Another day trip into Shiga, this time with my lovely wife Ritsuko, and our friends Shinya and Chiyo and their daughter Ruth. We headed further up North along the shores of Lake Biwa this time, but not as North as I went in 2007. The place we visited is called Omi-Maiko (note the Kanji character for "Maiko" in the towns name is the same as that used for "Maiko" as in an apprentice Geisha, I'm not sure why though). Omi-Maiko is a popular swimming spot in the summer months, so I took a swim in the fresh waters of Lake Biwa.
I decided to go for a bit of a swim out to a rope, it was about 15m out from the shore. I made it to the rope, turned around and started to swim back doing freestyle. I made about three strokes when suddenly my wedding ring flew off from my hand when my arm was out of the water. Attempted to dive down to find it for a while, the water was about 2m deep. I had very little visibility so after about 5 minutes I called to Shinya to see if he had goggles. He said they're are back up on the beach, so I swam back to beach told Ritsuko that sad story and got the goggles. I prayed and asked God to help me find the ring, then I headed back to where I thought was the spot and proceeded to duck dive around looking for the ring. The bottom of the lake is pebbles. After about 15 minutes of duck diving I decided I might be more successful I skimmed along the surface. I spotted something gold in the water and duck dived down to find it was only a candy wrapper, but I was compelled to reach out just a bit further and suddenly my hand felt the ring! I picked it up and brought it back to shore and Ritsuko took care off it while I continued with an afternoon of swimming. You can hear me talk about this experience here.
After the lake we headed for a nearby Onsen (hot spring) for a wash.