Road Trip day 1

I think the biggest holiday in Japan is Obon.  It is a week long time where the Japanese tradition is to celebrate the spirits of their ancestors.  Most Japanese take this week off of work and travel to be with family.  It is also the end of summer vacation for Japanese children so some people go on vacation.

Jeff's boss informed him about a week ago that his office would pretty much be empty so he should take the week off.  We decided to take a road trip.  The one minor problem we ran in to is because there was very little notice and many Japanese are traveling, it was very difficult to find a hotel with any vacancy.  Because of this we stayed away from the big cities.

We started with Iwakuni.  It has a beautiful bridge with 5 arches. 

It was a beautiful day and the water was crystal clear.

If you look closely there is a building on the hill in the background, it is a castle.

The underside of the bridge.  As an engineer, I love to see how things are built.

Yep, this is me.  This is to make my mom happy that I occasionally post a picture with me in it - lol!  The umbrella was for the occasional sprinkle and a sun shade.  Japanese really like to use parasols.

We stayed that night in Yamaguchi. Just a block from the hotel was a lovely little stream running through town. 

This is a fairly famous pagoda and was extremely pretty.

Can't blame a girl for getting artsy once in a while.

Looking up at the pagoda from below.

We finished the evening by strolling back along the stream/canal and finding a restaurant for dinner.  Found a great little place that had pizza.  It was our first pizza since we've been here and it was fantastic.  We had two little pies.  One was pretty traditional tomato/basil and the other was cheddar cheese and potato.  Both were excellent.  It was a great meal and the had a fantastic bar, so we had a drink or two as well as the pizza.  Day-one of vacation was a huge success.  :-)