Mino National Park

We went to Mino national park last weekend. There was supposed to be heaps of candles and lights around the waterfall but only the waterfall was lit up. It's about a 50min hike up the mountain but follows a creek all the way so it's nice to stop and cool off with your feet in the water. Mt Mino is famous for the monkeys and red leaves in Autumn (expect lots of pictures in October and November). back in the 70's there was a monkey park there that didn't do so well, so it closed and they just let all the monkeys go. Basically i don't trust monkeys and i hate them but it was funny watching everyone get their food stolen and growled at by the psycho monkeys.

Just after dark we we sat down to have dinner and i finished quickly so i got up to take some photos of the waterfall and heard mika scream. One of the monkeys snuck up behind her and scared the crap out of her. the actually act quite viscious, getting there teeth out and spit at you when they growl or whatever it is they do. There's also lots of food stands near the waterfall selling takoyaki and karage that the monkeys often try to rob but usually cop a broom stick over the head.

Here's the waterfall lit up. Apparently it's one of the top 100 waterfalls in Japan. I'm not sure how many waterfall there are so don't know how to judge it's greatness. Maybe there's only 105, i have no idea. It was pretty boring compared to some of the ones we saw in Hokkaido a few weeks ago.

here's one of the famous monkeys. It scored a packet of chips from this bag. I was amazed how easily they opend the packet. Opened exactly like the instructions. Had lots of practice i think.

Me and Mika doing the snapshot pose thing.

me trying to be creative with the water and reflections, didn't really work but i still kind of like it. it's a small restaurant just below the waterfall.

 

Hokkaido - Summer Vacation!!!

Last week Mika and I went to Hokkaido for summer vacation. we booked the trip about 2 months ago and even then we got the last seats on the tour. It's very popular in summer because of the mild climate (compared to the 37 - 38 degrees we've been having in osaka) and green open spaces. for those of you who don't know it's the big island at the top of japan that kind of looks like tasmania. It's famous for seafood (crab, salmon, oysters, scallops and prawns) wild bears, deers, foxes, patatoes, corn, flowers and beautiful mountains and gorges.

the tour was great and i'd love to visit again in another season. you can click on any of the photos in the next 5 blogs to see the pictures in a larger size. this one took me a few hours so if your friends or family please leave a message so i know i'm not wasting my time doing these. i will probably add some more pictures after i sift through the 800 photos i took.

Hokkaido is really famous for Ramen noodles. So that was the first thing we ate when we arrived at the airport. we had miso, butter and corn ramen. I don't usually eat ramen that often but it was beautiful as you can see by the empty bowl.

after lunch we headed to Biei to visit a corn and flower farm. We were supposed to be picking corn at the farm so we could eat it. When we arrived we went to a souvenier shop and picked a cob of corn from and branch. I couldn't stop laughing. not really the farm experience. the flower farm was really nice and i got some great photos. Lavender is everywhere here. not sue why and don't really care but everyone was buying lavender everything. Next is me and mika at a lookout. It's pretty exciting for japanese people to see wide open spaces. it was nice for me after living in such a big city but not a big deal when you live in australia. the last photo is mika with a roll of hay. she got excited everytime we saw these, not sure why. apparently they're cute. btw they don't usually come with eyes and a mouth.

here's our first dinner on the trip. lots of seafood. Mika was really happy becuase she didn't think we would be eating crab because it was summer. by the end of the trip we both were sick of eating crab. the dinner was really nice. we had raw salmon, tuna, prawn, squid and scallops.

we went for an early morning walk before breakfast. it was intersting to see a caution sign other than a kangaroo. i wonder if these are just for tourists like many of the kangaroo ones in Australia. the wateralls are famous for being husband and wife apparently. they're about 50m apart.

Hokkaido - Day 2

After an early morning walk we had breakfast at the hotel. it was nice to have sausages, bacon and eggs after all the raw fish last night. the beer is from the night before. One of the first things you should always do is test the local beer. if they can't make a good beer how can you trust them. Luckily the beer was great and we were able to continue the tour.


after breakfast we headed to a fox farm. The fox park was almost as comical as the corn farm. The photos in the brochure show foxes running around in beautiful meadows happy and frolocking. the park was tiny, smelly and all the foxes looked as though they would rather die. i think i managed to pull of a shot that doesn't look like it was in a cage. after that we went to a huge lake i can't remember the name of that is famous for fishing. the lake was pretty gross. the beach was black pebbles and stunk.



just after the lake we had lunch. more seafood. we had crabs, seafood dom (seafood on rice) and seafood nabe (seafood boiled in a pot). it was really nice and as you can see another big meal.


