Christmas in Hakuba

Dan and I have just returned from our trip to Hakuba. It is a village up in the mountains of Nagano, where the 98 winter Olympics were held. We had a great time. We arrived there on December 23, skied and snowboarded on the 24th and 25th and came home the 26th. We stayed at a hotel called Hakuba House. It was more of a trendy bed and breakfast. This place made our stay so wonderful. It was run by a nice young Australian couple, who just opened the place days before we got there. It was cute and cozy and everyone was really friendly. They had a little comfortable lounge where everyone hung out and talked. The skiing was good too. I was able to ski on a run that they used for the Olympics.

This is a view from our window Christmas eve morning. We woke up to beautiful snow and it continued to snow all day.

Dan snowboarding. We dressed up like Santa because the resort was giving free lift tickets to people in Santa costumes on Christmas eve.

Mrs. Claus

Dan was loosing parts of the costume every time he fell.

Here is a view of the valley.

This is a view from close to the top of the mountain.

Surreal Human Rights Experience

There won't be too many posts that I put up without pictures, but this is definately worthy of immediate mention. Today was a normal day at Ritto- Nishi Chugako. I was grading papers at my desk when a teacher approached me to let me know that there was a Human Rights Performance in the gym being done by the second grade(our 8th grade). I was appreciative of the heads up, so I followed him to the gym. Once in there, I realized I might be stuck in there for an hour, trying to pick out any Japanese vocabulary that sounds familiar to me. Then the piano started and a stage full of thirteen year old Japanese kids started singing "We Shall Overcome". I must say, they did a nice job. After the song, which up until that performance I had solely connected to the African American Civil Rights movement, I began trying to pick through the Japanese vocabulary for something to hold onto.

Nagasaki

It was a long trip for just two nights, but we thought it was worth it. We took the shinkansen(bullet train) and it was still alomost 6 hours. This country is deceptively big. It looks so small on maps. Anyway- we arrived in Nagasaki in the afternoon on Friday. We found our way by tram to our hotel. It was very small, but cheap and had western beds and our own bathroom. It was walking distance to some shopping and restaurants too. The tram system was great in Nagasaki. You could take a ride anywhere and it was only 100y(less than 1$). We basically settled in, walked around and found a restaurant to have dinner at on Friday. Saturday, we went everywhere. We started by going out to Glover Gardens and The Dutch Slopes. These are areas that have a lot left of all the European influence. Historical note: Nagasaki was the only open port during the isolation period. That's why it has so much cultural influence from the west. Then we crossed town to the Peace Memorial and a-bomb museum. It was smaller and less dramatic than Hiroshima's, but it still got the point across. After that, we dropped by the shopping area for lunch(Indian Curry), and bought tickets for the Inasa-yama ropeway. It is a cablecar that takes you up a mountain, where you can see the whole city. We went up right before sunset and it was beautiful. The sun was setting on one side of the mountain, while the moon was rising on the other. We stayed up there and had a coffee while the cities lights came on. It was really cool. After that, we went to the train station area, where there is huge shopping complex(with a gap- gap is pretty expensive here). We bummed around there and had dinner at this gourmet organic buffet. It was super good. We originally went there because I read on Frommer's web page that there was 1000y beer all you can drink in 90 minutes, but that ended up not being the case. Dan was slightly disappointed, but we both loved the food. After that, we went back to the hotel. Sunday we got up had breakfast and made our way back to the station, so we could make sure we got seats on the train.

This is the first night after dinner. We wandered around and found this reggae bar- who knew?

Here we are the next day at Glover Garden. It's a beautiful area with a nice view of the city and a lot of European influenced architecture.

This is the Confucian temple. It's much more colorful than the Buddhist ones.

This is the Peace Memorial Statue in the peace park near the a-bomb hypocenter. It's controversial, because it's not pretty. One hand is pointing towards the sky(where the bomb exploded) to always remember it and never repeat it, and one hand is held out like a Buddhist statue to represent peace.

In the peace park there are monuments that have been given to Nagasaki from other countries. I forgot what country gave them this one, but I liked it.

This is another one I liked.

This is a memorial to the "26 martyrs". 26 people who were marched across the country to Nagasaki because they were Christians and then crucified here. This was a long time ago.

