Lake Biwa - Castles, temples and boat rides
For the Memorial Day holiday we took a trip to Lake Biwa with our friends, Chad and Sloan Guisinger. We rented a van from MWR and drove to Moriyama - it took us about 6 hrs. At the rest area where we stopped for dinner there was a tank of fish swimming right below a sign advertising how they will look when cooked. It was too odd, and not appetizing, in my opinion. The next day we drove to Sakamoto on the opposite side of the lake from Moriyama. We took the cable car to the top of Mt. Hiei. There is a huge temple complex at the top, and it is possible to take a ropeway down the other side of the mountain and then you would be in Kyoto. The view of the lake was lovely and we enjoyed walking around and seeing the temples and pagodas and interesting museum with extremely old statues and carvings (from the 9th century). Sadly you are not allowed to take pictures in the museum. Our next stop was to Karasaki Jinja, which is suppose to be the place where dango was first invented. W...