There's a special place in North Western Shiga-ken that's very close to our hearts. It's somewhere that it's possible to experience peace and tranquility of rural Japan. I'm talking about Omi-Imazu. Those who've been visiting my site over the last few years, may know it's also a place where our good friends the Sakamotos have a holiday house and we've visited a couple of times.
Well, the last time for me go there, was in September 2007... And to cut a long story sort our friends decided in September 2009 to move out of their place in Kobe and live permanently in the Omi-Imazu house... So, this year rather than going to Kobe to celebrate New Year with them, we took the train out to Omi-Imazu. Winter in Omi-Imazu is something special, unfortunately most of the low level snow had been washed away by rains the day before, but the mountains were still beautifully covered. We ate nabe on the second floor of the house enjoying the view of the mountains.
We made our way back to Kyoto on the super fast (well 135kmh, not quite bullet speed) Raicho limited express and got back in half the time that it took us to get there on the regular train.
Note 03/07/2010: If you'd like to see more of Omi-Imazu, I've started a gallery of some of my best shots from Omi-Imazu from the previous visits to there in 2006 and 2007. Check it out here:- http://www.pbase.com/jameslclarke/omiimazu