Kurashiki

On Sunday the girls, David and I (Orlando was playing golf in 37 F weather) went to the little town of Kurashiki about 2 hours by car from Hiroshima. Here we are looking hot (actually it was quite cold) as always:

The town had a very cute preserved area which is surrounded by shops and museums. In one of these shops I found a Japanese doll representation of my family, Mom, Dad and 3 girls as you can see below:

I also found some very comfortable and modern looking Reefs (a brand of flip flops) in one of the little shops:
We where lucky enough to run into a wedding, check it out:
I wonder if we could have crashed the wedding....I don't think so, but hey it would have been extremely educational. Here is a close up of the happy bride and groom:
He's thinking "I love you even though you have the world's worse wig on". Seriously you can't notice it on the picture but I could have bought a better wig at Halloween USA. Now that is commitment. Our initial intention was to go sightseeing but we got "derailed" and ended up shopping most of the day. He we are happily carrying our bags:

We also had a chance to go to the Achi Shrine as you can see below:To those of you who are wondering our pour Taxi driver/camera man/body guard/bag carrier, I mean David, survived driving 2 hours each way and shopping with 3 girls for 5 hours. Golf Claps please!!!! I'm certain Orlando would have given me money to take the train back home after 1 hour of shopping. Inside the shrine there where some "Daruma dolls".

These dolls are hollow and round wish dolls. Using black ink, one fills in a single circular eye while thinking of a wish. Should the wish later come true, the second eye is filled in and the doll is taken back to the temple where it was purchased. I found that out from a colleague on Monday, when I was actually there I just thought they where funny looking, but it's good to know that they actually have a specific meaning. Here is an artsy picture of the shrine:

It is traditional for the visitors to a shrine purchases a wooden tablet, writes a wish or prayer on the tablet, and hangs it at the shrine. For those of you who are planning to visit start thinking of a good wish. Your going to have to send me your wish 3 months ahead of time in order to figure out how to write it in Japanese.