Otori

I was last weekend at my friends house in Otori, a countryside small city to the south of Osaka.
Arriving there I was surprised by how nice the houses and the streets looked. Old countryside Osaka at it's best!
My friends are the official notes keeper of the priest in their eleventh generation.
Well this should mean something..


The house of my friends was also a very traditional house, a "farmers house" as they called it which is characterized by the fact that it is REALLY big compared to city houses.
Well if you know (or remember) till Edo period the farmers were after the Samurai the second highest class in the Japanese Cast system!
So it makes perfect sense that their houses were so big and beautiful. Simply put the farmers of Japan were rich AND they had status.


hmm, Japanese cherries.. ;)


And some nice "Tanbou"s (rice fields) giving the city it's countryside charm!



We ended the night in a Japanese restaurant, as all of my friends know that I am a Japanese food otaku! =)
It was very delicious except for the Sashimi which was too expensive for the quantity we got.