Onomichi -- Land of a Thousand Temples (and Cats)

Onomichi is an ancient city on the coast of the Seto Inland Sea, about an hour and ten minutes away from Hiroshima by train.  And let me say this, straight out of the gate: the place is quaint.  It's so quaint that the residents of Amish villages all across the United States look at Onomichi and despair of ever attaining such an overwhelming level of quaintness.  Like, it should be against the law to be this flippin' quaint.

But I digress.  Onomichi is famous for being a picturesque little place with winding back streets of almost Byzantine complexity and old houses that once sheltered famous Japanese writers and artists.  Apparently, TV shows and movies are often filmed here.  And the city boasts an overabundance of exactly two things: temples and cats.

Look at this little bus!  It's like our own personal Quaint-mobile!

The first of many kitties we ran across on our journey down the winding temple pathway.  Onomichi's citizens love its numerous stray cats and have even placed posters on storefronts indicating each cat's name and familial relationship to the other cats in the area.

...And you know me.  I just love me some cats!

What an artistic shot.  It's as if this cat is frozen in its tracks by the sudden realization that you can never really go back...

The first of the 25 temples along the temple pathway.  One of the weird things about most of our pictures from Onomichi is this soft, ethereal glow that seems to permeate the background.  Ryan says it's just a quirk of the lighting.  I say it's...I dunno, Buddha or somebody.

There's a Japanese superstition that says if you can land a rock on top of one of these torii gates, your wish will come true.  You can see my rock in midair on the right side of the gate.  And while it looks like I'm about to land that sucker and achieve my heart's desire, I regret to inform you that this is not the case and that I still do not possess my own theme song that plays whenever I enter a room.

The temple pathway involved a lot of stairs.  It also involved some charmingly antiquated signs (at right) warning visitors of the dangers of thieves and darumas.

More stairs!  They don't look all that steep from this angle, but trust me: we were thoroughly winded!

A three story pagoda from about halfway up the pathway.

A cute little miniature pavilion from about three-quarters of the way up the path.  It sort of looks like it's made of Legos.  Thanks, tilt-shift!

Once you've conquered the mountain pathway and have reached the holiest of holies at the top, you are accosted by booth after booth of temple-related merchandise, including a little cartoon bear-head upon which you can write a prayer to the gods.  Either these are some very irreverent gods, or the above-mentioned cartoon bear is assuming way too much importance in Japanese culture.

A woman carries here small, horn-tootin' son aloft while a miniature wolf nips at her knees.  Significance?  I don't know, unless this really happened in Onomichi at some point in history.

We celebrated the completion of our journey with one of Japan's greatest delights: soft cream!

That heavenly glow started getting out of control at this point.  I'm just trying to ham it up in front of a pagoda, but I look like I'm being bodily assumed into the afterlife.  What a drag.

The biggest tree I've ever personally seen.  It's 1100 years old and photos cannot do it justice.  Even with me in the picture for scale, it somehow doesn't look nearly as gigantic here as it did in real life.

I told you Onomichi residents love cats!  In addition to all the posters, we saw several stones painted to look like cats and placed in strategic locations around the temples.

Each temple had an accompanying graveyard.  This one was particularly large.

We cap off our day at Onomichi with a little visit to our good friend, Ultraman.  Notice the righteous glow around Ultraman's right arm.  FOR JUSTICE!