Oh the places I've been part two...

Here is the second part of my Spring Break Japan Tour. 

Here is Kyoto. Above is the Golden Temple.
Right: The Philosopher's Path

        People love cherry blossoms in Japan!!! The next part of the trip we traveled to Hiroshima.

The Hiroshima Peace Dome

Miyajima 

        

The next part of our trip we went to Iki Island off of Kyushu. It was a great little island, I think we were the only foreigners on the island. People really liked to stare at us. But what's new....  

the view from our hotel room. 

Literally what I ate for breakfast at our hotel. 

We found a dolphin park. 

Monkey Rock... I wonder how they came up with the name?

Lovely beaches! 

Aleece and me

Our boat back. We had a great trip and were able to see a lot of Japan! 

Oh the places I've been...

Sorry it's been a while... I've been busy traveling around Japan. I have now been to all four major islands of Japan. Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kuyshu. I figure I am doing pretty good in my Japan travels. The last week of March and first week of April our school had our spring break. I have two different friends come to visit from the states during this time. I am now a certified tour guide... The first week my friend Nathan came to visit. Here are some pictures of his visit. 

Endoshima 

 Endoshima

Tokyo Tower 

The first week Nathan we here I was in work still so we made a few little trips near Yokohama. We visited Endoshima and Tokyo Tower. The next week I was off of school so we traveled to Nagano and Yudanaka to visit the snow monkeys. After Nagano we took a Shinkansen to Nikko. Nikko was pretty cool. The temples were awesome and so was Lake Chuzenji.

 The original hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil monkeys. 

This trip was really fun. We got to see a lot of history, a cool lake, two waterfalls, and to top it off we found the best fish hatchery ever.
Once we got back to Yokohama we went to a garden to see if the cherry blossoms had started.

There were a few blossoms but most were still not opened up. The next day we went to Lake Ashi and Odawara Castle. 

Overall this was a great trip with Nathan. We saw some really old things and some really amazing views. 

Hakuba Snowshoeing

 This last weekend I went with a group of co-workers to Hakuba. Hakuba is an hour and a half outside of Nagano Japan in the Japanese Alps. We left rainy Yokohama on Friday after school and took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Nagano. We spent the night in Nagano near the station and headed out early the next morning for Hakuba. Once we were in Hakuba we checked into the hotel and set out on our first adventure. We headed out from the hotel to Iwatake Ski Resort. The trail was well marked as many snowshoers had been there before us. We hiked around and had a snack break of hot coco and maple cookies. After that we continued our trek through the snow covered wilderness. We stumbled across some interesting tracks in the snow... The two ladies I was with were convinced that it was a bear... I voted rabbit... they asked the patrol guy once we got back, and he confirmed my rabbit vote. While we were hiking the clouds lifted a bit and gave us an amazing view of the valley bellow. 

After our hike we asked another person skiing by and asked her to take our picture. One of the ladies we were with tripped over her snowshoes and fell, and the lady taking our picture was awesome and kept on taking pictures. It made my day. After our hike we ate lunch at the ski resort at the top of the hill and then rode the gondola back down the hill. After we got back to town we found a lovely coffee shop and had coffee and played cards for a bit until everyone else was done skiing. While we were walking around we saw a bunch of people with snowshoes walking around, so we asked where they had gone. They were very nice and gave us a map and verbal directions on how to get to the start of the trek. So we were very excited to have a plan for the next day. 

The next day we took the Tsugike Kogen Gondola to the start of the trail at about 5,200 feet. Basically we were traversing up an old ski route. The upper lifts are shut down for some reason. The traverse was relatively simple but took us a while. It was a beautiful day with blue skies, which really made the mountains stand out. By the end of the hike I was down to a t-shirt and my snow pants. I also got a pretty awesome sunburn. Near the top of our hike the area is normally a marsh land so there are relatively few trees. But it made for great hiking and great pictures. From the start of the hike to the top of the hill took us about 3 hours and we climbed 1,112 feet. 

We ended up at the summit of out little hill (6,289 ft) with great views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. We hung out near the top for a while and ate onigiri (rice balls) for lunch and had tea. Once we ate lunch we made our way down the hill and back to the gondola. It only took us about one hour to make it down the hill, mainly due to some creative trail making down the hill. I had a really cool app running on my phone the whole time which tracked our hike. Overall it was a great trip, it's always great to get outside and play in the snow. 

Here is a link to my Trail Map I created. 

