Tourists in the mountains

The weather was nice, the three young people walked around in shorts and t-shirts or with a light pull-over (as you can see, I still opted for a down jacket).  We headed up the mountainside to the lake area...  Got out of the car and were met by... WIND and COLD!!!

 Julieta-san's and my hair whipped around wildly! 

 Takumi had to hold Julieta-san's down so that he didn't get whapped in the face.

We actually all had a lot of fun and the wind was unexpected.  Takumi had to borrow one of Tetsu's sweatshirts.

 Still... it was cold!  Quick take a couple of pictures and get back in the car!

Whew!  We decided to go up a bit farther into the mountains...  to another lake.  We got out of the car to be met by WIND and COLD and SNOW!!!
The snow was blowing horizontally!

 I was concerned that the cameras were going to get gummed up with snow.

"Ouch, ouch!  That snow hurts!  Take the picture already!"

It was hard to keep our eyes open.

Simple pleasures.

Once down the mountain we stopped at an onsen/hot spring for a relaxing bath.  Tetsu was so happy that Julieta-san and Augustin didn't mind the "nakedness" in the public bath and they both seemed to enjoy the experience.  The blue noren (hanging sign) says "Men.

The red one says "Women".

After the bath a relaxing 10 minutes in massage chairs.

Dinner was at Tetsu's favorite pork cutlet restaurant. 

More touristy stuff tomorrow!

Touristy things

I'm finally back at the compute after being away nearly a week.  Takumi was here for two days... then Tetsu and I drove to a northern prefecture for three days to visit friends and do some grave site repair.  The drive is 6 hours each way so we were pretty wiped out last night when we finally arrived home.  (Let's say Tetsu was pretty wiped out.  He did all the driving!

So backing up a bit...  Takumi and Julieta-san and her brother Augustin arrived in Japan Tuesday afternoon and took the train up to Utsunomiya where we met them and brought them back to Nikko with us.  It was the first time for Julieta-san and her brother to visit Japan but they were willing to try and eat and do anything!

Dinner that night was a buffet style restaurant where they could chose whatever they liked to eat.

Tetsu took Wednesday off and we all piled into our little car and headed up to the shrine and temple areas of Nikko.

 Nippon is a formal, maybe even archaic way of referring to the country, Japan. 

This large temple, the Rinnoji Temple, is being renovated for 12 years and though the beautiful temple can't be observed, there was a sightseeing area set aside so that tourists could view the whole renovation process. 

We climbed up 7 stories to where the roof was being worked on...  These are the under shingles before the roof's true copper plating is applied. 

Someone cleverly spotted a fund raising opportunity of "selling" shingles that would be used in the roof (of course not visible after the final plating)  That's one way to have your name preserved for a few more hundred years!  (We declined the opportunity).

 A five story pagoda on the grounds.

 Walking between shrine and temple.

 Julieta-san is so cute.

At a charm booth where one could purchase good luck charms for academic excellence, a long lasting love relationship, protection from traffic accidents etc.

The Shinkyo bridge (Sacred Bridge) of Nikko is a favorite tourist spot.

All in the same area are the Toshogu Shrine (Shinto) Futara Temple (Buddhist) and the Rinnoji Temple (Buddhist again).  It is somewhat confusing to foreigners how these religions can be intertwined but the tall cedar trees, the mossy cobblestones and the snow topped mountains all lend themselves to the sacred atmosphere.

Tetsu and I sat out the visit to the Toshogu Shrine and we ate Japanese sweets while the three young people hiked into the burial grounds and checked out the See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil monkey carvings and the Sleeping Cat carving.

Our next jaunt of this trip was further up the mountain to the lake area....

More tomorrow.

Guests

Surprise!  We have guests for two days!

Takumi and Julieta-san and Julieta-san's brother Augustine, arrived in Japan yesterday afternoon and by evening we met them in at the train station.  They have two days with us in Nikko and then the three of them will go on to other parts of Japan.

So... no blogging until I see them safely off to their next destination!
 

Cherry blossoms

My trip to the fabric store was too exciting for me and I ended up in the bed for the rest of Friday and all of Saturday!  Actually, I just caught a cold and was holding it at bay during the fabric store trip finally crashing when I got back home. 

So...  Cherry blossoms...

Cherry blossom viewing is practically a religious rite in Japan.  The past month has brought daily weather reports announcing the beginning of the cherry blossom season (the meteorological agency makes the announcement when four or five blossoms are sited).  Just like daily weather maps forecasting rain, the television lets us all know how far the cherry blossom front has advanced northwards and when will be the best days for viewing.  Schools plan their entrance ceremonies to coincide with the flowering of the sakura trees planted around the school grounds (and ALL schools have sakura trees) and it is all very photogenic for new students to pose in front of the cherry blossoms.

