Central Hotel Aomori

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... Beach which is right outside of our resort and also daily visits to the Chula-U hotsprings spa. It is ajacent to our resort so we can go there daily for free. I'll post pics as soon as I can find my camera usb cord! I hope I didn't forget it cause I can't find it!! LOL!

... I don't want to know). They even seem to eat it for morning tea. In fact, the kiosk we went to went to the length of writing a sign letting us hungry, calorie-foraging foreigners know that they'd run out of lavender ice-cream. Sigh..., we had to make do with mixed melon ice-cream instead. Whilst frustrated in looking for a bin for the serviette, we did some research and discovered that it's rude in Japan to eat or drink whilst walking down the street, and that ...

Well Golden Week started on Wed. the 29th and myself, Kira (from Oregon) and Anna (from NY) traveled to the northern prefecture of Aomori to the city of Hirosaki where there are 1,000s of Cherry blossom trees  of various types within the former castle grounds   which are now a park and museum  .  We had to go right away since it was almost time for the blossoms to fall and we didn't want to miss it ...

... I think it would be a fantastic place in the summer or autumn, but we were just a bit too early in the spring. Close to the train station, we stopped by an enormous farm that specialized in dairy cattle and layer chickens. We wandered abot the grounds for a bit, with Kaoru chirping about the cows. When we came out of the main exhibit building, one of the workers was bringing a cow across the yard. Kaoru ...

... were actually using their region's specialty... DOG SKIN.) *gulp* It was pretty, but we were wet and ready to go soak in an onsen. When we emerged from the concert, there was a couple of inches of thick wet, slushy snow on the ground. We jumped from semi-dry to semi dry spot to get back on the bus. When we were underway again, it was announced that there was one more small issue... the freeway we would use to get to our hotel was CLOSED due to SNOW ...

We carried on our travel in Tohoku (North Honshu) by stopping in a nice and small valley called Tono. This is a place famous for all its legends about small malicious water spirits (Kappas) and other mystical stories. We stood there enough to enjoy the valley by bicyle. We then headed further north to Morioka where the cherry blossoming had just started ...

... vapeur rajoute un petit air mystique... un repas gastronomique tres fin avec divers poissons (cru et cuit) fruits de mer et autre racine de lotus, le tout arrose de sake chaud, paracheve notre sejour dans ce petit paradis des sens ! (pas donne cependant... ;-) note : une subtile odeur de souffre nous a suivi durant toute la journee du lendemain...

Two significant events have happened. They're significant because they involve me, and I'm important. The first is that I finally did the karaoke deed, which was probably a good idea. The second is that I climbed a mountain with a couple of other English teachers, which was most definitely a bad idea. I'm not sure what the source of my alien logic was, but for some reason I was convinced that a life of playing video games and waxing academic about ...

With my close friends, Hiro and Daiei, we travelled to Tohoku, north part of the main island of Japan in the summer of 1998. I was a graduate student at that time, but after the operation for retina detouchment, I took a rest for a while. We didn't have a graduation tour, so the travel was like that.

The main purpose was to join Nebuta Festival of Aomori. It took very long time to get to Aomori ...