Mauricio & Kay

A couple of months ago, my friend Mauricio sent me an e-mail surprising me with the news that he and his wife, Kay, were planning to come to Japan for a trip. I actually thought he was joking at first (Mauricio, you do have a history of jokes and kidding people, you know!) but when he sent me back an e-mail with their schedule, I realized he was serious. So, not long after that, I happily greeted my friends Mauricio & Kay in Tokyo (about five weeks ago). We spent the weekend together, traveling to different areas of the city. It was great to see them, and fun for me to be able to show people around one of my adopted cities (even though I certainly am not an expert). We met up on Saturday afternoon, relaxed and caught up a bit in their hotel, and then took the train to Ueno Park and Shibuya.

The first picture is actually from the next day when we took a tour around the city, and I'll save that description for another post, but I think it's a great picture of Mauricio and Kay, so I started with that one. The next picture is in Ueno Park, not far from the zoo. The picture with the shrine and the video monitor behind it is near their hotel in Shinagawa. I thought it was an interesting contrast between an old image of Japan and a very modern one. The last picture is in Shibuya near the Hachiko statue. After walking around the district and being amazed by the energy and scale of the neighborhood, we were walking back to the train station. Near the entrance there was a group of people holding up signs (as you can see in the picture) that said "free hugs". I thought it was very odd, so of course, took a picture. Since then, I've checked online, and it's apparently a recent, semi-worldwide movement; check this link if you're interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Hugs_Campaign

More later . . .

Nasu (Northern Tochigi)

About three weeks ago I took a trip to the Nasu area of Tochigi. I visited my former student, now friend, Hiromu. He had visited here in Utsunomiya a couple of weeks before, and we talked about getting together again in his city, so when I realized that I had a day during my spring vacation that I had no other commitments, I decided that would be a good day to visit. Hiromu and I made a plan, and on April 1st I took the train there. The shinkansen goes there and takes only 17 minutes, but costs about $30, so the local train taking 45 minutes and costing only about $8 seemed like a much better choice! Since I'm such a roller coaster maniac, and there's a fairly large amusement park there, that was on the list of things to do that day, of course. The weather forecast for Utsunomiya was predicting a warm, sunny, comfortable day.

Did I mention that it was April 1st? The weather was about to play a big April Fools joke on me...


After about 20 minutes on the train, I noticed that the weather was getting much worse-dark and cloudy. About 10 minutes after that, the train traveled through a small town where there was snow on the ground, which really surprised me. The closer I got to Nasu, the worse the weather got. Hiromu met me at the station, and as we were driving away from the parking lot, the rain slowly started to change to a mix of rain and snow. We decided to drive to the amusement park anyway, and see what the conditions were like, and well . . . . you can see the picture! I guess I didn't realize how much higher the elevation is in Nasu!

Obviously, the amusement park plan was canceled. Nasu is known for having many different kinds of museums. One that I had heard of before, and that Hiromu had never visited, is a group of three "trick art" museums. We decided that would be a good, unexpectedly snowy day activity.

The two photos with paintings in them are completely flat (2D) but have a strong 3D look because of the technique used where part of the picture extends beyond the frame. The other two photos use an optical illusion and a trick. (I'm not actually doing a handstand in the middle of an art museum.) See if you can figure them out!

After the museums, we went to an onsen, which felt really good after the cold, gloomy weather. Then Hiromu's father called and invited us to come and have dinner at their family pension. From previous descriptions that I had heard of pensions in Japan, and from the word itself, I expected that it would be something like a "B and B" (Bed and Breakfast) in America. I was very surprised; it's more like a small hotel! It turns out that in Japan, the word hotel is usually only used for structures that are four stories tall or higher. So even though this building has many guest rooms, and more than one floor, it's not considered a hotel. In any case, it's a wonderful place! Kuroda-san (Hiromu's father) is an excellent chef, and served us a delicious steak dinner, the best I've had in at least a year! As we were finishing our dinner, Hiromu's mother arrived and spent some time talking with us too. Kuroda family, thank you again for a great evening!

So, in spite of the snow, the day turned out great! (And I'll visit the amusement park another time. . . !)

Mount Kogashi

I'll post something more recent before trying to catch up on older trips and pictures: on Saturday my friend from church, Shouji, and I went to Mount Kogashi. It's about a half-hour drive into the countryside from Utsunomiya. (Previous visitors: it's a little further beyond the town of Oya where the huge Kannon statue is.) At the foot of the mountain there's a beautiful park with a reservoir surrounded by trees, including several sakura (cherry trees). They were still blooming when we visited, and that's one of the pictures I'm including. The other panorama photo is from the top of the mountain (or very large hill). The third picture is Shouji near the summit. Shouji, thanks for again for taking me-I had a great time!

Part three of Kappabashi--when we WEREN'T in Kappabashi

After leaving the Hanayashiki amusement park, As we were approaching the main area, we walked a few blocks to the nearby temple. a small group of geisha (or possibly maiko--click the link to Wikipedia for more info if you're interested) was leaving one of the buildings. That's not an uncommon scene here, but it made for a good photo in any case. One of my favorite pictures that I took while I was there is the cat sitting on the pedestal of the statue. There are quite a few wild cats at this temple, but I mean wild more in the sense of living on their own; the one in the picture was actually very friendly. At one end of the temple complex, there's a LOOOOOOONG shopping arcade that is frequently jammed with people--that was certainly the case the day we visited!

After leaving Asakusa, we took the train to the opposite side of "downtown" Tokyo in the district called Roppongi Hills. The last picture was taken on the observation deck of the Mori Building (where I went to the modern art museum previously). I posted pictures from that viewpoint before, but they were all night views--it was very cool to see the same view during the day.

Kappabashi's neighbor

Well, really the neighborhood next to the Kappabashi neighborhood, Asakusa. That didn't really make much sense. In any case, after visiting Kappabashi, Mondo and I went to Asakusa and visited Hanayashiki, which, as you can see in the picture, is the oldest amusement park in Japan! (if you count the fact that it opened in 1853 as a flower park.) It does have the oldest, continuously operating roller coaster in Japan, which you can see me riding in the second picture. You can also see that many of the other riders were children--not a very scary coaster, but fun from a roller coaster history point of view! Mondo didn't go on the roller coaster (not so creatively named "ro-ra-ko-suta-") because he wanted to take pictures of my coaster adventure (absolutely NOT because he is scared of roller coasters! Hmm.... uh.... well... ) (By the way, Mondo, you took a great picture!)

God blessed us with a coupon for free entrance tickets (good that day only) that was being passed out close to the train station which was great, because otherwise we would have had to pay about $7.00 each just to get into the park so I could ride one roller coaster. (Thank you!)

Randy and Diane, you can see the hotel where we stayed in the background of the third picture.


More later . . .