Sayonara to several departing friends.

The final week of June has brought on a slew of gatherings in honor of several of our expat families and friends who are returning to the US and Canada after finishing their assignments here in Utsunomiya.
The best of luck to Mark,Susie,&Abbey, Jim & Jenny, and Marc-Alex, It was a pleasure hanging with and you will all be missed.
Here's a few pics, with a few more to be found in the Flickr folder.

Trout Fishing the Yugawa River 湯川 日光

Today we went to the Yugawa river to try a bit of trout fishing. The Yugawa is a river running through Nikko that connects Yunoko and Chuzenji lakes and is the source of the Yudaki, Ryuzu, and Kegon Falls. It is a very scenic area, and the weather was great. I was pretty much skunked on the trout fishing, but my co-worker Brad being the fly fishing aficionado that he is at least managed to land 3 brook trout, one was actually decent sized at 9-10 inches. As the river is fairly close to here, I will have to go back and try it again, hopefully a little better prepared for the fishing at hand. We started the day fishing the river below the Yudaki Falls and after the fishing we took time to stop at the Kegon Falls to sight see and and take a few more photos.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8953511@N05/sets/72157605601347998/

The Trips Final Day in Miyajima 宮島町,

Day 4 we traveled to Miyajima Island by ferry. It is said to be one of the three most beautiful sights in Japan! I think it is on the very top of my list out of all of the places that I have seen so far. It is very peaceful and relaxing, there are deer that walk the street and seem to be pretty much everywhere. I actually had one following me too closely at one point, I had to give him the batsu.
I highly recommend checking it out if you are traveling Japan and end up in that area.
http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/location/regional/hiroshima/miyajima.html
http://flickr.com/photos/8953511@N05/sets/72157605479466343/

Hiroshima Visit 広島市,

The 3rd day of our trip Kindra and I visited Hiroshima and stayed at The Hotel Granvia in the station. We visited The Peace Memorial Museum, which was very interesting and moving. I had a hard time with the childrens exibits and the story of Sadako Sasaki.
http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/frame/kids_e/sadako_e/index.html
We followed it up by spending some time at the Peace Memorial Park which was absolutely beautiful. We took some great pics at the park and there are more in the flckr folder.
http://flickr.com/photos/8953511@N05/sets/72157605479069435/

Kyoto Visit 京都市

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Our friend Kindra and I spent two nights in Kyoto, where we stayed at The New Miyako Hotel. Our first stop was at Toji Higashi Monmae, and what a way to start off our trip as it was beautiful. The pagoda is 57 m high, is the tallest wooden tower in Japan and is surrounded by gardens. We also enjoyed seeing the Buddhas of Toji which are located in Kondo-Hall, I don't have any pictures since they are prohibited. The very large statues are very intricately carved and just unbelievably beautiful.
Day two was a busy one we took the local JR line to Inari and visited Fushimi Inari Shrine, it was a 6 minute train ride. Fushimi is surrounded by thousands of torii all lined up making a beautiful path through the wooded area. For our next stop we took a city bus to Kiyomizu Temple, and after they dropped us off we had quite a hike up a steep hill. This required a little break about 1/2 way up for a few cold Kirins! It was worth it, there were many school age kids there and many of them wandered over to speak a bit of English and asked us to join them for pictures. Kiyomizu was also a very beautiful spot. Our last stop of the day was Heian Shrine, this again was a very nice place to visit. We didn't spend allot of time here since they were doing some restoration work.
In my opinion, you really need to have more than two days in Kyoto, we didnt have enough time to see it all. Enjoy the pics and of course there are more in the flickr folders.
http://flickr.com/photos/8953511@N05/sets/72157605478483529/