Hello, Goodbye

A couple of weeks ago, a friend stopped by Wajima on his way from South Korea to the U.S. I gave him a tour of the Noto before he moved onto other adventures. We stopped at Sojiji temple, near my house. Having now been in Japan for a full year, I have seen Sojiji during all four seasons. It is my favorite temple that I have seen in Japan, usually there are no other tourists and it's one of Japan's few temples that is striking in beauty and not overrun with tourists trying to tick it off of their list of 100 famous temples in Japan. Sojiji is located in Monzen as small village that attached itself to Wajima city a few years ago. Despite being under construction for the damage done in the 2007 earthquake, the temple has a serene atmosphere and I seem to discover something new upon each visit. They also serve a delicious green tea-vanilla soft-serve ice cream cone.

Sojiji Temple, Monzen

Down the street was an over-1000 year-old tree. I think they might be connected at the roots because there was no mention of two trees... or maybe that was lost in the Japanese-to-English translation.

We watched a beautiful sunset at Senmaida on the Sea.

The next weekend, Tini and Herbs came up for a last visit before returning to Australia. We etched our own designs into chopsticks and then covered the design with chinkin (gold dust). It's pretty difficult to come up with a design that will look nice on a set of chopsticks and be easy to etch into the curved surface.

Tini looking frustrated with her design (which turned out great).

Herbs working diligently.

My chopstick

On the way back to Kanazawa and the beach, we stopped by Ganmon, a famous rock in the Noto. It still feels like I only touched on the iceberg getting to know them, and it was sad to see them go. Now the new JETs are here, and I look forward to getting to know them over the next year.