Advertisement
Published: October 15th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Day one
Uradome beach, Tottori-ken Here in Japan every day is a new journey full of surprises, challenges, and joy. Every weekend is a journey not only for the mind, but a chance for me to see a new landscape, to scratch the surface of a new culture. I'm absolutely thankful for the holidays.
Oct 12th, Monday, Health and Sports Day. A long weekend. Here the journey begins! ^^
(Four pages of photos arranged by time.)
Day 1. Saturday, Oct 10th.
Did a road trip with Takeshi out to the northern part of Hyogo-ken and Tottori-ken. Here are some highlights.
Izushi Soba Izushi, Hyogo-ken, is a small and peaceful town, with a reeds-decorated river running alone side, it is absolutely rejuvenating. The town is famous for its soba. The entire area is packed with restaurants that serve mainly soba. It doesn't surprise me that the whole town survive solely on selling its noodles.
Izushi soba is known for its unique style, served in tiny dishes. I was more impressed by the fresh wasabi root served with the meal. In addition, a grater that came with it for grating the wasabi was made of dried sharkskin. I certainly had fun grating my
Day three
Only in Kyoto could one encounter such sublime scene. own fresh green spice for the first time in my life.
Konotori Sato Park This is the home to the Japanese white storks, a kind of birds that bring babies, or fertility to the Japanese according to the folk tales.
The animal almost went extinct in 1970s due to modern farming practices that killed off its food supply of frogs and other wetland animals. This park right now is the result of collaborated effort of government, local scientists, and farmers. They are building an environment which is suitable for the birds. The whole town practices organic farming and the birds are well taken care of before they are mature enough to venture a voyage into the wild.
The birds take life easy and spend most of their time on the ground. We were super lucky to witness more than a dozen of them hovering in the sky at the same time! Another amazing scene was this old man with his massive camera (massive lens to be exact, see photo) stood by the park all day just to get a perfect snap shot of the birds in flight. I definitely felt his passion through Takeshi's conversation with him.
Day three -- Ayuko and I
The old lady who took this photo later gave us a short lecture on photography. ^.P Though I'm not so sure if that passion was toward photography, or the birds, or both.
And I wandered how often he comes here to photograph when I left the park.
Unfortunately, I have a super small lens (18-55mm). So while others were shooting the birds in sky, I was busy capturing the motionless dragonflies in the bushes. ^^
Kinosaki Onsen We left the park and went straight to Kinosaki onsen for a dip into the zone of relaxation. Did a blog on this when Cindy and Jane were here. Second time here and can never get bored of it!
Sand and beach Later that afternoon we stopped at Uradome beach and Tottori sand dune, and saw a small exhibition of sand art with a Vienna classical music theme.
Looking out the car windows on the way back to Osaka, marveling at the beauty of nature. Life is good.
Day two, Sunday, Oct 11th.
Had a dilemma the day before whether I should go to today's wataiko (Japanese drum) practice invited by my Japanese friend, Umemoto. Or to join my roomie, Beryl and her friends to Universal Studio Japan. I later decided to
Day three
Only in Kyoto... choose the former. Partially because I was saving my pennies for my winter vacation trip, partially because I'm just more captivated by the Japanese traditional culture.
This turned out to be a great choice I later concluded. Izumi city is very far away from where I live. So I left the house in the early Sunday moring at 7am, arriving at Izumi at 8:30am, met up with Umemoto san. On our way to the taiko practice hall, saw another random matsuri! Japanese summer is full of matsuri fun, we walked with the team for a while and was excited and inspired by their energy. Ah, how nice it is to be young.
The practice was held in a community center hall. The team was consists of 7 members. An old man, clearing the one who's in charge of the team. Two ladies in their late 40s, one young lady and three men, one each of 20s, 30s, and 40s.
I wasn't expecting a warm-up stretching session before the practice. At least I've never seen anybody stretch before playing music, piano, guitar, drums whatever. But they were doing a full session of warm-up, from neck to arms to
Day two
Random matsuri, Izumi shi, Osaka hips legs and ankles. Umemoto and I were invited to join in as well.
(P.S. Haha so I'm not even half way through my writing of this blog, but some friends want to see photos so I guess I'll put this up first and come back next week to continue writing.)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.095s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 20; dbt: 0.06s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb