The answer, dear friends, is that my Asian adventures have come to a close (for now) and I'm back in the states, where Ive spent the last two months sitting around on my butt, tromping around in the snow, eating things cooked with way too much butter, and watching Top Gear.
But I had a recent moment of inspiration where I realized-I can't abandon my blog! Ive been with it this long, and since I have lots of pictures left to share, Ive decided to continue to post the rest of those, and anything else interesting that happens.
So....when we last left off, I was in Japan, visiting my awesome friend Quill, and I had significantly more in my bank account than I do now. But never mind that...I think there may be more pictures in this post than ever before, so Ill shut up now.
Quill and I took a trip out to the coast one day. First, a quick trip to the grocery store, where I was utterly dazzled by the array of instant noodles. This is one of two aisles.
Mushroom mascots!
I don't think this was the same day, but whatevers...this DVD was called "Amazing Nuts!"
This is Quill in the massage-y chair. Later he got on the robot workout horse, but that picture looks a little obscene, and this is a family friendly site, so we wont share that.
View from the apartment in the evening. The big brown square is the town hall, where you can go up to the observatory and look around for a great view (which we did).
So on Thanksgiving Day we drove out to the coast, stopping at a waterfall (ooooooooh).
I love these trees...even now. Maybe more now than then, if its possible, since its cold and brown and dead here now.
This is officially My Favorite Beach Ever. The water is warm, the beach is covered in seashells, the sand is clean and the sun was shining.
Feet. Foot.
Someone else's feet!
Shells!
We left the beach and went out to a huge temple complex right on some cliffs by the sea.
All the wood was painted orange.
Rain chain, all oxidized, inside the main cave. It was real purty.
You can buy these little pieces of wood that are painted on one side and then you write wishes and prayers on the other side and hang them in the cave at the temple.
Right outside the cave with the main temple there are crazy rocks!
Its right on the sea.
And we finished the day with green tea ice cream and a lovely sunset.
Quill bought a fish cake or something, but we wont talk about that here.
As we were driving home, I took a picture of Quill.
He seems to always make this face when I take pictures like this-mildly terrified.
END OF THAT DAY.
The next day we went to climb a volcano.
And this was the road.
Good lord, I can die now.
Crazy gate. whoaaaaao...
Trail...seems fairly tame at first.
And then the trail just stopped and went straight up the side of the volcano, which had sheer sides covered in slippery rocky red pebbles. We struggled up it, me more so because I was wearing Converse All Stars, like a colossal idiot.
Somehow I managed to fail in uploading pictures and missed one of the volcano crater (which is off to the right in the picture), but I'll put that up next time. I thought this was it, but that far peak is actually where we were going.
Erosion due either to lava or weather or something- anyway, it exposed the bright red underlayer of earth.
Half way up the second peak.
The view from the top!
It kept changing as clouds blew over everything below us.
Good Lord...who let me loose in Photoshop with textures?!
On the way down...the edge of the crater again. The top peak is in the background, on the left.
Back to the real trail...my knees were dying at this point and I was starving.
Lunch Box! Nom nom noms...
Come to me delicious box of rice and mushrooms and potatoes and colorful fish cake and sauce...I will make you mine.
After lunch we saw WILD DEER! Whoooaaaaaa! They were WILD! Actually, they weren't, but that's a story for another time.
On our way home we stopped at the Kappa Gorge (definitely not what its really called) where the mythical water demons called kappa supposedly live. The trail goes through multiple tunnels, and was sort of blocked off...but we maneuvered that without much difficulty.
Quill has giant feet. And you know what they say about big feet...
Big Shoes.
Hark! Is that a kappa I spy, waiting to lure us to a watery death?!
Maybe....
Most likely I just have an over active imagination.
That was pretty much the end of that day. We drove home, and probably got dinner or something somewhere. I can't remember off the top of my head since I'm awful and its been a few months since my trip. I could check my journal, but I'm far too comfortable in this chair for that. But anyway, I'll do my best to get more pictures up for your viewing enjoyment soon, cause I like y'all a whole bunch.
I'll leave you, as I like to do, with one of my favorite photos from this bunch, the sun setting in the Kappa Gorge as we left for the day.
And tonight I'll dream of sushi.
