http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Yamagata/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Asia , Japan , Yamagata en-us Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:15:42 +0000 Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:15:42 +0000 Hey all. At the moment Liva is back in Latvia to finish her studies and I'm currently pursuing my Master's Degree at Yamagata University. So I guess there won't be much updates until Liva comes back in the summer. Anyway most of our travels were done in the past so I'll update this blog with previous travel stuff. Lots of pictures so it'll take some time. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Yamagata/blog-352411.html Hey all.I realized a few days back that I needed to renew my driver's license.. I thought it'll be a nice day in Yamagata until I saw that it started snowing.. few pictures of what it looked like the night before and what it looked like this morning..I woke up around 630am.. had breakfast and got ready.. It takes about one and a half hours to get to the Yamagata Prefecture Traffic Safety Socie http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Yamagata/blog-352308.html We raced down to Nagoya from Hakodate on a local train and 2 Shinkansen to meet up with Chris and Soren our friends from the Blue Mountains. They have been here on an exchange with the Blue Mountains' Sister City of Sanda. It was great to share stories and pictures of each of us in Japan. They had some great adventures and had worked hard. They were really ready to go home after 3 weeks. I http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Yamagata/blog-339860.html In Sendai we have this weekly newspaper called Sendai Weekly. It's a lot like the Independent in Raleigh. It has ads for restaurants concerts coupons and articles about things that are happening around or in Sendai. It's in Japanese but I have been going through it and practicing my Japanese and trying to learn new kanji and vocabulary. It is fall or becoming fall up in Tohoku so most of th http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Yamagata/Yamagata-/blog-321151.html I finally made it to Zaosan Zao is one of the top national parks in Tohoku and I am so glad that I got thereZaosan is a sleeping volcano that has a beautiful crater lake that is said to have 5 different colors. The Japanese characters mean 5 color lake I believe. The easiest way to get there is by car because the buses that run from Sendai and Yamagata Station run on an odd schedule and only http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Yamagata/blog-302692.html So today was a fun eccentric day trip for the weekend. I got most of my house work done on Sunday so I searched through my LP to find a good day trip for today. As I was reading through Yamagata I found Tendo. According to the LP Tendo makes 90 of all Japanese chess pieces or Shoji. Since I had such fun at Ishinomaki I thought this Tendo and its shoji were just the place for a good day trip. Te http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Yamagata/Tendo/blog-222858.html Yamadera or Risshakuji is absolutely amazing and anybody who is in Sendai or Yamagata needs to go there and do the extended hike up. It makes the trip up to Yamadera so much more worth it. Especially if your around for the changing of the leaves. At 1050am my co and I caught a rapid express train out to Yamadera. It takes about 50 minutes and around 820yen on the Senzan Line. Though you could j http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Yamagata/Yamadera/blog-213367.html After six or so trips yoursquod think we would run out of things to say about Japan and if we kept going to the same places each time that might be true but Japan is a country of many contrasts and Tohuku northern Honshu proved to be different again to anywhere we had been before. They had had a very hot summer as many oher areas of the world thse days seem to and even though it was late sum http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Yamagata/blog-199621.html Yamagata is a friendly city that is working to improve its appeal to travellers. Yamagata has at least 1 hotspring in each of its 44 municipalities. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Yamagata/blog-131373.html With one more Kyoto update still in the midst and so little time in my busy day between work errands working out reading novels cooking up concoctions the latest very tasty lentil soup and catching up with old friends I barely have time to read the instruction manual for my new Digital SLR. aka the love of my life and the most expensive purchase that I've ever madeYou are sorely over http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Yamagata/blog-112673.html Yesterday I took a trip to an area called Yamagata about a 2 hour train ride away. Located in the small village is Yamadera a mountain monastery west of Fukushima.Yamadera has a collection of shrines and temples along the side of a mountain. There are stairs that lead you to the top of the mountain for some breathtaking views of the surrounding mountains and valley. The trees that grow along http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Yamagata/blog-59665.html