More of the Mystery Tour

 Time for lunch!

Our next stop was at a soba factory that also had a restaurant and a gift shop.

We had to take a tour of the soba factory before we could eat. Lucky for us the tour only took a few minutes and then we were lead into the restaurant for our lunch was already on the table. 

Not only does the food look good, it tastes good too!

After lunch we got back in the bus and drove out to the countryside to visit a knife factory. This building is the for displaying and selling finished knives and other related products.

This building is the small factory for making the knives. 

The factory is set up so that people can observe the knife making process without being in the way of the workers and the equipment.

Forging, grinding and polishing... it looks like hard work to me.

Big grinding wheels; it's very noisy too!

This guy is forging red hot metal into the shape of a knife.

There are display cases showing the different products that they make.

When we went to the main office and sales room building we got to see this knife art!  

Okay, back into the bus and we're off to visit Daishizan Qingdao Temple.

Katsuyama City, Fukui Prefecture

There's a lot of snow here. The temple complex covers a large area and here near the entrance it looks like a hostel or dormitory for visiting followers. 

Go this way.

This place is big! And it's impressive too! We keep moving forward.

A long outdoor covered corridor... we keep moving forward.

That's our destination. There is supposed to be a big Daibutsu (Great Buddha) inside; we shall see.

Yep, there sure is a big Buddha inside.

It's hard to tell by these images how big this place really is.

This Buddha is 17 meters tall.

This room is full of small statues too!

We have plenty of time so I'm just walking around taking pictures of everything.

Well, that was enough time with the Daibutsu. Time to start heading back to the bus.

There are two long outdoor covered corridors to pass through.

Here comes Emi!

For anyone interested in more information on the temple this is their website:

http://etizendaibutsu.com/index.html

Now it's time for dinner! 

No, we didn't eat rabbit for dinner, they're in the petting zoo attached to the restaurant.  We had all-you-can-eat shrimp for dinner.

Cold beer too!

You look at the shrimp and the shrimp looks back at you! What a gourmet delicacy this is!

After dinner we got back in the bus and headed for our first night's hotel in Kanazawa city. That'll be coming in part 3 of this mystery tour. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Mike