Dragon Gate

Dragon Gate

This Dragon helps hold up and ward the gates to the Yonggungsa Temple in Busan. Isn’t he darling!

Summer Gourds

Summer Gourds

There were some beautiful gardens at the Wolmi Island park in Korea 🙂

Japanese Homestead

Japanese Homestead

Sorry for the quality, it was raining as you can see from the photo. But this was the beautiful view outside one of the windows at the Tokyo National Museum. Gorgeous!

Yonggungsa Temple

Yonggungsa Temple

Photo of Yonggungsa Temple in Busan, South Korea. This is one of the few Buddhist temples built along the coastline as opposed to more land-based mountainous areas.

Gyeongbokgung Palace

Gyeongbokgung Palace

Gyeongbokgung Palace, a beautiful complex of dozens of palaces, buildings, and museums. You can literally spend an entire day exploring just this. If you don’t have an entire day, definitely pre-choose where you are going to go.

The Ringing Bell

The Great Bell

This is one of the bells at Japan’s Kamakura Shrines. It sits at the top of a mountain, and originally was run to denote important news/times. Now, they still ring them on News Years Eve if I understand correctly. They are beautiful works of art!

Further good news: I climbed a butt-load of stairs to see this bell, and I was delighted to find out that it also gave me a great view of the area. Plus, I know I lost some weight. 🙂