Next was Oshin Koshin water fall. it's really famous in japan. i'm not sure exactly why but it was impressive. It was really strange that it was on slope rather than vertical. as you can see from the last picture it was really close to the ocean as many of them are here. there's many small creeks that meet the ocean. this is where the atlantic salmon migrage up the creek to breed.

 

Hokkaido - Shiretoko!!

After lunch we arrived at Shiretoko National park. this was the main reason i wanted to come to Hokkaido and seemed the same for most of the people on the tour. It's a world heritage listed national park and one of the most beautiful places i've ever been too. It's famous for wildlife and much of the park is unnacesible so has remained unspoilt. In winter the ocean is covered with drift ice, in spring flowers, summer the mountains are a beautiful green and in Autumn the mountains are red. This is a place i'd love to visit in all four seasons.

The first picture is out first stop in Shiretoko. just to the left of this shot was a heap of people fishing but like everywhere else they weren't catching anything. The second picture is our group with a ranger from the national park giving us a guided tour of the park. the two bottom pictures are of lake 1 of the 5 lakes.

This area is famous for wild bears and as you can see from the first picture they're really here. Those are claw marks from a bear trying to get fruit from the tree. the photo at the bottom left is a map of the five lakes. it's supposed to look like a bears paw. the last picture is telling you that lakes 3, 4 and 5 are closed because there's too much bear activity at the moment.

After visiting the five lakes we went to our hotel but on the way back the sunset looked like it was going to be beautiful so we dumped our bags in our room and started running to the ocean. I literally mean running. sunset was at 6:20 and we left the hotel at the 6:00 so not much time considering we had about 2kms to go. it would have been pretty funny seeing me running with my camera and Mika trying to keep up carrying my tripod. you can see some bigger versions of these sunsets pictures on my flickr page. It was beautiful and well worth it.

here's dinner at the hotel. It was all you can eat again (called viking) here. it was huge. 80 differenty types of food. mostly seafood. i pigged out on fresh prawns, crabs and oysters. after dinner we went to the onsen (public baths) they were the best ive been too. there was 5 baths including a giant spa and another one you lie in thats shaped to your body that massages you. there was also an outdoor bath with views of the ocean and boat harbour. really relaxing and soothed the sore muscles after running to the sunset.

 

hokkaido - shiretoko and Mysterious Lake

Day 3 - After breakfast we went on a ferry cruise for 90 minutes to see the shiretoko national park from the water. it was a beautiful morning but the sun was right in our faces most of the was so it was difficult to see the coastline at time and difficult to take photos.

the first picture is of Turtle rock. Supposed to look like a turtle and i think it does. the rest of the photos explain themselves.

next we went to shiretoko pass. this is where you can go from one side of the penninsula to the other. the mountain is the biggest in the NP. You can do a 1 day hike up and back but of course we were on a tour so no chance of that. The weather was so hot in the morning. Felt like we were back in osaka.

the next two photos are from our hike to the lighthouse. We didn't make it to the lighthouse because a wild bear got in our way. The guide (ranger, not tour guide) was busy talking about something i couldn't understand so i walked ahead to take some photos and saw the bear. I kept saying "bear! bear!" to the group but of course no one had a clue what i was saying. the word for bear here is kuma. once i said this and started pointing everyone shit their pants. I think the guide was really suprised and by her reaction didn't have much experience with actually coming across bears in the wild. anyway we didn't make it to the lookout and had to go back and spent the next hour looking at crappy photos in the tourist centre. lesson learned - if you go somewhere with dangerous animals, learn what they're called in the native language.

after we left shiretoko we went to lake Mashu (Mysterious lake). It's called that because it's often covered with thick fog so you can't see the lake at all. it was amazing because it was only about 1 1/2 hours from the photos above at shiretoko. You can see how cold it is because mika is wearing a jumper. the 1st shot is of the lake and the second is a picture where the fog cleared for about 5 seconds from the wind. there's also wild squirrels in this area.