Thursday afternoon I was out walking Choco when a farmer neighbor stopped his car to say hello and I noticed him all spiffed up and his wife in a beautiful soft pink kimono.

"Grandchild entering school today?"

"No.  We just got dressed up to go view the cherry blossoms at the nearby elementary school."

I thought it quaint that they would get dressed up in kimono even and make a day of cherry blossom viewing.

It is not like there aren't cherry blossoms EVERYWHERE around us in this season.  The street in front of us has five or six cherry blossom trees.  My neighborhood was once called Cherry Blossom Heights until so many of the sakura trees were cut down and they changed the name to North Town...  I loved being able to say I lived in Cherry Blossom Heights...  North Town doesn't have much of a ring to it...

But sakura trees only live 50 years or so unless they are well cared for, and they are easily infected by parasites.  The branches break easily and the leaves become infested with bugs and worms so that though people love the cherry blossoms, the rest of the year the trees are a bit of a mess...

Another reason there is almost a religious worshiping of cherry blossoms is because of the short blooming season.  Cherry blossoms represent the fragility of life and though they may be beautiful, they disappear quickly.  Cherry blossoms bloom and a week later they are gone.  If it is windy or there is a rainfall, then the life of the cherry blossom is even shorter, and given that if a weekend gets rained out then the actual days to go view the cherry blossoms are very few and dear.  Tetsu had already been planning about WHEN we would go cherry blossom viewing and he even took a half day off for us to go to the same local school as my farmer neighbor and his kimono clad wife.  I wore jeans that day.

Of course there are many different species of cherry blossoms.  The famous tree in the school yard is a weeping cherry tree and it is has a slight pink tinge to its blossoms.

The tree here is a off shoot of another tree in the area and together they are about 450 years old... There is even a donation box in front of the tree with funds being used for its upkeep.

The school itself has a very pretty stained glass window in its front entryway depicting the cherry blossom trees surrounding it.

The neighboring houses also have trees from the same original tree.

The small school itself with wild cherry trees up on the hills.

This was a different cherry blossom tree on the school grounds with blossoms all in a cluster.

I didn't realize I'd captured this photo of the bird until he flew out of the camera frame.

As I say, cherry blossoms are short lived and I doubt I'm going to get out to picnic under the flowers this spring...
  

Spring is here!

I have to go off in a few minutes so this will be short.  Today I'm heading off with friends to a fabric shop in another city.  We will probably go check out the cherry blossom situation there too.  Yesterday Tetsu and I did a bit of cherry blossom viewing ourselves but those photos will have to wait until another post...

In my own neighborhood the daffodils are out...

...as are the magnolias.

 Around the fields the rape blossoms brighten the countryside.

At tree at the preschool bloomed just when the new school year was starting.  A great place to take entrance ceremony photos!

Mola project

I am not getting any QUILTS made.  I am doing small projects; making postcards, tatting, weaving, quilting, making mola blocks, but not getting any finished quilts under my belt!  There will be a sorry inventory at the end of the year if I don't set my mind to it!  But life is not about the NUMBER of things I get done is it... 

So I hand quilt and I continue to make those mola blocks (that I wasn't planning to make).

I now have 5 small mola blocks.  The patterns are from an old Japanese magazine and they are taken from the Chinese horoscope... which I've never in my life given a thought to but they were pretty little patterns.

I really wasn't going to go this far with this particular project as evidenced by the fact that I am running out of fabric.  The green "grass" fabric scrap was merely a scrap and I've run out of that so I had to switch to another color of green half-way through the year of the mouse.  (and can you tell that I even short changed myself on the original fabric and had to do some patching in the hills...)

By the way, all these figures are supposed to have another layer of tiny black pieces over the inner triangles, circles, rectangles in the animal figures but I determined that that was going to try my patience too far...  I'm not adding more black.

Except for the year of the chicken...  My chicken seemed to have to have that center black to pull the "feathers" together...  The chicken has been by far the most difficult of the patterns to do (because of that black!)  I sure hope I don't run into any more intricacies...

And no...  It isn't the camera lighting that accounts for the slight shift in red color.  I ran out of red fabric too and had to make an emergency trip to the fabric shop.  How impossible do you think it is to match reds!  (Especially considering the original red fabric was fabric I'd bought in the States for something.)  I will not be a perfectionist and this shade of red came the closest.  Not a bad match...

Except when all the blocks are side by side...  Ah well, hopefully I will be adding more blocks to this and the one stand-out block will have companions in the same shade... seven more companions if I stick with this project...

Mola in 2017!