Japan Summer Vacation Trips - Pics/Video 2

On with part 2!

So we arrived through the gates to Nikkou - a national heritage, the whole area is a cultural treasure for Japan. There's amazing and beautiful scenery and so many huge and well beautiful shrines.

First, after entering the gates, we see this map. Notice the red triangle at the bottom center - "you are here." Directly to the right of where we are, you can see the park with a lake in the center. That's the first destination, then on to all the shrines above.



After looking at the map, we head to the 'lobby' area (the first 3 red arrows after the 'you hare here' triangle on the map), and I took some pictures again before we headed to the park.









Next, we turned around and headed into the park. The park was really great but I don't think the pics/vids do it justice, but here they are. I added the video to google videos so the quality should be a little better than the usual youtube videos.


Entering the park...




Video of the walk through the park (one of my watching recommendations).



Photos from inside the park!


















And in the next part, we'll head to a museum, an old building where guys and girls are fighting with swords, and some of Japan's most famous shrines. Stay tuned.. until tomorrow.

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.

Pictures and Video of Tokyo

Well, some people have liked my picture/video posts on the blog, so I'm going to try to do more of them. Here's the next one.


Cellphone and music ads

Tameikesanno Station / Tower

Restaurant

Komatsu construction company building


Financial district

Bicycle parking garage, flower shop, etc.

Use ISDN internet connection on the payphone


Koujichuu (Ouch)






Elevated crosswalk picture

Shiba Park

Videos:

Walking home again - Toranomon / Azabu. Tokyo Tower, tunnel, trees, buildings.


Tokyo Shrine Guardians


Crosswalk pictures and view


Walking along wooded area of Shiba Park to Tokyo Tower