Hokkaido Ski Trip

On Saturday I left with a group of 9 teachers from Yokohama and flew up to Hokkaido for Ski Break. It was crazy in the airport I didn't have to take off my shoes through security. I never even showed ID to get on the plane. It was great to just get my boarding pass and get on the plane. We flew into Sapporo and took a bus from Sapporo to Niseko. It was only an hour and a half flight and a two hour bus ride. Once in Niseko we got into our cabin and a small group of us quickly set out for some snowshoeing. It was great to get out into the snow. We went for about a two hour snowshoe trek in the hills near Niseko. There was tons of lovely powder as we hiked around. We walked up a hill, had some tea, and then on the way down the Nepalese guide, Basant, had us "sled" down a steep part of the trail. I suggested the use of plastic bags to make the sledding a little more fun. 

The next day we got up and had breakfast all together, then most of the teachers took the 5 minute walk to the ski slope, while two of us went snowshoeing. This day's trek took us along a lovely river. It was snowing quite heavily most of the day, which made for some good pictures. As we were shoeing along we got to see numerous "River Mushrooms", or rocks covered in snow. It was beautiful! We didn't do any sliding this trek, but we did make some snow angels. After snowshoeing for three hours I decided to go snowboarding, needless to say I was a little sore. But the -30 C and near zero visibility didn't really help. But the powder was amazing. 

On Monday, Elif and I convinced a larger group of people to go snowshoeing with us. We walked near a temple and the up behind a ski hill for some spectacular views. We found a cool snow cliff, and decided it would be fun to jump off, it makes it more fun when there is about 20 feet of snow and 5 feet of powder. We spent quite a bit of time jumping off into the snow. After that we continued up and around to the top of the ski hill. Once there we stopped for a bit of tea. After our tea Basant asked if we wanted to slide down a or walk down part of the hill. Most of us decided to slide. He then pulled up two plastic bags, he was really excited to see how they would work. After one slide he said that the plastic bags were the best thing EVER! So we continued to take turns sliding down the hill. We continued down the hill back to the van. 

After snowshoeing Elif and I played with some squishy mud and did some pottery at the hotel. It was nice to do pottery, I haven't played with squishy mud in a while. Elif made some lovely garden markers for her herbs and I made a cool mug and some other little cups. The people at the hotel will glaze and fire them, and then send them to us in Yokohama. It was nice to have a little down time for arts and crafts. 

The next day we had even more people that went snowshoeing with us...Elif and I are very good sales people. On this trek we started out near a large boiling sulfur spring. Then we hiked up to another sulfur spring. We of course enjoyed sliding down some hills and having tea time. We also had a snowshoe sprint. I won... After we snowshoed we went to a Sulfur Onsen near the trailhead. The Onsen was awesome. It was all outdoors and had four baths and a mud bath, with warm squishy mud at the bottom.  It was a great way to end a great four day weekend. The only down fall was that I kinda smelled like sulfur the rest of the day. This was a great trip I got to bring plastic bag sliding to Japan, and snowshoe through some of Japan's wonderful wilderness. 

Here is a video of the snowshoeing and sliding in Hokkaido: 

I'm still alive...

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, life has been busy... I just finished coaching middle school girls futsal, which is basically small sided soccer. It was fun to coach a sport where I actually knew what was going on.... better than tennis. At the last game we played there was still some left over snow from a few days ago in Tokyo, so one of the girls made me a snowman, as thanks for a great season. The next sport I will be coaching will be track and field. There is no javelin, but I will be able to coach most of the field events. I've already had a lot of students express their excitement for track, so I am looking forward to a great season. 

Last weekend (Sunday) I decided I needed to get out of the city and walk with dirt under my feet. So I looked up a hiking spot in a book and went. It was a little cloudy and there ended up being a lot of snow on the mountain. But a nice old man befriended me and became my hiking guide about half way through the hike. He lives in Yokohama and has invited me to go hiking again. After the hike I took him out to lunch to thank him for his time. It's always great to find random people to talk with. 

After the hike I went to a cool castle in Odawara. There were a lot of really cool displays of swards, armor, and other old things. Overall it was a nice chance to get out of town for the day. I love that in Japan I can get on a train for an hour and be in a completely different part of Japan. I can go from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo to the solitude of a mountain top in a few hours. Next week I will be going up north to Hokkaido for about four days with a group of teachers from school. We have our Ski Break so I will be snowboarding and snowshoeing and getting more of my outdoor fix.