A play in the sakura and momiji

What is better than spring or autumn in Japan? When spring and autumn happen at the same time! Sheena, thanks to her amazing skills, discovered a place just a few hours from us that has a type of sakura tree that blooms twice a year, and if ones cards are played right one can capture the maple leaves and the cherry blossoms in the same shot! Which was exactly our intention as we set out early, before the sun was even up, to find such a place!

 The sun finally rose just as we made it to Nagano and stopped, thankfully, for Starbucks. I had a second cranberry white mocha this week! Lucky lucky! And an amazing breakfast sandwich such as I have not had before in Japan! It was very lovely! I said good bye to Fuji in the review mirror for the day and then we were on our way south and a few prefectures over.

Around nine we found our first field of momji and sakura. I suppose I could go on all day how lovely it was but I’ll try and let the pictures do the talking. However the pictures do not have the soft warm breeze in the chilly almost winter morning under a fragile blue sky. Nor, do they have the feel of when the breeze rustled just right and down came a slight shower of leaves and pedals. Nor the way it felt to be in the bright sun and then shadowed by a dappling of trees. Nor the quiet stillness of the beauty surrounding us, the trickle of the stream flowing and the hush of admirers. But they didn’t turn out to bad. We goofed off a bit and Sheena caught me edging my way over the river to get the perfect shot and it was all just such great fun!

 

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon we came across a famous sight for the area for in the distance was a brilliant red bridge and on one bank of the river it crossed was a cluster of brilliantly coloured trees that reflected in the water. But, it was so incredibly busy that we didn’t spend much time there at all to the point where only I got out to take photos, for there was no parking, and then proceeded to get lost trying to find the car on the way back.

By now the sun was setting, it sets so early here, so we began our ascent back north, a different way we had come, and like the sunrise in the morning I caught the sunset in the review mirror. We ended up stopping for dinner at a nice rest stop and were able to run and take pictures of the last rays of sun over a lake just as a bird swooped into my photo and created one last good one! Then we grabbed food, admired some Christmas lights, and headed home! Brilliant day!

On Sunday, I allowed myself and Rhee the pleasure of sleeping in a bit, not something I do often at all, and our plans to return to Fujiyoshida for the day went up in a smoke due to the white sky. So, at last, something I have been putting off for far too long, I went to Tokyo to buy a new computer. All year I have been battling with mine and unable to skype anyone back home and enough was enough. So I braved the big city with Rhee and went for an upgrade. But first, not wanting to travel all that way just for a computer, we went to Ueno Park. At first I intended just to go to the zoo, but we found a little festival serving okonomiyaki and ate lunch overlooking a pond of dying lilies, and then stopped at every shrine along the way. In one of the shrines was this really cool display of paper cranes and a flame that is said to have been found burning after the atomic bomb and has been kept a lit ever since...

 

By the time we actually got to the zoo it was late afternoon but we had a wonderful time! I think even Rhee, who is not so big on animals, enjoyed herself, especially when I left her to the penguins which she loves! And I, of course, adored the tiger and the little leopard cats which look like miniature cheetahs. There was a cool polar bear and adorable little Japanese bears which are much smaller than Canadian bears and there was a baby one too! And a baby gorilla! And a enormous hippo that was hanging out in his water!

 

 

After the park called it’s closing time it was definitely time to get underway and we headed to Akihabara, Tokyo’s electronic town, and bought me a snazzy new computer in English, and headed home on the evening train back to the very cold mountains where I live. And that was that, sakura, momiji, animals and a new computer; it was a fabulous weekend!

The case of the midweek adventure

So because Japan has the most national holidays in the world, I was gifted another in the middle of the week. So after praying for good weather I set out on a Wednesday to successfully hike Shosenkyo. I tried a few weeks ago but got their too late and didn’t see anything. This time it was different and while some of the momiji were past their peak the majority of the hike was simply gorgeous. The first thing on my hike was the famous rock cliff which I couldn’t have had the opportunity to photograph on a bluer day. And the maple trees all around me as a hiked along the gorge and deeper in was just breathtaking.

 

 

A few twists, beneath a natural arch, next to the green river, fish and smooth white rocks, across a bridge to look back on the cliff against the sun, under a stone ledge where people had wedged one yen coins into the cracks above my head and into the shadows was a spectacular waterfall with a rainbow! So many things exist in Japan that I had believed only existed in books!

 

 

Up the stone stairs carved into the rock and past a pleasant shrine was a rope way that took me way up to see what I could see. Unfortunately my perfect blue sky appeared to be clouding over and I did not see much of Fuji like one can on the clearest of days, but I could see all the way to Saitama which is the next prefecture over. And I was able to scale the rocks that loomed above the gorge to the cliff that I was admiring before! It was really amazing up there. There was also a little shrine and a place to eat my lunch of champions: chicken cheese bites and a chestnut white mocha. Then the clouds came in and I took myself down the mountain, past the shrine and the waterfall, under the ledge, over the bridge, through the rocks, past the cliff and momiji and back to my car.

I finished my afternoon and drove from the mountains and into Kofu just as the rain began. I treated myself to a Christmas cranberry white mocha at Starbucks and for only 300 per cent more than I would pay in Canada, I bought a box of Kraft Dinner macaroni and cheese at the little foreign import store! I happen to be one of the best KD crafters in the world!