10 Photos from Our Time in Japan
By leelefever on February 18, 2008 - 12:16am.
The delicious food, the amazingly nice people, the sites, the experience, Japan is one of our favorite places. Thankfully one of our friends moved there recently and has an extra bedroom (thanks Ken!). Before the planning was done, 5 of us from Seattle decided to go. The photos below will give you a taste of our time there.
I took 2,900 photos in the 15 days we were gone. You can see a set of 135 photos on Flickr.
The photo below is one of my all time favorites. We happened to be a Meiji Shrine in Tokyo just as a wedding party walked through with snow coming down really hard. It seemed to snow everywhere we went.
One reason we went this time of year was for Yuki Matsuri, the annual snow festival in the northern city of Sapporo, Hokkaido. The event attracts 2 million visitors who come for the giant snow and ice sculptures. It was also very cool to spend an evening with Michael and Takako of Smashcut Media.
The ice sculptures were amazing - I call this one "see food."
The seaside town of Otaru, outside of Sapporo, has it's own snow festival that is all about hand-made snow lanterns and delicious sushi.
Sachi and I split from the group and went to the less-visited southern island of Shikoku. Sachi's Japanese speaking helps in getting off the beaten track. In the central part of the island is the Oboke Gorge, which gave us a chance to stay in an Onsen Resort Ryokan called Kazura-bashi.
The water-level view of the Oboke Gorge.
The bag you see here is all Sachi brought for the whole trip.
We moved around a lot. In fact, not counting subways in Tokyo, we rode 18 different trains, including one of my favorite modes of transport: the Shinkansen.
Every single train was on time to a matter of seconds - amazing.
In Nikko, north of Tokyo, this monkey screamed, walked up to me and took a harmless swipe at my leg before retreating. Scary for a bit.
All in all a wonderful vacation. I plan to have another post soon about visual thinking in Japan. After that, we'll return to regularly scheduled programming.
Japan photos
The photos you shared with this post are amazing. If they are representative of your 135 image Flickr album then I look forward to checking it out. Well done!
Great photos
Nice Photos!!!
you did a nice job of capturing the people.
rgds
-Skip
Packing Light
Sachi should run a packing light seminar at the travel book place in Wallingford. She's a champ. TO pack that light in WINTER is amazing.
As always, love the photos. We should talk about visual_thinking (my latest fav del.icio.us tag) in Northern Voice.
Lee those are some awesome
Lee those are some awesome shots. I was in Japan in May 2006, it is such an easy country to take tons of pictures. We hope to be able to go to the festival in Sapporo someday and your photos just reinforced that. Thanks for sharing.
My trip to Japan
I am across this website when searching for trip to Japan. When I was younger, me and the mrs. went to Japan. Way back in the 1950's. I sure to miss the place and it is a great place to visit, but I sure wouldn't want to live there. I think I would miss my Mcdonalds too much!
Richard Lee
Living in Japan
for many years and have been places on business and private trips, however, my photos do not compare with the beauty and simplicity of these.
To Rick: your McD is over here too, has been for more than a decade.
Photos
Geez Lee, you sure to go on a lot of vacations. Those photos are truly beautiful and I only wish that I could visit Japan one day. I bet it sure is nice to be able to work almost anywhere in the world right from your computer. Of course you have the set, but you can always come up with an article or two to keep things rolling.
Pennsylvania Tummy Tuck
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