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.