The world is my trailer park.

I have arrived safely in Edmonton. The return voyage involved one train, three planes, one car, numerous escalators, some walking, and plenty of sitting, all of which took roughly 32 hours without any sleep. I woke up this morning after an eleven hour snooze that somehow felt like four.

The stop over in Seattle was my first exposure to North American "cuisine." After six weeks in Japan, it has become really noticeable that the stuff we call food is pretty awful. I could've killed for a bento box.

It's just above freezing in Edmonton, with a light wet snowfall. (Although it's not cold enough to stay on the ground just yet.) Today I'll go and see the Trailer Park Boys movie, tomorrow I return to LLoyd, and Wednesday I restock the fridge, remove six weeks worth of dust, and perform other "welcome home" chores. Thursday is back to work, bright and early.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

Tomorrow morning I catch the early-ish train to New Chitose Airport and begin my triple-flight return to Canada.

As a closing note, I'd like to write about the Japanese language school I attended in Fukuoka. It's worth mentioning because I thought the teachers were very good, and had a nice relaxed environment.

During my four week stay I received instruction from roughly eight or nine different teachers. This mix was a definite plus, not so much due to different teaching styles, but because it exposed my ears to various speaking voices/styles and added variety to each day. In addition, new students began every Monday, followed by new "graduates" every Friday, which maintained a constant flow of new faces each week. I met people from Germany, Sweden, Austria, Swizterland, USA, Malaysia, UK, Russia, Italy, Hungary, and maybe somewhere I've forgotten.

The only bad thing was an ever-changing timetable. Sometimes classes wouldn't begin until the afternoon, which can ruin a day. It's much nicer to finish early and have the rest of the day to do whatever.

Having said that, if anyone else is interested, their website is: http://genkijacs.com/

I'll only post once more in this blog, and that will simply be to say I landed safely back home. Sayonara!

I have to admit, this final week in Japan is a bit more low-key than previous weeks. Probably just as well -- my knees are beginning to ache from all the long hours of walking.

Yesterday I visited the Sapporo clock tower and learned a little about the history of the city. After that, it was gift shopping, which I still haven't finished. Two of the gifts I had ideas for quickly became nightmare missions. But in the end, I was successful.

Now for the rest.



This photo is from yesterday, but wasn't uploaded due to neglect on my part. Inside the botanical garden grounds was a small taxidermy museum. Nothing too exciting: Some bears, wolves, birds, etc..

However, the above "Giant Japanese Salamander" really caught my attention. I put my umbrella (about 80 cm long) in front of the glass to provide a sense of scale. That makes the Salamander roughly 90 cm in length!

I haven't completely deciphered the Japanese information card, but did notice it mentions Fukuoka prefecture. I wonder where they were hiding...?



A clock mechanism inside the Sapporo clock tower. As it turns out, Sapporo city has only a 120 year history. The Meiji government tried to accelerate development of the city by sending many students abroad to study in Europe and especially the US.

This explains why Sapporo has a more "Western" feel to it's design. Roads are on average much wider than other Japanese cities, a grid system is used, fire hydrants are above ground (in other cities they are under manhole covers), and many other small details.

And the weather's beginning to feel a lot like Canada.

Yesterday morning I awoke to a sudden crack of thunder, and opened the curtains to discover a rather heavy downpour. Following a small breakfast, I wandered off to the internet cafe -- taking as many covered/underground routes as possible -- and once again attempted head-to-head battled with blogspot's wonderful image related features.

After emerging from the "media cafe" darkness, I found the rain had stopped, and subsequently decided to visit the botanical gardens. Not the most exciting adventure, but at least it was something.



Shortly after entering the gates. It was rather cool, damp, and cloudy outside. While some of the pathways were made of fine gravel, others were simply dirt. As you can no doubt imagine, these dirt trails were rather muddy due to the heavy morning rainfall.



A handheld manual control macro shot. It took several attempts to get this one right. My camera's image stabilizer feature only works up to a point, after that a tripod becomes necessary. In this instance, I was the tripod.



The same species of plant I saw on Maruyama trail, except here the pods have not opened. I wonder what lurks within...?



A nice little bridge in the middle of the gardens.



They did have a rose garden section, but most of the flowers were wilting -- it is late in the season afterall. All the same, I managed to find a couple of nice specimens.



Not much in terms of image composition, but the mix of colours are nice-ish.



A rickety wooden walking trail along a swampy section. There were some frogs, but they were too quick for me to take any photos. Sorry.

Here's the Asama shinkansen train sitting idle at Nagano station. Seconds after snapping this photo, they began boarding. Minutes later and we were off.



Sorry, no photos from neither Morioka nor Hakodate. To appease the masses, here is a funky looking building near downtown Sapporo, located just a couple of blocks from this internet cafe. I assume rain water drains out through the nostrils, partly because of the water stains, partly because there are two holes on the bottom of the nose.

As a side note, I must mention Sapporo uses a grid system for it's roads. Although a few minor streets are not labeled, navigation is similar to Alberta cities.



