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

Sakura (cherry blossom) season

Sakura blossoms mean the final arrival of spring (although it really hasn't felt like it yet). In the local area the peak will be in the next few days. Today we visited a local temple with 100 year old cherry trees. Inside we found a treasure trove of contemporary calligraphy drawings.