Japan, April 5th: Uji and Daigo-ji

Monday saw a trip to the nearby town of Uji. It is a fairly small place, but surrounded by pretty hills, and it has a very long history and a couple of Unesco world heritage sites to its name. Below is Byōdō-in, which is also featured on the 10-yen coin. It is also a nice place to see cherry blossoms in bloom.





In addition the world's first novel, The Tale of Genji, has a significant portion set in Uji, so there are a number of attractions related to it as well.





A further claim to fame Uji has is its green tea; tea merchants and green tea sweets, baked goods, ice cream etc. are plentiful. Unfortunately I know so little about proper Japanese green tea that most of the finer points are lost on me.

After Uji, with some time to spend, we decided to make a detour to Daigo-ji; it was one of the temples I had managed to miss on my last visit, and is also known as a spectacular place to see cherry blossoms.





And indeed, busy despite it being a Monday, Daigo-ji was specially set up with banners and fences for cherry-blossom viewing.