Sapporo TV tower. It is possible to ride the elevator to the top, but I haven't done so yet. Most Japanese cities have TV towers. I get the impression cable TV doesn't exist, as most hotel TVs use UHF signals.



Starting my ascent of Maruyama.



Along the path were many small numbered statues. The last one I remember reading was 73. Near the start of the trail there were multitudes grouped together, which would have made a nice photo. However, many elderly people were praying in front of the statues, and I didn't want to be rude. Luckily, most people seemed to turn back half way up the climb,so I had the rest of the trail mostly to myself.



Somebody has his/her cheeks stuffed for winter.



And so it continues... (Ten points if you can spot the other hiker.)



Damn, another 225.4 millimetres until Maruyama summit. Do you think I can hold out?



The view from above. I wasn't alone up here. In addition to other hikers, there was a hawk being bothered by several ravens/crows.

Later on I managed to get a photo of this viewpoint from the ground. Unfortunately, it's a poor photo.



Starting the descent. Notice the strange plant growing from behind the stump. What can it be?



This is what it can be! An alien species from another planet. I really have no clue what this is.



And down we go...

The forest floor was covered with these small bamboo plants.



At the bottom, near Maruyama zoo. After taking this photo, some old man approached me and we attempted to have a chat. He didn't speak English, but is studying Spanish, has been to BC, the wind knocked over the tree, and I should go and eat at as many Sapporo restaurants as possible. That's all I could understand.



After Maruyama, I climbed up to some memorial park. At little disappointing as the path up was mostly paved. Below is a fountain, but obviously it's not turned on.



Here's the view from below. The fountain is still not turned on.

Today I did some hiking up Maruyama (Round Mountain) just to the west side of Sapporo. I took plenty of photos and chatted with some old man the best I could.

As it turns out, I will be posting more images afterall. It dawned on me last night that GIMP didn't install because I didn't install GTK+ first. (The error message was in Japanese and I didn't quite get the meaning.) Today I tried again just for kicks, and lo and behold, I now have GIMP. Of course, my camera cable is still in the hotel, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow. (I came to the internet cafe straight from the mountain.)

It's rather odd, however, that the internet cafe doesn't prevent people from installing programs. Maybe there's no way to stop this from happening in WinXP...?

Last night everything on TV pretty much exclusively involved discussing North Korea's nuke test. Let's just say that action was very unpopular in Japan. Other news items included images of typhoon damage on Hokkaido's east coast. I originally wanted to travel to that area, but I changed my mind for obvious reasons. It looks pretty messy out there.

Oh, and there was special showing the top 100 TV Anime programs of all time as voted by a bunch of Japanese television personalities, one of whom was "Hard Gay." If you don't know who he is, just search You Tube. At any rate, number one was Lupin the 3rd! I didn't realize the TV series began way back in 1971. Wow. (For Lloyd residents not in the know, I have a couple of DVDs and one manga anthology in my apartment. You may borrow if you wish.)

Until tomorrow...

Hmm... This internet cafe has no photo editing software installed, and unlike the other places from previous days, it's locked down so I can't install the GIMP or anything. This means no photos. They come out of the camera at three megabytes a piece, which I think is a little too large for general internet viewing. You'll have to wait until I return to Canada to see more images.

Today I haven't done much of anything, and don't plan on doing much of anything. I did, however, do my laundry. The laundromat I used was a complete dive. Five tiny capacity washing machines at 500 yen a pop! My machine shook like crazy when in spin mode. After that, I stuffed my clothes into one of three HUGE driers. I'm not kidding when I say I could've climbed in them. At least the drier was only 100 yen for 10 minutes, which was surprisingly enough time. (Video games and slot machines were also present.) You should have seen the waiting chairs -- I think they were stuffed with dead cockroaches. The mouse traps all over the floor were also a nice touch. This place belonged more in a down-and-out US city neighbourhood than in Japan.

Here in Sapporo there is a ferris wheel on top of a downtown building. I think the building in question is eight stories high. Kind of a strange place for a ferris wheel. Today I'm going to locate the entrance.

So, I'm in Sapporo. The train from Hakodate was diesel powered! Smelled like it too... However, the scenery more than made up for the fumes.

I have to admit, after the less-than-hospitable atmosphere of Hakodate, I didn't exactly have the best night's sleep. It worried me that all of Hokkaido would be like Hakodate. But, I was wrong. So far everything in Sapporo is just fine. I'm even going to get my laundry completed!

After getting off the train I headed straight for the "tourist information" window. For the previous week I just wandered around randomly and choose a cheapish looking hotel. (Exception = Nara) But because Hakodate was less than inviting, I decided to play it safe and ask someone for accomodation advice.

The Japanese woman at the counter spoke Canadian English with a slight Japanese accent. Strange. As it turns out, she lived 12 years in Canada: four in Vancouver, and eight in Medicine Hat! Wow. Unexpected. (For the benfit of non-Canadian readers, Medicine Hat is located in Alberta, the same province I live in.)

