon-dog) statues. See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil...tanukis!

The fall leaves were beautiful!