Kawagoe-City

Since we've spent the majority of our time in Japan with my folks in Kawagoe, we've seen many of the sights around here.

Also known as Ko-Edo (Little Edo... or Little Tokyo), Kawagoe has quite a number of tourist attractions... very important ones as my dad keeps telling me. His involvement with a Non-Profit Organization that preserves the beauty of Kawagoe has nothing to do with it, he tells me. .. Kawagoe wa SUGOI! (Kawagoe is great!)

In a 5 min. walk from my parents place is arguably the most historically important building in Kawagoe, Kitain Temple... founded in 805 A.D. Yeah... a few years before the U.S. was a country... known for it's 500 Buddhas... click on the pic for a sample.


Some more info here...
http://www.kawagoe.com/kitain/english/index.html

With such a long history, any visitor will find that Japan is full of landmarks. In culturally rich places that weren't destroyed by the war, some sort of a historic landmark on every turn. On our visit to Nikko a few days ago, we felt like we were in the Louvre Museum. Too much to see on on every corner of every block on a building had some significance... but I'm getting ahead of myself now.

There are numerous shrines here, as well as budhist temples.

In addition to the rich history here, there is a TV drama called "Tsubasa" or "Wings" that is shot here... and appearently it's pretty popular? We see posters for the show everywhere...


Kawagoe is also know for it's sweet potato (with numerous stores selling purple potato ice cream, bread, donut, any other sweets) and unagi (much to Kimbo's delight).

Now... I've gotta get out of here, as my mom just turned on the Smooth Jazz AccuRadio station, and KennyG is blasting away...

images from wikipedia