Konnichiwa from JAPAN!

Dior and I are now in Japan! We live in a small city near Nagoya and are loving the easy access to delicious Japanese food! Dior's team is Hamamatsu Phoenix and he's played in six games and they won five of those :)

We've done a bit of sightseeing already... We took the local train and visited Toyokawa-Inari temple last week and had a nice time seeing traditional Japanese buildings.

The trains reminded us of BART

Strolling the shops outside the temple

The Temple gate was built in 1884

The main shrine is made of whole zelkova trees. I had to google the tree since I had never heard of it.

Prayer banners you can make at the temple, they were hanging along most of the pathways

Behind the temple there was a shrine for Toyokawa Dakinishinten, who is depicted in Japanese Buddhism as a female deity riding on a white fox. People who come to this temple bring little fox statutes and leave them behind.

There were so many little foxes but I am not sure what the red fabric symbolized.

Okuno-in temple was built in 1814 and was surrounded by these incredible trees! the couple on the bottom right were writing their prayers on small pieces of fabric that are then tied on to a surrounding fence. I didn't want to bother their prayer so I didn't take any photos but it was very moving to see.

After spending the day at these temples we completed the day with a train ride to Toyohashi, a nearby city. In Toyohashi I found...... STARBUCKS! Grande caramel machiatto please... arrigato!

CHEERS!