December 31, 2011
I’d spent the evening calibrating the telescope and making everything worked, so Hayamizu-san took me to the local shrine for a New Year’s Eve celebration. The Nitta shrine (Jinja) was in honor of turtles and required climbing up several flights of steps on a hillside to the top. Over 650 years old, this Shinto shrine and its 700-year-old tree had survived lightning strikes and World War II bombings.