梅花： Plum Blossom

While driving back from Sumo in Osaka, my entourage and I stopped at a shrine on Lake Biwa, Japan's largest lake. I thought I'd share a few of the pictures.
The plum blossoms had just begun to bloom. That's a tori, the name for a shrine gate, in the background.
The highway splits two of the tori.
Here, the two passengers of my car (oh, yeah, got a car in March - will show a picture sometime soon) sit and admire the tori. Look closely and you'll notice that it's in the lake itself.

Haven't quite given these two nicknames yet. Let's see, the guy on the left is in my calligraphy class and well-versed in various Chinese characters, so I'll call him Kanji Fiend. The girl on the right just started driving after coming to Japan and nearly killed me in October, so I'll call her New Driver.