Travel Tips

We kept a close eye on the weather forecasts... everyone said it was too late for snow. But, EVERY year there are a few unseasonally cold days in March and even April. Tuesday there was a chilly wind and an evening forecast of more of the same for Wednesday! So Wednesday morning, March 5th we left for Kurama early in the morning - to find that YES - it had snowed!! Aparently it was the first snowfall in weeks!!

We arrived at around 9am. There was only one little old lady waiting to get on the ropeway that takes you to the top of the mountain. Then two young Japanese men, perhaps University postgrad students? got on as well. Hiromi and I proceeded to race them to get to the fresh snow and perfect pictures first! We were outdone by the little old lady... !!

I just loved the colors of these blue lanterns against the white of the snow. It was like a magical wonderland. There was no sun coming through the sky nor the canopy of snow-covered limbs of the trees. Everything was so white...

... and silent. The silence was "almost deafening". Now I understand the meaning of that cliche! We stopped to catch our breath and suddenly realized - all around us was completely silent. No birds, no cars, not even wind. Complete silence. Several times we just stood there and stopped breathing for a moment, and let the silence fill our ears. It felt like medicine - really like cleaning my ears out with silence! Amazing.

This is the main complex of Kurama Temple. You could smell the incence, at this early hour we were the first ones here (OK! OK! - second! After the little old lady...) To get here involved walking up lots and lots of slippery stone steps, as well as taking the ropeway and then more steps and then some more steps.

My sneakers were not made for this! Mind you, they have taken me through India's dusty Agra right to Kurama's icy slopes. Nevertherless, they were soaking wet inside by the end of our 3 hours of walking!

As I took this picture, a HUGE amount of snow came crashing down from the enormous sloping roof several meters behind me! Hiromi thought I was under it! Nooo! I just had to get this pretty picture!

Can you see the stooped lady below? She must be in her 70's, perhaps even 80's. She was meticulously keeping the way clear after every crash of snow from the sloping roof of the entrance gate. As the day wore on, more and more visitors came and so did the sun! After that you could hear the constant crashing and THUD as layers of snow lost their grip on roofs and tree canopies. But by then we were relaxing in the Kurama hot spring! :)