Trip to Japan Part 3 Kyoto

My wife and I visited Kyoto with good old friends of ours, Shihoko &Yuichi Maruyama.  The last time I visited Kyoto was about 48 years ago.  I was a grade 11 high school kid.  Amazing.  There were lot of new discoveries especially excellent sake and foods.  I'm getting old enough to enjoy them.  These are some photos from Kyoto.  We started from the Kyoto Train Station, of course.

We arrived late afternoon, so the first thing we did was looking for a good dinning spot in old section of Kyoto.  We did find a really nice place.  Next day we visited some old temples and hike around the northern section of Kyoto.  The first buddhist temple was Tenryuji, a UN world heritage site.

 With our friends strolled the temple's garden.

 We were sitting inside of temple looking at the garden.  Quiet and beautiful!

 Sakura trees were still blooming adding to the beauty of the garden.

 We were strolling along the famous Kamo River and found this place for lunch.  Foods were excellent.  You can tell from my face that I drunk little sake wine.

Although Bamboo forests need a lot of maintenance, they grow very well here in Kyoto.  At the end of day walk along the river with cherry blossoms.  I will post more Kyoto photos in next blog.

Spring in Japan Part 2: After the monster tsunami in Tohoku Region

All areas along the coast line of the Tohoku Region has suffered from the monster tsunami three years ago.  People and towns are slowly recovering from the damages.  We visited Rikuzen Takada in Iwate Prefecture.  What the city is doing is so amazing, that I have to share some photos.

From Tokyo Station we took this nice looking bolt train, Tohoku Sinkansen to North for about two hours. 

This is a photo of a service area in the city of Rikuzen Takada.  This building was used to house restaurants and shops.  The picture of waves on outside of the building was the height to tsunami.  The inside of the building was completely destroyed, and there was a huge pine tree stuck inside.  The coast line of this area had shelter belts of red pine, but they are all gone.

This was a gas station sign.  It indicates the height of the wave of 15.1m (the allow mark).

 I want to show you these photos.  These bridge like structures are belt conveyors.  The most of the city was sitting on waterfront at zero meter sea level.  To avoid future tsunami the city decided to build the new city on 17m of earth.  They are moving mountains from the back of this photo to the low lying areas.  Only Japanese can think of such idea of moving mountains and doing it.  Wow!

 

Spring in Japan: Part 1

I received comments from some of my blog followers to continue.  I actually missed blogging, so I decided to continue my blog.  My wife and I visited Japan for three months and I'm going to post some pictures.  This is part one: Cherry blossoms (Sakura) in Tokyo.  Tokyo has some most beautiful spots to enjoy sakura in Japan, if you don't mind a crowd of people. This is Ueno Park area. It will light up in evening and giving fantastic view and not so great drunken people.  You can drink in the public in Japan.

Since I am a Forester I should mention about tree. These cherries are call "somei yoshino" variety and most common sakura in Japan.  Japanese has been cultivating ornamental tree species for few hundred years.  Somei yoshino is a man made variety cultivated from several species of native sakuras and planted all over Japan.

Although sakura blossom last only a couple weeks, Japanese enjoy a peaceful moment in the spring.  I bet my doughnut that Japanese is the only people in the world talking about when sakura blooms in the national news every day in the spring.  Japanese should be proud of being a nature lover, but at the same time be grateful living a peaceful country.   It reminds me every time I watch sakura blooms.  Enjoy Sakura!