Caption

Winter in Aizu Wakamatsu - Fukushima Prefecture

This place is about 200kms North of Tokyo and the castle, which this moat surrounds, was home to the 19 teenage samurai who killed themselves in 1868. Not that I want to overemphasise Japanese and ritual suicide - the town is also famous for the "naked festival" where youths run to a hilltop temple in the middle of winter to climb a rope in loinclothes (boys only 'fraid to say).