More Travels

I have been out and about again!  After all these months of not really going anywhere, I've been out and about twice this month!

A short trip that Tetsu and John and I made, was up to the lake region of Nikko as supposedly the leaves were changing colors...  The news had shown beautiful colors of autumn and Tetsu and I decided to head up the mountain, early in the morning before the crowds came.  We later learned that the day before it had taken traffic 6 hours to get all the way up the mountain but as we started out very early and it was the last day of a three day weekend, it was fairly smooth driving all the way.  Unfortunately, the news stations hadn't been showing recent autumn clips of Nikko, or else they have really good filters on what they show because there really wasn't much color yet!

Off in the distance we did see Mt. Fuji which was a surprise! 

Hiroko-san and me

Then a week later, I took off with my friends to Shizuoka, south of Tokyo, on an over night trip.  We had two purposes for this trip.  One was to see the Toshogu Shrine of the area, and yes, it is the same name as the Toshogu Shrine in Nikko.  Hiroko-san who is a guide in Nikko, had taken us on a tour of Toshogu and we wanted to compare shrines (and Hiroko-san wanted to see how a veteran guide guided).  We also were hoping to see Mt. Fuji because Shizuoka is one of the best places to spot the beautiful mountain...

We got a glimpse of Mt. Fuji from the Bullet Train.  It was covered with an umbrella cloud which is rather rare and we heard about on the news the next day!

Four of us left from Utsunomiya on a Tuesday morning, and one friend joined us near Tokyo and another friend met up with us in Shizuoka. 

There is a folktale in this area, about a celestial maiden who was tricked into performing a dance in order for her to return to the heavens and so we got into the mood by dressing up in maiden clothing and posing before a PHOTOGRAPH of Mt. Fuji.  It was still hiding behind clouds when we arrived in Shizuoka.  This is why a girlfriend trip is so much fun...  We laughed and said how we'd never act so silly if we were on a trip with our husbands!

Sachiko, me, Eiko, Mari, Hiroko and Kaoru.  Alas, one more member of our group couldn't attend as she's been having health problems.  She was with us though as we remembered all the other trips the 7 of us have taken together.

Mt. Fuji was spotted behind the clouds again.

The area was also famous for the thick, bent pine trees that line the coast.

My depiction of the pine trees and coast.

We stayed in an traditional Japanese style hotel and ate loads of seafood and delicious morsels of food!

The next morning we woke up early hoping to see the sun rise over Mt. Fuji, but again it was playing hide-and seek and wasn't out.  Instead, we played around like girls again (not like the 60's to 80's year olds we are!)

As you can see, the shoreline was really rocky, making it hard to walk, but I found a Mt. Fuji rock and watched the sunrise over that!

Mini Mt. Fuji

We visited a small shrine and enjoyed the morning.

We hoped to see Mt. Fuji from a famous look out point but no luck this time either!

But Mt. Fuji could be found in other unexpected places!

Faintly.... very faintly...

And then it was time to meet our guide (who spoke English, German, Korean and Chinese as well as Japanese of course!)  He has been a guide at Kunozan's Tosho Shrine for 20 years.  He had a lot of information to give us but I'm afraid all the high steps wearied us long before our guide was finished explaining everything!

A gorgeous and impressive place!

We said goodbye to Sachiko-san and boarded the Bullet Train to take us back to Tokyo.

And look who came out to see us off!   Beautiful Mt. Fuji!

And those were the photos we took (and pages from my sketchbook once I was home).  We are already talking about where we'd like to go on our next trip!

Back in Nikko... I'm sewing...  Actually doing maintenace work on a quilt whose binding had become threadbare.  M-san comes regularly and I MADE her make a Mexican Star quilt of her own.

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Leiya sends photos to us regularly too...

Taiga-kun is scooting around and keeping everyone in smiles.

I love this photo of Leiya though she says she was dressed up for Halloween...

Tony isn't going to be able to do this too much longer!

And Luka's pre-school photo with him trying hard to smile brightly.

And I guess that's about it for this post!  Thank you for sticking with me!