Metropolitan Morioka Hotel

... is set deep within the gorge and not making it I realized we didn't have nearly enough time and I really hope to make it back there before I leave so I can see the waterfall and the Buddha statue that is even farther into the gorge.  After the gorge the buses took us to Lake Tazawa for lunch.  This is claimed to be the deepest lake in Japan and is a caldera lake.  The lake is normally a very crystal ...

... 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 ...

... boire beaucoup d'eau apres avoir mangé un poisson tres salé. Il subit le meme sort que Takko Himme, et de nouveau il y eut une grosse tempete ; ainsi naquit le lac Towada, a quelques centaines de km de Tazawa-Ko. Bien entendu les 2 dragons tomberent amoureux et Hachirotaro rend encore souvent visite a Takko Himme. On dit que c'est grace a la chaleur de leurs ebats amoureux, au fond ...

... 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.

... arrived in Morioka, we headed for Kumagai Ryokan again as we had enjoyed staying there before. We got a much larger room this time, with a sofa and enough space for at least 4 to bed down, maybe a reward as return customers! Kate also got 2 massive Morioka apples which she promptly tucked into. Then went out for dinner to Hot Jaja, where they serve the local speciality Jajamen, ramen (noodles) with a spicy meat sauce. Verdict - very odd, wouldn't choose it again ...

... girls as they had been in Japan much longer than us (not difficult at this point!) and looked at her photos of lots of things we would soon be seeing. We all then parted ways at Utsonomiya as they were heading back Tokyo direction, nd we were carrying on northwards. We were heading for Morioka and had to go via Sendai, under 2 hrs by the fab shinkansen. We wandered round a little in circles before finding the Ryokan (Japanese ...

jai oublier de dire dans mon autre message que ici, a morioka, la ville est jumelee avec une ville nomee morioka en colombie britanique. Alors par un pur hasard, en me promenant dans la ville , je suis arriver devant un epicerie et puis il y avais des biscuits feuille d`erables et du sirop d`erables de la beauce.. un peu plus de 16.00$ le 250ml. bon apres m'etre fait demander gentiment de sortir parce que je n'etais pas un resident de l'hotel ...

... etait grise et ponctue de petite averse, les photos sont pas tres belles. Ensuite je suis revenue sur mes pas, dans la ville de morioka, pour dormir dans auberge typique du japon (ryokan) dans une chambre avec un plancher en tatamis, et un futon au sol pour dormir. Il n`y a pas internet alors je suis dans un autre hotel en train de bummer leur ordinateur !

We stopped here on the way back from Sapporo for about 4 hours in the afternoon. It was a nice enough town, big enough for us to spend an afternoon wandering around and exploring. The town itself was quite pretty and compact, we needed to find an Internet place so spent a lot of time looking for one. The first one we found wanted our passport and said we needed to register in order to use the internet, what a palaver, as usual there was to be no expection to ...