Wheh, been a while. Lot’s ‘o school and work >< The Terms this year are blah, this Sunday the term I’m currently in ends, and Monday the new one begins. >< This last term I took and interesting class called The Psychology of Persuasion, and this coming term I’m taking one called India: The weight of tradition on the modern world. I’m excited but also afraid there will be quite a bit of writing involved. Work has been extremely busy lately and that cuts down my homework time. I’ve also been playing Hello Kitty Online (HKO) and helping out on the wiki when I have the time, my characters name is Chihiro. ^^

In October K and I went on a hiking trip through the Oirase gorge. It’s on the way to Lake Towada and we’ve wanted to walk it since we got here and finally had the chance. It’s supposed to be one of the nicer places in Japan to hike during the fall and see all the pretty foliage, but unfortunately when we went the leaves hadn’t changed yet. I think they would be now though because the leaves are turning here around where we live now. It’s been a later fall than it usually is here, staying pretty warm until nearly November. Just recently we’ve had our first cold spell and had to turn on the heat. But I heard some states have gotten snow already, which is unusual for those states.

Oirase gorge is known for its waterfalls and we did get to see several of those. They were really nice, and everything was such a beautiful green. I had a very fun time of it. ^^ It’s a very well maintained trail too, and the day we were there, there was a group cleaning up the trash along the trail and the road that runs parallel to it. I got an interesting picture of some of their group going up some steps. They look like they’re elves on their way to the boats to leave the world in the Lord of the Rings. XD

I’ll go into some of the waterfalls because the tour people gave us a sheet with the Chinese characters for the names as well as an English description of what the names mean. I unfortunately lost the map that marked which waterfall I had gotten to, so I’m just going to name some of the more interesting ones. There is the Mouth of the Mouse waterfall, the One Thousand Senryo (it’s an old Japanese currency) rock, Ten thousand Senryo stream, Great Bottle of Sake Fall, Nine Step Fall, Elder and Younger Sister Fall, the Un-Aging Fall, White Thread Fall, the Gem Bead Screen Fall, the Long-nosed Flying Goblin Rock, and the Asura (a guardian god of Buddhism) Stream to name a few.

So we walked the trail and ended up at Lake Towada where we caught a ferry to Yasumiya. K and I love going there, especially to the temple. It was a bit of a windy day so that did damper things a little, but otherwise we had a great time!


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Here’s my Pirate name grr what’s yours arrr?

Mad Bess Bonney

Every pirate is a little bit crazy. You, though, are more than just a little bit. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate’s life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com yarr!

This weekend we took another trip, this time to Yamadera Temple in Yamagata Prefecure.  It’s a famous holy site because it houses a 1100 year old flame in a Buddhist temple brought from a big temple in Kyoto, which was brought from a temple in China, and it’s been burning all this time.  In fact, the temple in Kyoto had been destroyed in a war, and the flame from Yamadera was used to relight that flame when the temple was rebuilt.  The main flame is deep inside the temple to keep it safe from wind and the elements, so unfortunately we didn’t get to see it.

It’s also a very beautiful place, it’s built on the side of a volcanically formed mountain, and there are all these Buddhist carvings in the rocky formations.  It also has many temples built on the rocks which give an awe inspiring view with the mountains in the back ground.  Sadly though it was raining when we went, so the mountains were not quite as visible as I had hoped for.  But there were pretty with the clouds all hazy around them.

The only bad part was that since it is on the side of a mountain is there are literally a thousand steps. XD  1105 to be exact.  It was quite a trek up, but thankfully there were lots of places to stop to take a picture or a breather.  There were a lot of people there Saturday too, and pretty much everyone was using a umbrella, which made navigating around people very challenging. XD  I was afraid I was going to poke peoples eyes out with the tip of my umbrella, and I kept poking K in the head with it while I was trying to use the camera. XD



Steps and more steps XD

Aside from the steps, it’s a really nice place.  To quote Eddie Izzard, “it’s got this aaAAaaaAAAaaahh  kinda  feel to it.” It also has a really fresh mountainy and tree-ey smell that’s always so relaxing.  ^^

Oh, these also this story about when the town and temples were founded.  There was this rich lord who was going through the area now know as Yamadera and was awestruck at the natural beauty of the area, so decided to have temples and shrines built there.  There was a famous hunter living in that area already, and who me the lord one day in the woods.  The lord told the hunter of his plan to build the temples.  But the lord also said that he’d like to keep this place a safe and sacred place so he’d like no more hunting on the mountain side, and even though the hunters livelihood might suffer he agreed because honoring Buddah was more important.  When he said that a bunch of animals from the area walked into the clearing where the men where discussing, and danced for them because they were happy they weren’t going to be hunted anymore.  ^^

I like that story, and that picture is from a little book I picked up while I was there.  I’ve got a couple of little story books, 1 because I like the stories, and 2 because they’re written in furigana, which is when they write hiragana next to the kanji so that little children can read the books too.

