imai-cho, kashihara jingu, koriyama

Less than 5 minutes from where we were staying was Imai-cho, a cluster of preserved homes that are from the Edo period.

They have some homes open for viewing, but when we arrived on Saturday, we were too late to visit and on Sunday, we were too early...

How cool is the tofu/aburaage vending machines in front of a tofu shop?!

Some roadways were so narrow that cars cannot pass through.

On Sunday they were having blessings done all around their neighborhood, we happened to stumble upon this one near a preserved home.

I didn't photograph the service out of respect.

We then headed down to Kashihara Jingu, which dates back to 1889.

The buildings here are similar to those at Ise Jingu in Mie prefecture and exhibit classical Shinto architecture.

The shrine is dedicated to the mythical first emperor Jimmu.

The sun was even more blazing at this point...

From Kashihara, we backtracked to Yamato-Koriyama.

I wanted to check out this cafe...K-Coffee.

Yup that is goldfish in a telephone booth. (click on the photo to see a video).

Using an old gas station, this cafe serves coffee and shaved ice as well as other items too.

Luckily, we were there early enough to have some shaved ice.

I chose coffee while Satoshi chose ume.

The coffee shaved ice also had coffee jelly (gelatin) as well as coffee powder on it.

The ume shaved ice was super refreshing! But bummer no color though...

Apparently this area is known for goldfish breeding.

You can see goldfish farms here and there.

They were doing some brisk sales at this farm.

some goldfish were so tiny others were really huge!

cute manhole cover.

We also saw the ruins of the Koriyama Castle.

We were thankful that we had good weather but it was so blazing hot and humid that it made walking around very uncomfortable.

Hope you enjoyed our little adventure as much as we did.

K-Coffee
4-46 Yanagi
Yamatokoriyama, Nara
Phone: 090.6986.3255
Hours: 10:00-17:00
Closed Thursdays