Hikone Shrine

It's snowing! Again. The blizzard hit last night, and we had some more snow this morning. As you can see, the bonsai garden is covered! I'm hoping it won't interfere with our Kyoto trip...I think we may just go anyway, though. ;)
Yesterday, we went to go see Hikone Shrine (at least, I think that's what it's called...) - it's really close to campus, so we walked. To get there, you cross Ajiroguchi (the main road to JCMU) walk around a creepy old building (complete with tanuki - raccoon - statue), cross another road, pass a bunch of graves, and walk up a mountain. :)
Here's another Japanese cemetary. Isn't it cool? :D I think they're beautiful.
It's impressive how close to the woods we are - I like that we're surrounded by nature here. We followed this path up the mountainside for a little while to get to the shrine. Here's the entrance, surrounded by little statues of some sort. I'm afraid I don't actually know what they are for! But they're everywhere. :) The gate in the back (or "torii") indicates the main entrance.
This (below) is the new shrine structure. As you can see, the shrine is completely empty right now. One of my friends went during the coming-of-age day and it was apparently packed! This building is opened for celebratory times of year.
And here's the older building behind it. I think I like it better...it's more representative of what I think a shrine should look like.
At the shrine, there's a mountain path that leads upward, higher into the mountain. It's a pretty steep hike, but you can get to a lookout point at the top. It gives you a marvelous view of the closest city to Hikone, Maibara. Maibara is about the same size as Hikone, and JCMU is right inside Hikone - the Maibara city limits are just a block away!
I don't have a good picture of the Hikone skyline - there were a bunch of trees in the way! But we were able to see something else that was cool. Fujitech is a company that has its headquarters nearby. It's an elevator company! In fact, it's one of the biggest worldwide. You most likely ride in a Fujitech elevator on at least a weekly basis. And this is their test shaft. You can go in one of their test rides and everything!Once we left the summit, we left through a different way, which had an entirely different shrine area. I likes this one too! There was a little pathway of red gates like Fushimi Inari - apparently shrine patrons will donate money and they get the big gates in return. I'll skip that picture in favor of the real thing on Saturday. ;)We ended up on the edge of Maibara, so we headed back along the lake to JCMU. It was so pretty yesterday! The sky was actually clear enough to allow us to see the mountains on the other side of the lake. It makes me glad that we went out yesterday, since today we might as well be snowed in. I don't really know much else! I hope you all are enjoying the warm weather, and have a wonderful end to your week. :)