This guy has an interesting hat.

These are seals attached to the underside of a roof of an archway that’s also a temple.

These are candles and incense that can be bought and used at the temples or taken home for at home shrines.

This is where you burn incense; I’m not entirely sure on which incense you burn for the departed, and which you burn to wave some of the smoke on yourself and to inhale in order to cleanse yourself to go pray. I think the single small sticks are for the departed, and the bundles are for yourself, but I could be wrong.

These are little charms and souvenirs sold to help pay for the maintenance of the temples. Some of the charms are to be attached to the inside of your car for protection, while others are cell phone or key chain charms.

These are statues of Basho, a very famous wandering poet.  He wrote a famous haiku about Yamadera:
Silence and penetrating into the rocks — the cry of the cicada.

These are little Buddha status that you can buy and place at shrines to appease the souls of the departed. The particular shrine these are for is a shrine for children that have died. You can tell which ones are for children because they will have pinwheels and little toys at them.


These are from the top most and most holiest temple. This is where the flame is kept lit, and generally the point of the trek up the steps is to come here and pray. It’s kind of weird wandering around these temples with everyone is taking pictures. Because to us in Western society, when we think of holy we think of churches, and most wouldn’t appreciate people wandering around a church during a sermon taking pictures. XD But Shinto and Buddism are very different from most Western religions.

This is the temple at the bottom of the mountain, where the trek begins. At the center front of the hall is a big wooden Buddha, that if you donate a hundred yen you can rub it. I’m not sure if you rub it for luck or make a wish, but it’s is well polished from all the people who have rubbed it over the years, its so polished its almost soft feeling (yes, I rubbed the Buddha’s belly ^^.)

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The third day of our trip we headed back home, but on our way we drove to the Abukuma-do caves.  The caves are right next to the Hoshi no Mura (”Village of Stars”) Observatory, but we didn’t have a chance to go to the observatory.  ; ;  But the caves were really cool!  I got some really great pictures, and it was quite a hike through them.  And since the caves and observatory were on the side of a mountain, there was quite a spectacular view of the surrounding country side.  I fiddled with my new camera and managed to take a “stitched” photo which made a big panoramic shot.

After that we headed back home, but we stopped at a Starbucks in Fukushima city.  Across from the Starbucks was a neat little Indian restaurant that I couldn’t help but take a picture of.  ^^  Wow that’s a lot, but it was a  lot longer then any of the trips I’ve been on so far.

Abukuma-do Caves

 

The drive back

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The first place we saw on our second day of the trip was Goshiki-numa, the 5 Colored Ponds.  We started off at the foot of the trail which has a nice visitor center and restaurant.  Bishamon-numa, the first pond, which was a beautiful blue and we saw some people feeding ducks.  ^^  I couldn’t believe how vibrant the color of the water was, very cool stuff.  Then we hit the trail and walked for a bit and came to the next pond, Aka-numa, which was a very creamy green color.  We were getting pretty warm out by then, but it felt really nice in the shade.  Then we walked for a bit more and came to the next one, Midoro-numa, which was a crazy reddish and green color.  You can definitely tell that there is some iron in that water XD

Along the way we saw some families enjoying the trail too, and some of the kids had nets and little insect viewing cases.  Bug collecting is very big here from what I can tell, the popular insects to catch are these gigantic beetles that scare the crap outta me XD  They sell them in some pet stores, and I can’t imagine having one of those in my house, blah.

Well, then we headed to the next pond, Benten-numa, which was a bright blue color with a bit of a creamy blueness around the edges.  Very interesting.  And then we were off to the last one, Ao-numa.  It was a creamy greenish blue color, with more on the green end then blue.  Between Benten and Ao-numa we passed a nice little bubbling brook.  I love that sound, its so soothing ^^

Then it was a little more of a walk to the end of the trail, where there was a rest center and bus stop.  The bus stop is for a quick ride back to the trail head, and I have to admit we took it.  But we didn’t have the time to walk back because we wanted to see some other places that day.  Oh, I’d like to note that I used past-tense for all the lake colors, because apparently they change color over the course of the seasons, so even though they were a particular color when we went they don’t stay that way all the time.

