This was a pretty chill day in the sight-seeing department...although the weather was anything but! I'm glad we didn't have TOO many places to walk to, as the places we went really wore me out from the heat alone. My dad wanted to go to a Japanese castle located here, and lucky for us, the place we stayed was SUPER close. Practically next door. Now, I have to admit, when he used the word castle, I had the European image in my head. This turned out to be *slightly* inaccurate. It did have a moat, though!
After the castle, we decided to go to this lake made famous by a popular anime movie called Your Name. When I saw this listed in the "things to do in Suwa" left by our hostess, I knew I HAD to go. The thing is, I haven't seen this movie--yet. But I happen to be addicted to a couple of podcasts hosted by Rachel Wagner: Rachel's Reviews and Hallmarkies. I feel like we could be the best of friends as we actually have quite a bit in common, and I actually respect her and her opinions very much even though we have never met or even interacted online. I have actually wanted to reach out before as she is very warm and friendly on Twitter and welcomes that, but it has always felt a little stalkerish to me. But...if I had real-life pictures of a setting from her favorite movie...for some reason I haven't shared them with her yet, but I will. I wanted to finish the blog first, and that has only taken me about a year. (Don't judge!) Plus, my dad and I didn't really have anything else to do, so why not?
This actually turned out to be more than a best friend stalker experience. While there, we met with a man, who started talking with us. Or rather, with my dad in his rusty Japanese with me standing there in my nonexistent Japanese. I'm not sure how, but through the conversation we discovered this man is a member of the church! The church is small in Japan, so this was quite the "Mormon small world" moment. He immediately felt like an old friend, even for myself who couldn't understand the words he was speaking. We truly are all brothers and sisters.
This large sculpture had pictures of the Japanese Zodiac. I thought it was only a Chinese thing, but I was wrong. This is me pointing to my animal the Rooster.
