This is such an excellent post...

I've said before that Pure Land Mountain is an awsome blog, this proves it...

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Last weekend, along our serendipitous wanderings (serendipity in fact being the main point of such excursions) in search - as herein chronicled earlier - of the renowned pond that as near as we could tell is nowhere near its location, we stopped at a local sake brewery up the road a ways in "Irish village," as it is called - for its puzzling rural Japanese village love of Ireland and the presence of a delightful "Gulliver's Village" up there in the low hills.

One day I will get to the bottom of why it is called Irish Village - I have to find the pond first - so many things on that loooong list - but to my present point: as we meandered down the narrow village road I saw a sugidama (sugi: cedar; dama: ball) hung outside the door of a local sake brewery I hadn't noticed before....[Pure Land Mountain]