Voyage Junkie

Once again, amid tales of forthcoming apocalypse, we've rung in the next year!  Last year was incredibly cold and a bit snowy, so we watched fireworks from our balcony and didn't do much.  This year was mild, and our chiropractor lent us a bike for Matt to ride (I already had one given to me by a good friend who returned to America over the summer), so we had no excuse to stay in like the homebodies we are.  We rode around the mountain to Inaba Jinja, a prominent Gifu shrine.  I was amazed by the beauty of the place as well as the liveliness of the street lined with vendors.  I'm used to visiting Kyoto, Tokyo, Osaka, and other such cities, where there are tons of historical sites that draw huge numbers of visitors each year, but even counting the Nobunaga Festival I've never seen this sort of gathering in Gifu before.  To the left is the view from the first shrine torii  down through the street of vendors.  We arrived about 11:25 and took a ...