Hotel Pearl City Morioka

... later a prince drinks too much of the water and also is turned into a dragon.  It is said that the heat from their love making is what keeps the lake from never freezing during the bitter Akita winters but in all reality this is because it is a Caldera Lake.  Anywho that is about it for this part of the blog.  The next will be about Kakunodate the Samurai village we visited later that day. Stay Tuned...

... see. So it's really all odds and ends--a bunch of kabuki dolls, lacquerware and pottery, scrolls, maps and even a family with a trove of intricately drawn human dissection guides. Somehow the elucidation of the human ligaments of the hand are more disturbing in blue ink than the real thing in photos or in the BODIES exhibition. Plus, all the figures for the guides were of caucasians--take from that what you will. Could've gone longer but needed to catch a train--which are ...

... lac, que la surface de Tazawa-Ko ne gele jamais, meme en hiver ! Nous avons passe 2 belles journees a nous promener autour du lac avec le beau temps et a profiter des Onsen, sources chaudes naturelles. Notre auberge avait d'ailleurs son propre Onsen. La culture du bain, O-Furoba, est tres presente au Japon. Meme s'ils n'ont pas leur Onsen prive, ils remplissent une petite baignoire ...

... village situe a 45min de train a l'ouest de Morioka. On peut y visiter un quartier feodal avec des maisons de Samurais. Apparement nous n'etions pas les seuls a avoir eu cette idee en un samedi d'avril (encore des beaux arbres en fleurs). Sur la berge de la riviere (ou les arbres etant d'une autre espece n'avaient meme pas encore bourgonne) on a pu assister a un concert avec des instruments japonais (tel Shamisen), des mamies chanteuses et des petites filles ...

I stopped off here on the way to Hokkaido to break up the journey. It was actually a bit of a let down as I seemed to arrive on a holiday and there was nothing open and I couldnt find the temples and museums I was looking for! There were some nice ice sculptures though and I had a good hike up a very steep hill. It is very mountainous here and quite beautiful.

Today was quite a long day of travelling. Woke up early and checked some reservations we had made, which came through for Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo. Got ourselves together and caught the 10.30am train from Sapporo to Hakodate, then had to run to the next train which left in 4mins, fortunately the trains are so efficient that you know exactly when they will arrive and leave to the minute! The weather had turned to heavy snow as we were leaving and it was nice ...

We had breakfast, toast with jam and coffee before leaving Nikko Park Lodge. We helped a little boy, George with his homework, who we'd met with his mum the night before at the yakitori place . They were travelling from New Zealand and I presume being home schooled whilst travelling. What a great education! There was a lift service down to the station but we wanted to get off, and we knew the route back to the station so decided to ...

... suis partie faire le tour de la ville a la recherhce d'un starbuck cofee. entre temps je suis arriver par hasard au ruines de l'ancien chateau de morioka. la ville a transformer les fondations en un mega parc. Avec l'eclairage et les feuilles de toutes les couleurs, c'etait beau, mais encore une fois, les photos ne sont pas terrible. J'ai finalement trouver le starbuck coffee de morioka, je suis venu dejeuner ici pour profiter du wifi gratuit.

apres 4 heures de train, je suis arriver vers 14:00 a hakunodate, un village entoure de montagne qui contient un quartier de samourai. Dans ce quartier, il y a des anciennes maisons de samourais, ce sont plus des anciens domaines que des maisons. sur chaque site, il y a plusieur batiment, le tout derriere une palissade de bois. c`etait ben beau, mais comme la ...

... inflexible Japanese rules, so we found another that said it would be a minimum of 480 yen for anything up to an hour. So what we did was just use for 5 minutes, then told the staff that the computer did not work and they then said we didnt have to pay anything. There is a way around most inflexible rules. Before boarding our train we wanted to grab a bite to eat, there was a food court luckily beneath the station. We found a Kaiten Zushi for a few fishy ...