oh dear @mrsomebody, your post is wonderful! I would love to visit Japan one day but in the meantime, through your stories, I did a virtual journey with you and your wife! and what about your drawings? you are really good and with them you give a great charm to your story! congratulations on your work and your curie rating :-))
Thanks for your warm comments @road2horizon. I thought of adding a map of the routes we took, but it was already so long with the 22 drawings that I left it off. Each day brought new and wonderful sites. Though I'd seen many shrines before, they still fill me with awe, and I wonder how they could have been created in all their magnificence so long ago. It seemed like a mix of world heritage sites existing next to small rice farmers.
yes, the whole history of those places must be feasible, a culture so different from mine (I am Italian), but so fascinating with all its rituals ... but do you live there or did you visit your family?
I live in Seattle, USA. But my wife is from Japan. We visited her daughter in Tokyo and her sisters in Yokohama and in Shizuoka (her hometown). It certainly makes it easy to travel for me. Our next big trip will be to Italy, probably in a year.