After that we to the Noguchi Hideyo Museum, which is dedicated to a famous Japanese doctor who helped cure Yellow Fever and Syphilis in South America and Africa.  When he was an infant he fell in a fire pit which severely burned his hand and quite a bit of his body.  When he was a teen he was sent to Tokyo for surgery on his hand which gave him the use of his hand back.  After being healed so dramatically he devoted his life to medicine and became quite a distinguished doctor.  He won many awards and found the vector for Yellow Fever, saving many peoples lives.   But unfortunately he died while in Africa, working on a cure.  He’s on the 1000 Yen note, which is a pretty big honor.

Then we went to a Glass Museum and saw some lovely pieces.  Then we headed back to the hotel , which I’ll talk about a little because I really liked the place.  It was pretty cheap too, for the niceness of the accommodations.  In the driveway they had a van painted like the Neko-basu (Cat Bus) from My Neighbor Totoro.  That’s such a great movie, and I’m pretty sure every Japanese person has seen it ^^  If you ever get a chance, I highly recommend it, it’s such a happy kids movie. 

Well, inside the main building, they had this wonderful eclectic assortment of stuff.  They had these really nice wall paintings of trees and flowers, and right off the dining room there was a big koi pond.  There were some crazy big fish in there XD and some pretty colored ones too.  What was really neat was they had a bunch of wood walk-ways going all over the place with picnic tables stationed throughout.   We called it a night after that, we were pretty worn from being on our feet all day.

 
These are from the town where the Hideyo Noguchi museum is at.

The Hideyo Noguchi Museum

The Hotel X-Teru

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Last week K and I went to Fukushima Prefecture for a couple days.  We had a fun time and saw some really nice stuff.   It was kinda rainy on the way down, but it made some cool looking misty mountains.  When we got settled in we went to a Denny’s for dinner.  We hadn’t eaten at an American franchised restaurant here yet except for McDonalds and that’s the same wherever you go.  They had some very “non-American” dishes on the menu, which K and I thought was kinda funny.  Since you go there for an American feel, but can get traditional Japanese meals.  XD  But they had some yummy looking deserts, the regionally famous fruit is a momo (peach), which I might add is my favorite fruit ^^  Oh man did that momo crepe look good.

Well, that’s it for today, I’ll write about the second and third day of the trip over the next two days.

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For those using Firefox I’ve noticed there’s an issue with it playing the music.  The music is very soft for the first 5 seconds, then gets louder, if no sound plays after 10-15 seconds (after all the loading of course) I’d suggest just clicking the link below and watching it from Dream Studio.
http://video.sanriotown.com/video/d402d62932b61025

I apologize for the somewhat lengthy pauses between the videos.  If I didn’t include them, half the time the videos skip the first half before it catches up.

Yay! Got my computer’s CD-rom working, the old one had gone bad XD

Almost a month ago now I went to the Aomori Nebuta festival for the second year, this time with a friend too. It was a lot of fun, hot, but fun. ^^ I finally got my new camera so I got a few more good shots this year too.

First off we strolled around the Aspam building and looked at souvenirs and I picked up a cool shirt. From what I gathered from the sales clerk, the design is from a famous Aomori artist. The drawing wraps around the shirt from the front to the back, and I really like the burgundy color.

Next we wandered out back of the Aspam where they house all the floats in tents. This time of year in Aomori it rains fairly often, so this is mostly to keep them dry. We got to watch some singing and dancing, and got to check out more souvenirs. The more popular ones are these strings of bells that you can wear around your neck or some to attach to your cell phone or purse.

Then we headed into the city and wandered around the shopping district. I found this really cute carp bag that I couldn’t resist XD We also picked up some food to eat, me and S (for sake of privacy he shall be known as “S”) got these giant taco (octopus) legs on a stick. They were really good too, they heat them up for you when you order them and brush on a sauce while they’re heating it.

After that we went looking for a spot to chill at during the parade. We ran into some co-workers of mine and ended up staying there. The parade doesn’t start till it gets mostly dark out, but they start setting up a little before it gets dark. Then they shoot off some fireworks when it begins then all the musicians start playing. There were some pretty cool floats with some nifty themes. But it started raining XD a lot… We were partly covered by an overhang but there were some people in front of us who jumped up when it started and moved back to where we were. But the dancers, musicians and floats kept going even in the rain! They looked soaked too XD But the floats were covered in a large sheet of plastic to keep the rain off, and that slightly interfered with the pictures unfortunately. But it was still a blast.

I think it’s great everyone gets a chance to enjoy the festival!

I have no idea XD

It’s not a festival without Totoro!

Yay Tom and Jerry!

It’s not a parade without the Goodyear blimp!

I hope to get pictures I took of the Tanabata festival here in Misawa developed soon. That was about a month and a half ago, but they’re on a disposable camera I’ve had in my car and I haven’t gotten to the shop while they were open yet XD (yay mid shift)

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But here’s some random stuff in the meantime