Just got back home from a trip to Japan. What an amazing country! I've traveled extensively because of my work and been to almost 30 different countries around the world. But I've never been this impressed: starting from the overwhelming feeling of being welcome by the Japanese people and ending with the overwhelming feeling of everything in that country made to make its people's lives more convenient and comfortable. On the former, I don't necessarily think they LIKE foreigners much (in fact, Japan with the population of 130M, accepted an average number of 16 refugees per year in the last 30 years); but they don't show it at all - even the complete strangers we met there went out of their way to be helpful, polite and friendly.
Special thanks to our resident Japan expert and CP user
scrambler, who had given me a few really good tips on traveling there.
I made over one thousand photographs on the trip and just started processing them. Some are decent, some are too "touristy", some are too trivial and you might have seen similar ones elsewhere. But a few came out surprisingly good. They will be loaded
here eventually.
The two shots below are just for sample. First one shows a strange group of Buddha statues I discovered behind a small prayer pavilion in the giant hillside park surrounding Daigoji Temple in Kyoto, which is not overly popular with tourists. They look unkempt and hidden covered in dead leaves and dry tree branches.
As you leave Japanese temples, you can drop a coin and leave a written wish tied into a bunch. These are the wish bunches at Daigoji.
If you have any questions about a specific photo in the album of Japan, in general, let me know. I'll try answering it as best as I can.