Kawagoe City - Kawagoeshi (川越市）

Backpost. Just a few more posts to write and I think I covered everthing I did in Japan. I'm going to post another Engrish section, the reverse culture shock I'm feeling, my full evaluation of the Kansai Gaidai Program and my honest opinion and observations, what I wrote in my Thank You cards and gifts I'm sending to Japan. So I still have something to keep myself busy this summer.

Another one of the many places I visited in Japan was Kawagoe city which is in Saitama Prefecture. This is the city where my boyfriend went to school. It feel really good and mushy to see the kinds of things my boyfriend did and saw in his high school days. Kawagoeshi (Kawagoe City) is trying to attract more tourists. It is trying to advertise itself as "Little Edo" for some reason. My boyfriend said that Kawagoe used to be a major city back in the day until Edo (present day Tokyo) came along. (...what is this? and why was it there?)

One of the most interesting part of Kawagoe City is this section called "Kashiyayokocho." It is a street full of candy shops. The best part is that all the candy and snacks are cheap. I felt a bit sick pigging out on so much candy.

(I didn't see these kinds of shops in the major cities. So this was a refreshing sight.)

(From this angle...this part of town seems like part of an old Japanese movie)

I think after this we wandered to a temple...probably Kitain temple. After going to Kyoto so many times all these places start to look alike. But I got my birthday fortune!

My boyfriend wasn't that enthusiatic to translate for me. I'll probably translate it myself this summer. All I remember was that it was very general.

In the same area there is a famous site called gohyaku rakan statues. I'm not sure what a "rakan" is but gohyaku literally means 500. You have to pay to get in but I wasn't in the mood to look at statues so I just took this picture through the gate.

One really random place we went to was this house musuem. It was just a typical Japanese house and you could walk inside it to see the what a house looked like in the old days. It was a really short diversion but I guess worth it. I really like the view into the street from the second floor of the house. One thing was really amusing is that while walking in the hallway my boyfriend walked straight into a hanging lamp. At 5'7'' or 170cm he is average height so he would have been considered tall in ancient Japan. I'm 5'0'' or 152cm and I manage to walk under the lamp fine. I was gloating when I took the picture.