Recently, I'm finding it much more fun to tour around the country scenes of Japan rather than do a big city tour through Tokyo. It's been a while since I visited an onsen in the mountain and I wanted to return to Mt. Minobu because I loved the water the first time I went there. It took a little over 4 hours with a rental car from Tokyo and the distance was about 200km which wasn't too bad. However the mountain roads took me a lot of time to navigate after the highway. I found the famous temple called 'Minobusan(身延山)' in Minobu where I stopped by on my way back to Tokyo. The cherry blossom over here is so beautiful that I made sure to stop by on the way back down the mountain and take it all in a second time.
Deep in the heart of the mountains... I think that expression suits this place.
It was an enormous and beautiful temple. They wouldn't have much equipment back then so I wonder how they built it. I stood there thinking "how could they build a big temple like this so deep inside of the mountain?" Just below the temple there was a small town covered with sakura. It could have been called the 'City of Sakura'. The sakura at this place was not the ordinary one that you can usually see in the city. It was called 'Shidarejakura' which had drooped branches like a willow tree. It was so beautiful.
Unfortunately, my photographing skills are not quite good enough to truly express the beauty of this place so the only way is for you to go and visit it!
