Snowy Photos Japan - 2014
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Out @ The Emperor's Palace today, with 90,000 people for his birthday. We skipped the inner court, queue was 4 hours long (it's only open 2 days a year, except for today due to a special birthday).
Cherry Blossoms are crazy, not just for tourists!
This from Tokyo Banana Roar, a crazy pastry shop/thing that had a decent sized line - I had to queue to sample - was good
Another magical sunset
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Today was/is all about Mt. Fuji, we're here for 2 nights to do it slowly and do some hikes around the hotel as well as the usual tourist trap things. Oh and BTW, clicking on the images expands them inline if you'd like a closer view
On a walk back from the lake. tagged as 2009, really odd.
Watched this guy catch about a 60cm long trout-looking fish. Amazing. He took out of water, confirmed it's length, then bowed to it and released back into the water. Then he sung a little jig.
Fuji-san
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We went up to the lave caves and hiked between them, and then back afterwards. Seems that most drove, we saw 1 other couple in the hour of hiking - bliss. The caves themselves, christ, not my cup of tea at all. 23 meters down for the Ice Cave, with clearances of 90cms at some points, poor lighting, small stairs, and icey floors in bits. A great experience to see how ice was kept all year around, but not high on the fun radar. Hiking back from the station in the afternoon we stumbled across a random temple that was not visible from street view and about 2kms from anything touristy. Very interesting seeing a 'real' Shinto temple. May be a few days before I'm back online after this, off to a valley from the Shogun era next…
Mt Fuji @ dusk
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The hike, it was very enjoyable, good weather. We only saw 6 people on the 3 hour hike, so amazing to have to ourselves. Constant sound of water flowing for the entire hike which was heaven. Ended up doing another 1.5 hours after the formal hike to check more out, and found the delightful clock in a stone (one of the last shots)
Man @ the half-way-house serving tea
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We're now up in Nagano for a few days, primarily to check out the Snow Monkeys, but couldn't help by swing by Googie's Cafe (aka The Flat Head Diner). The idea of an American Diner in the outer district of Nagano was too much not to do. So we went, turns out the founder of The Flat Head - Kobayashi-san was sitting next to us for a business lunch.
bit of Lightning Mag with Lunch
Kobayashi-san - The TFH Fire King mug on the table was not for sale, so I found out.
Some impressive looking wabash
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Thanks so much for doing this–this is by far the best photo album I've seen on this forum, and there have been some real doozies.
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Tremendous
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We wandered around the city of Nagano itself today. Hit the Zoo (Mrs Snowy's thing), and a few temples and random shops. A wonderful city, still very proud of the 1998 winter olympics with it's influence being felt with more functional english here than anywhere else so far. Was down to 1c this morning when we got up, but rapidly hit a beautiful 17c.
Airforce mascot
Not the only people heading to the temple
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The Snow Monkeys, yeah, they're amazing. Would have never made it without a working simcard, directions were way to obscure. After hanging out up there for a while we opted to hike back to the station and absorb the scenery instead of racing around.
In this onsen is a naked guy in public view of everyone going to the 'main' onsens. A snow monkey happend to join him in his onsen
The real monkeys?
Snow Monkey park is in the top center of this photo; not a bad location
This little guy had forgotten where the food was?
