[Written on March 16, 2017]
Dear Virtual Diary,
I am setting out to Mie prefecture on the weekend March 17th. I will stay in the small town of Iga the home to poet and master of the haiku, Matsuo Basho. I am hoping to learn some tidbits about Matsuo Basho. One of his most prolific works is called The Narrow Road 「奥の細道」. I have been reading through it as of late and I am eager to see his birth place as well as the history there too.
I have never been to Mie prefecture before, the town I am staying in is called Iga and it only has around 100,000 people as its population.
While there I will be looking for cool little Jazz bars along with the great music to accompany it. Not sure if in a town this small that they’d have something like this, but I’ll see.
Here are a couple of the sites I will be visiting:
- Ueno Castle
- Basho Memorial Museum
- Minomusi-Sam
- Haiseiden
- Ueno Tenjingu
- Kokyouzuka
Further south of Iga there is Shima, which has a number of nice parks from the look of it on google maps.