Tourists might be attracted by Japanese temples and their gardens, but have you ever thought what it takes to preserve their timeless beauty?
Recent encounters in Shiga Prefecture certainly brought home to me the enormous effort required to pass age-old traditions down through generations.
The history of Omi Province (now Shiga Prefecture), which boasts the huge Lake Biwa, goes back to ancient times. But nowadays, as you race through it on a bullet train between Nagoya and Kyoto, its gentle hills and vistas of paddy fields may barely give you pause for thought.