Birthday Hike

Actually the day before my birthday, a hike up Mt. Haruna-Fuji, an old volcano in Gunma prefecture, was energizing for the new year. On the way up, we had a nice view of Mt. Asama which is an active volcano (the photo shows the steam coming off the mountain, not clouds at the top). After hiking down a snowy, slippery trail, we stopped at the hot spring at the bottom for a relaxing soak; later back in town, we went to an izakaiya (type of tavern for drinking/eating). We had a spicy seafood stew (nabe). The stew is cooked at the table. You can see what we started with and what it looked like after cooking. It was just right after the cold hike. Of course, M. joined us for the food part.

Trip to Karuizawa

It is a work place tradition to have an end of the year party called "bonenkai". It is a chance for your work group (minus spouses) to go out to eat and drink a lot to celebrate successfully completing your work year before the New Year holidays. This year we went to a hotel in resort town in the mountains, Karuizawa. Most everyone drove but because I had a meeting in Tokyo until 5PM, I had to take the Shinkansen bullet train to Karuizawa. When I arrived it was snowing and continued to snow all night. We went out to a restaurant and had lots of good Japanese food and plenty of beer and sake. After, we went back to the hotel and soaked in the hot spring (outside) while watching the snow fall on the surrounding garden. Very relaxing. We drove back down the mountain to town on Saturday afternoon.

Takao San

The weather cleared and gave us beautiful weather for Sunday. The leaf season is starting at the higher elevations near Tokyo so we went to Takao san and hiked up the Ishiyama trail. Stopped to eat lunch at an overlook where we had a great view of Fuji san.

It's Halloween in Japan too

1st prize went to the lady Vulcan. Party at Chicory Restaurant was with a mix of people from different countries (America, New Zealand, Panama and Japan of course). Yukio, the chef, made a beef burgundy as well as a home made desert of tirimisu and raspberry sorbet. Yum.

Folk Song Festival

This Japanese folk song festival is sponsored by Ota city. Organized by my shamisen teacher, it included several local groups keeping alive the old folk songs and dances.

Kabuki Theater

This is a photo of the Kabuki Theater in Tokyo (Ginza area) as it appears now. Soon it will be renovated. Alvin did not want to be in the picture. :>). The poster shows the actors (all men) in character and as they really look.

Cosmos Flower Fields

Just a small fall flower festival in Ota. Many fields were planted by local growers with cosmos, sunflowers, zinnias, merigolds. Click on the video to see the flowers in the wind.

Rice is almost ready to harvest

Fukiya (Blowdart)

Ashikaga Fireworks Festival (Hanabi)

The first Saturday of August is the Ashikaga Fireworks festival. It is 2 hrs of fireworks. It rained for the first 30 min and slowly cleared. We went up to the shrine (Orihime) on the hill overlooking the city and watched from there. The smoke was drifting toward us so sometimes it was difficult to see. I think this was not as good a show as in the past (probably due to the economic situation). After we went to get some yakitori (grilled chicken) and beer at a small but great place near the bridge. I took the train to and from to avoid the traffic.

Hiking Mt Akagi

It was hot and humid on the Kanto plain Sunday so we headed to the mountains. This is on the way to Nabewareyama, one of the peaks of Mt Akagi that we can see (in clear weather) from Ota. Prof. Masuda is the hiking buddy. At this point on the way down we were chased by approaching thunderstorms which hit just after we got to the car.

Shinrin Park

Shinrin Park is a national government park about 1 hr away in Saitama prefecture. It is a large park 1x4 km with many walking trails, bike trails, gardens and special areas. It is the start of the season for Yamayuri flower (a type of wild iris). It is native only in the eastern part of Japan. They were only a few blooming but they are very unique. See it in the 1st photo and some other interesting views of the flowers and gardens.

"Furoshiki"=square of cloth used for wrapping

These wrappings are used to carry items to people, especially to people's homes. A square can be any size, and sometimes combined, (i.e., with 2 pieces of square cloth) folded and tied together--not sewn. The cloth can be untied and used again."Click" on the image to see detail.

Nagusa Rocks

Nagusa rocks is an unusal group of large granite rocks in a mountain valley near Ashikaga. At the top of the valley, there is a small shrine sitting on top of the rocks. The largest one is 36 feet tall and 33 yards in circumference. There are no other rock formations like this around the area.

Flooding the rice fields

a system of canals fed from an uphill water source is used to flood the rice fields. The canals weave all through the communities--backyards, roadsides, under streets and into rice fields; sometimes the farmers control the water's speed into the field with small sandbags or maybe a cement block?.

Akagi san

We (Al and Shinji) returned to hike on Akagi san because of the beautiful spring weather and the flowering of the wild mountain azaleas.

Spring

It is finally warm weather and the roses are blooming.

Azalea

It is the time for azalea blossoms now. At Tatebayashi city park, there is an azalea section with hundreds of huge azaleas (called tsutsuji), some very, very old. This is the oldest at 800 years.

Chinese Restaurant

Here are 3 members of the Kubota family (Fumiyoshi-san, Michiko-san and Masataka-san). We went together to a Chinese restaurant and enjoyed delicious new tastes from recipes of various regions in China. There was also a Japanese drink called imojōchū made from sweet potato, and served over iced water, during warm weather.

Hiking Senningatake

On Sunday we hiked Senningatake (meaning peak of the mountain wizard). It is the highest mountain in Ashikaga at 2,172 feet. It sounds like a low mountain but we started near sea-level in the Kanto Plain. We achieved our first goal and reached the peak around 1:00, ate lunch and rested a little. On the way down we decided to take a different path, longer but from the guide book, less steep (not). It actually ran across a ridge with many other steep, rocky peaks along the way. Crawl up hands and feet and down by holding onto to trees. After cresting one peak in particular, we could not see where the trail led.(?) Looking over a rock, we saw that it continued down a long, steep (nearly vertical) 30-foot rock face with only a chain+rope to hold on to. It took 1/2 hr to get everyone down safely and when we started back hiking we found that there was a bypass! (duh). We made it back to the car near dusk, roughly 12 km later, tired but relieved to have completed a rough, steep hike. Click on the photos to see details