 

Hokkaido - Lake Akan NP

On our last night we stayed at a place called Lake Akan. It's a small onsen village right on the lake. It's famous for Ainu (japanese indigenous people) culture, fishing, onsens and an active volcano. The hotel was great. Beautiful views over the lake and it was my first time in Japan to sleep on a bed and not the floor. I think i was more excited about that than anything else. We arrived pretty early compared to other days so we had a few hours to explore before dinner.

This is kind of like an Ainu village but really was just souvenier shopping. this area is famous for wood carving as you can see from the people in the top photos. these are carved from one piece of wood. Click on the picture to see them bigger.

This first picture is the hotel we stayed in. I didn't get a photo of the beds though. the second photo is me and mika in Yukata. You always wear these at hotels in japan. Usually you put it on after you go to the public bath. im also wearing wooden shoes but you can't see them in that photo. the last photo is dinner at the restaurant. The food was beautiful. It was an all you can eat buffet. There was crab, prawns, sashimi, DIY nabe (lots of food in a pot) and best of all nice big pieces of steak. I had two pieces of steak as i was pretty sick of eating seafood by the last night.

The next morning we went on a boat cruise of the lake before breakfast. the first picture is our boat taken from our room window. the second pic is round moss. not sure what the go is but lake akan is famous for it. the bottom left photo is the volcano just behind the town. The last time there was any action was in 2000. I saw some photos of cars covered in ash and shops burnt down. pretty amazing.

After breakfast we visited another lake. It had a great view of another active volcano. It's been smoking like that since April. Basically that's the end of our trip. we spent the next 8 hrs sitting on the bus heading back to sapporo airport to go home.

 

Sunrise Chugoku Mountain Range

Sunrise Chugoku Mountain Range
Originally uploaded by brett in japan.

my most popular photo!!!

I added this photo to flickr yesterday and it is by far my most popular picture. this is another sunrise picture from our summer vacation.

some more summer vacation pics

another pic of me with a huge
japanese fish!!
the pool where we spent the day just near
the house.
another pic of the weird snail we ate at the BBQ.
Mika's first ever fish. I can't
wait to catch some real fish
again.

 

Summer Vacation

Last weekend we went to Okayama with Mika's parents for summer vacation. they're house is in the mountains so it was much much cooler than in Osaka. Most days in the last few weeks the temperature has been around 37'c and really humid.

The best thing about going to the holiday house is we always have a great BBQ. A japanese BBQ is very different to an Australian one but still very tasty. In this picture you can see sausages, mushroom, Ika (squid), Ebi (prawns) and some weird snail looking things. I ate the wrong end of the snail first and it was really disgusting but the rest of it was ok. we also had beef, pork and cow intestine.

we went fishing and mika used a net
to catch these shrimp for bait. They were
bigger than most of the fish in the pond
so they were pretty useless.

This is sunrise a short walk from the house. it
was really beautiful and made the walk at 6am
worthwhile. I was suprised how this photo came
out. Looks like a sunset to me.

This is Himeji Castle also known as the
white albatross. We stopped here on the way home.
The photo doesn't do it justice. it was huge and
looked amazing lit up.

 

and some more!!!

i just like this picture.
this is sunset from inside the stadium. the
horizon in the moutains behind Kobe.

 

Just a few more pics from the baseball

going for the bunt
a colourful cheer squad
only in japan do they use bamboo to keep cameras cool
koshien stadium

 

Feast of meat and baseball

Last Wednesday we went to a brasilian restaurant in Kobe. It's pretty much a brasilian BBQ Viking (here viking means all you can eat) So basically a guy walks around with big skewers of meat and keeps filling your plate until you beg him to stop. It only cost 900yen (about 12 dollars AUS) and there was 10 differnt types of meat and a salad bar. Best value i've found in Osaka and perfect when you feel like a fix of beef. Needless to say I didn't eat again until the next day.




After lunch we went to Koshien Stadium (home of the tigers) to watch High School Baseball. As you can see from the picture high school baseball is a pretty big deal here. The crowd was huge and the atmosphere was great. I've never been to baseball before and find it pretty boring to watch on TV but it's great at the stadium. Each school has its own band and cheerleaders and hundreds of supporters all singing and dancing to support their team. It can't wait to go back and watch a tigers game.