Cool song

Archuleta

I say I agree with Simon, the first round goest to Archuleta.

Who's it going to be?

In what has turned out to be the battle of the David's who will come out on top? They are both great but I'm predicting it will be Archuleta.

Japanese Office

This is really funny, I think we should do our own version of it.

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Gunma

This guys was quite the rice planter!

On the second day we went hiking. The 4 different classes all going on a different course.
I was on the Omine numa course. Here is some of the flora we saw on the way.

Rice Planting

This week took me to Gunma prefecture on a school trip with the J2 students. It was raining when we left but the rain stopped and with the cloud cover the greens on the hillsides and over the fields was spectacular.

This guy moved at an alarming speed planting the rice.
Even though most rice is planted by machine it was obvious he has had many years of practice the old fashioned way.

The students all stepped into the rice field which of course was accompanied by the shrieks of the girls. I couldn't have been too gross they all were wearing socks.

They went one row at a time and didn't really have to plant that many seedlings.

Given the posture that you have to stand to do this I passed up on it.

Rice p

Eisa Drummers

Here are some pictures of the Eisa drummers.

I thought this guys was pretty good.

I couldn't get a lot of variety because the same 3 or 4 guys were basically in front of me the whole time.

Happy Birthday to Me

Well I turned 50 day and there was nothing really exciting on my schedule. My treat for the day was curry at the little Indian restaurant near my house, and then out in the afternoon to the Okinawa festival in Kawasaki. The festival was actually rather disappointing except for the Tsurumi Eisa Drummers.

Video disappeared, I'll have to try again.

Food along the journey

Doing one of things things I do best. Eat good food! This was a small yakiniku restaurant in Yomonoyokocho called Omoni. It was very good, but I probably ate too much. But we did our best to walk it off.We started off walking to an old sento that actually is an onsen in Togoshi Ginza. Well we ended up heading in the wrong direction and we finally got to someplace we could ask directions and we had gone completely out of the way.

Clean and ready to head back to the hotel.

Old Tokaido Road

This is the area that we walked. Our hotel is in the bottom right hand corner and basically we walked along the pink line.

Here I am on my descent from the "mini" Mt. Fuji at Shingawa Shrine

Exploring Tokyo

After having put things off to the last minute Shige and I ended up spending the night in Tokyo. We ended up staying at th Sun Route Hotel near Shinagawa seaside station. We got off at Aomonoyokocho, a station I hadn't heard of before, and the area is actually very near the Old Tokaido, the old road from Nihonbashi to Kyoto. this is the road of which woodblock prints were made depicting scenes along the way. This is the police station right outside of the station.

Then just a short walk from the station is the actual road.

On the corner stood this old building that was actually a doctors office. It is quite rare to find such nice old architecture in Tokyo.

This is the night view from the hotel room.

After a hearty all you can eat breakfast, we set out on the road walking towards Shinagawa. this picture is one of the many shrines along the way. As you look at the map it is dotted with little shrines all over the area. This is Ebara Shrine. There is a large festival there the first weekend in June, I need to go back and check it out then.
There were quite a few interesting old houses that dotted the route. It made the walk very interesting.
There were also quite a few parks, in this one there were four old ladies playing a game of ring toss.

Ebara Jinja

A protecting Shisa at Shinagawa Shrine.
Notice Mt. Fuji, there was a mini Mt. Fuji in the temple grounds to climb up. I think I had seen it on TV and you are actually supposed to be able to see the actual mountain from there.

Torii