Rural Japan Images

 

To Steven's pleasant surprise, most of his walk down Japan was through peaceful forests and lush,well-groomed tight valleys sprinkled with small villages and orderly farms of rice and fruit trees that hugged swift streams and steep-sided mountains. Oftentimes the day-long hikes to the tops of the mountain ranges left him physically exhausted, but he could always count on lots of ancient cultural delights, like local shrines and religious dieties to be "waiting" for him in the next valley or village.