dreamon086

This is a famous Japanese pilgrimage, in which it is said that if you visit all of the 88 temples, you will be given eternal happiness. The shrines are beautiful and ancient, and the Shikoku is just an all around goegeous island. I have visited 4 of the temples and hope to one day make the journey to all 88.

I lived in Japan as a Rotary Foreign Exchange Student this past year in a little country town called Kochi. I’m back home now, but I can’t help feeling like I left apart of me behind. I never expected to get Japan, as it was the last on my list of selected countries. And I cried for hours when they told me it was where I had been placed. Then to find out about Kochi, which is like being sentenced to the Arkansas of Japan. Yet now that a year has passed, the best year of my life, I realized that getting Japan was the best thing that has ever happened to me. I could go on and on about how wonderful the people are (I did have 3 out of 4 host familes whom loved me like their own) and I traveled extensively throughout the gorgeous countryside. But I can’t fully describe what a great place Japan is. All I can say is that if you have ever wanted to go to Japan in the slightest: Go! You probably won’t regret it.

This past year I was an exchange student to Japan, and so I thought I had the whole Japanese temple thing down packed. But after I climbed the slope and reached the deck peering out about the city, I knew I had reached something special. Kiyomizu-dera is and probably will always be my favite place in Kyoto. It is beautiful, and even though there a bit too many tourists, it is spiritual. Try to go at night time in the fall and spring when they light up the whole structure. it was so magical for me, I even cried. It was also nominated to be one of the new world wonders. Alas, it did not win, but it still is a magnificant place