At any rate, I'm staying in a Japanese style room. The couple who own the place have been really helpful, even allowing me to check-in early. (They were in the middle of cleaning and technically "closed" at the time of my arrival.) Seeing as I'm staying a full week, I think I should try and write a thank you note in Japanese, or something along those lines.

Weather is still poor. Rain is now light to none, but the wind is still quite gusty. I might not get any new photos for a day or two. Tomorrow I'll post my only shinkansen photo.

The weather took a turn for the worst on the third day in Nagano. According to the news, two typhoons are working there way up near the East coast of Japan.

I rode the Shinkansen to Morioka, which turned out to be super friendly place. I wish I had decided to stay another day. But I figure one week in Honshu, one week in Hokkaido.

I stayed at a worn out hotel run by some super-friendly old guy. He was very suprised to see someone from Canada. After checking in I went to find food. The restaurant I choose was also super friendly, and I had the opportunity to speak plenty of Japanese. True most of it was basic stuff such as, "I'm from Canada. Yes, it's cold in winter, etc.." But hey, at least nobody tried to speak English, which was a welcome change. I liked Morioka.

Today I took the shinkansen to Hachinohe, then the super-duper slow train to Hakodate. The train was extra slow due to flooding in fields that the tracks went through and as a result was more than an hour late. However, after the tunnel to Hokkaido, it went back up to regular cruising speed. The Hokkaido tracks followed the ocean, and wow, there were some large waves.

Hakodate is not very friendly. The first hotel I visited kicked me out! My umbrella also crumpled in the strong winds. And it's quite cold. And I really need to find a laundromat soon.

Tomorrow, Sapporo.

Heading back on the trail.



Near the end of the trail was this old grave site. About 50 metres later I wound up in a very small farming community.



There was yet another temple near the bus stop. While waiting, I took a small visit. It had these extremely steep stairs. Several elderly people looked as though they were about to have a heart attack after reaching the top.



Some statues near the entrance of a temple in Nagano city.

The view looking from the other direction. You can see some small farming communities in the distance.



Here's Something-Ishi in all it's glory! Looks to be in a slight state of dis-repair...



After descending for a short while, there was another pond. Unlike the previous body of water, this was only accessable by trail. I had it all to myself.



One side of the pond.



And the other.

Here's the pond behind the trees. There were several elderly people scattered around this pond, painting pictures and drawing sketches. (A paved road also lead to the pond.)




After the pond, the trail began to lead upwards...



Nothing special about this photo, other than I managed to capture a bee in action. After this I also managed to snap an image of some yellow snake. However, it was only the back -- I wasn't quick enough for the head.



Here's the path continuing to lead up into the heavens.



Ta da! At this point I'm almost out of moutain. This was called Something-Ishi. The "something" is the Kanji I couldn't read, the "ishi" means rock.

Here's the entrance to the moutain trail. As always, it's guarded by a couple of lions. Inside the red gate are two wooden statues. I have photos, but they won't be posted here. Sorry...



Here's what the trail looks like after the gate. These are huge Japanese cedars. I do have one photo with a couple of people in the image to give a sense of proportion, but this photo is nicer.



After reaching the temple at the top, I walk back halfway and then proceeded on this path. It was very lonely, apart from all the bear-warning signs.



I was expecting to find a Jizo statue or two on the trail, but instead found two of these. Whatever they are, they're not Jizo statues of samurai movie fame. A bit disappointing.



A little later down the trail, the winding stream I had been following lead to an open part of the forest. What could be behind the trees?

Another view from even further down the trail.

The next temple over. This one had several buildings one could enter to view some old scrolls and wooden statues. One of the statues I recognized from history book photos. However, as you may have guessed, photography was not allowed inside these areas.



Another view of the grounds.



This is from the other side of Kyoto. I passed through the Old Imperial Palace on my way here. While the palace was disappointing, this pavillion certainly wasn't. Yes, the top two floors are covered in gold leaf. It's much more impressive in real life, but here's the next best thing.



Another photo, because one is not enough.

This place was absolutely crowed, so I could only photograph the gold building as it had a little area set aside for just this purpose. (I lucked out and managed to avoid having too many people in my shots.) The rest of the trail was too much of a mad house to take any images. Tripods and group photos were prohibited, probably because such activities would result in even more chaos.

After previewing last post, I found the white space was all messed up. Looking at the HTML, it seems as though blogspot decided to add a bunch of open and close paragraph tags that were cancelling each other out. Blah...

This is the pillar base from a temple very near the hotel I stayed at in Kyoto. Yes, the same temple were I partook in a Buddhist ceremony of some sort.

This is photo of the 11 storey Kyoto train station. Like many major stations, it also houses a department store. Well, two department stores in fact. And also like many major Japanese shopping plazas, it's not entirely enclosed indoors. As you can see in the photo, the people standing on the escalators are also holding umbrellas. Have you ever ridden an escalator in the rain? I have.

From my second day in Kyoto. This is the entrance to a series of buildings scattered along a mountain path. It was very busy and therefore impossible to take photos without somebody else in view.

Just after the main entrance. Fairly busy for a Monday.

The same building from the previous photo, but from part way along the path.