Yet again apologies for my prolonged absence, I’ve been very busy lately and needed a break from my blog due to a bit of writing fatigue. I return this week and will hopefully get through a lot of posts I’ve been meaning to write for ages. The problem with visiting lots of temples is processing which temples were where and what their history is. Soon I will have ‘broken the knot’ so to speak, and will hopefully churn out a load of temple posts!

I want to talk about where I went today on this post. Today I went to Kobe Festival 神戸まつり (Kobe Matsuri), an annual event held in Kobe (near Osaka and Kyoto) on the 17th of May. I have visited Kobe before (see here) but this time it was rather different. All the streets in the centre of town were pedestrian and there was music and…