Here is a catholic church near the martyrs monument. It has really cool mosaic spires.

This is part of the museum connected to the monument.

This is a view of the sunset from Inasa-Yama, the mountain that we went up via the ropeway. You can see the edge of the island Kyushu, the last of the 4 main islands(Okinawa comes next).

This was a view of the moon rising that we saw when we turned around.

Self-pic on Inasa-Yama.

Arashiyama, The Monkey Park, and The Purple Sanga

Dan and I had a fantastic day last Sunday. We started off by taking the train into Kyoto and heading over to the northwest side to a neighborhood called Arashiyama. We've heard of this place a lot lately, because it's supposed to be a great place to see fall leaves(apparently people here are just as excited about the fall leaves as they are about cherry blossoms). The other reason we had heard about Arashiyama is because a coworker told us about a monkey park that is there. So that, not the leaves is really what brought us to that side of town. I am glad we went there though, because it was beautiful. It is nestled into the mountains and has a big river running through town.

Here is one of the main streets. It was really cute, lined with touristy shops and food stands.

There was some celebration going on and there were people playing drums and dancing. Near that stuff was this crazy thing. It was so high you couldn't see the end of it.

This is the area you can rent boats.

This is after we got to the monkey park. After you enter you have to climb a mountain. Along the way, we saw a few peaceful monkeys looking quite normal and as if they were in their natural habitat.

This is the opposite of that. At the top of the long winding trail, you come to a clearing and see this. The building is a giant cage, not for monkeys, but for people. You go in and feed the monkeys through the fencing. We bought a small bag of sliced bananas. There were also peanuts and apples, but we figured monkeys should be eating bananas.

This is a view from inside. The monkeys would straight up reach towards people who had food. They are so human-like it's crazy!

Here are some on the move. They were fighting for positions. We were trying to feed the babies, bu the big guys weren't having it.

This monkey just received a nice piece o' banana from Dan. He had them taking the food right out of his hands.

Outside the cage there were amazing views of Kyoto.

Here is us among the monks.

After the monkeys, we headed over to the Purple Sanga game. They are Kyoto's professional soccer team. Here is Dan with his dog on a stick and his Asahi.

This was the crazy fan section. They chanted the entire game. Many of the chants went to the tune of old American songs.

This is the field with a pretty view of the sunset. The empty section across the field is the visitors section.

This is us having a fun time.

This is us having a fun time after it got really cold.

We had a really fun time and recommend the monkey park to anyone coming to visit.

At my mom's request

So my mom asked that I take some more pictures of the house and what we see from it. They might not be as exciting to other people, but I understand. Here they are...

This is looking directly out the door at the side of that "restaurant" next door. There used to be a bunch of bushes and stuff, so you couldn't see it as much, but City Hall had people cut it down.

This is the view if you turn left out of the door and look at the street.

This is our door.

This is our gate and the house directly across the street. The dentists office is right next door to it to the left.

This is our house from the street.

This is looking down the street. Our house is on the left, the dentists office has the blue sign and City Hall is the enormous building past that.

This was on my morning bike commute to Hayama Junior High School.

This is also the morning commute.

Halloween

So I really missed Halloween this year, but I was fortunate enough to be working with teachers that wanted me to share the joys of the wonderful holiday with the Japanese students.

This picture is hideous, but it was too funny not to share with the world. This is in the AM, just after I completed making the hat and right before I had to get dressed for work.

Here are the Jack o'lanterns I made with a couple students.

Kurama to Kibune

A couple weeks ago, Dan and I went on a hike from a town called Kurama to a town called Kibune. It was up north of Kyoto about a half an hour and the train ride up was beautiful. In Kurama we climbed up a mountain to a shrine and then hiked across a ridge to Kibune.

This is Kurama. At the end of the street are the begining of the stairs that we climbed for quite a while.


The temple at the top had great views of the surrounding mountain range.

Here is an example of that.

Here is the temple(Kurama-dera)

This is Yoshitsune Seekurabe-ishi. It is height comparing rock that Minamoto Yoshitsune used to measure his height before he went to join the Minamoto clan.

These are some crazy roots we saw along the way.

This is a pretty waterfall at the end in Kibune.