Japan Summer Vacation Trips - Pics/Video 1

So, having a summer vacation I made some plans for travel. I headed to a lot of different places in north Japan and some smaller trips around Tokyo. Here's the stories with some pics/vids.

Kicking off the vacation, I got a summer bonus from my boss and then came home to find this in the mail.

It's an envelope containing a certificate stating that I passed my Kanji writing exam. So, as for a vacation, so far so good!

So we hit the train at 6am, destination: Aomori. We had had packed bentou boxed lunches and had them at the somewhat famous and very mysterious Aoike "Blue Lake." after a number of hours of trains, buses and hiking.

Please click the images to see the larger full version.

We had lunch at the lake then some more hiking, winding mountain buses, trains and arrived at our first place to sleep. A beautiful hot spring resort. We were both beat from the long day so we had dinner then relaxed in the hot spring baths til bedtime.

The next day after a bit more sightseeing in Aomori we moved on to Tochigi. I took a few pictures after getting off the train in Nikkou.

Then, we grabbed the guidebooks and looked at the map to see what was in store for us.

Then we headed outside. Here's a short video of the surroundings followed by some pictures. The video makes the weather look worse than it seems - the fact is we were surrounded by mist covered mountains. It's really dreamlike in some areas of Japan.

Next up, we head to a famous Tochigi shrine and park. Here's video and pics just up to our entrance to the place. The shrine and park pics/videos will be in my next post, Part 2.