Hakodate

Last weekend we ventured to the beautiful city of Hakodate. Hakodate lies on the very southern shore of the northern island Hokkaido. To understand what we did in Hakodate you must first have a history lesson: In the late 1800's the Meiji Restoration took place in Japan. Prior to this time Japan had cut off all contact with the world for 270 years (which is also the longest duration of Christian persecution). Hakodate was one of the first ports open to the world during the restoration, so there are many old buildings of the western style.

So our time in Hakodate was spent walking about looking at old buildings from the early nineteen hundreds and taking pictures of them. All of which Travis thought was quite peculiar since his parent's house is older (this year is the 100th anniversary of their house!!) than most of the buildings...but they were in Japan so that makes them cool.

We stayed in a really nice hotel with English service!! We were quite surprised to find that many people talked to us in English, signs were in English, even menus were in english!!

To travel between places we rode on the street cars! Yes, that's right street cars just like in the 1920's San Francisco style. Here's a picture of an old school one.

Supposedly, Hakodate has one of the 3 best views in the world which is the night view of the city from atop the nearby mount Hakodate. It was gorgeous minus the fact that there were hundreds of people crowding around trying to take pictures.

We also went to the top of a tower to check out a star shaped fort characteristic of a Western fort from the mid 1800's. The fort looked cool from the top of the tower, but from the park grounds it was a mess of construction because they are rebuilding parts of the fort buildings.

Here is a picture of the old town hall built in 1910ish. Hakodate is prone to fires which burnt down most of the pre-1900 buildings. But this was a nice house!

Of course Hakodate wouldn't be complete without a bit of tourist shops. These buildings (and more) were filled with tourist shops. You think that American towns are bad, just wait till you see how excited the Japanese are about souvenirs!!

Also during our stay in Hakodate we stayed with Maribeth Voss who is another RCA missionary working as a teacher there. She was super nice allowing us to stay at her place and encouraging us in our efforts here in Japan. Unfortunately we did not get a picture of her to share with you, but she did take this picture of a giant block of parmesan cheese during Angie's birthday dinner.

We really liked Hakodate with its western style and English availability, but we are happy to be back home in Hirosaki.

Conquering Mount Hakkoda

We climbed 5 mountains this weekend. We went to the Mount Hakkoda range which consists of 8 mountains. We started out at 7am from our apartment with our camping gear on our back (Angie's backpack weighed 20 lb. and Travis' weighed 30 lb.!!!) and "hiked" to the station which eventually got us to our starting point at an onsen near the mountains. On the first day we were able to climb the biggest of the 8, Mount Odake (which we climbed previously with John Caldwell). Then we headed over to Mount Kodake and conquered it and were heading down it to the next mountain, Mount Takada odake, when the mountain conquered Angie. Somehow she managed to sprain her ankle making Mount Takada odake out of reach. So, after a short rest, we headed slowly back up Mount Kodake, back up and down the first mountain and retreated to our cabin for the night.


Day 1: 2 Mountains demolished.















The picture on the left is of the 1st mountain (Mount Odake), the picture on the right is of the second mountain (Mount Idodake)

After watching a movie on our zune (Thank you Team Johns!) we woke up bright and early at 7am to the first hiker to reach the top of the moutain. (Our cabin was about 200 meters from the top of the tallest mountain and is a refuge cabin for stranded hikers so people often come in and out of it). After a little breakfast we headed out... slowly. We then made our way to the cable car at the edge of the mountains. Along the way we climbed 3 more mountains, Mount Idodake, Mount Akakuradake, and Mount Tamoyachidake. Need I remind you that these are all mostly dormant volcanoes, and many of them have massive craters.


Day 2: 3 Mountains demolished.





Mount Idodake













Mount Akakuradake














Mount Tamoyachidake- this mountain did not have a nice sign like the other mountains, but this littler marker shows the highest spot on the mountain!








Because of Angie's ankle ailment we cheated once we finished the last mountain and took a cable car back to our starting point.

And, here are some pretty pictures from the hiking trip!
















The mountain in the background in the picture on the right is the view of Mount Iwaki (the mountain we hiked on Thursday) from where we went hiking this weekend.















The mountain in the middle in the picture on the left is the one we were trying to rush to when Angie sprained her ankle (it's the 2nd highest of the 8 mountains), and the mountain right before it is the one we were going down when it happened!


























The picture on the left is of three of themountains are three of the mountains we hiked, and the picture on the left is the sunset from our cabin. And, here are a few extras! There are more pics on our picasa if you want to see them!

The Enduring Battle of Iwaki-San

We finally conquered our mountain, Iwaki-san! We were very tired and it was a very hard climb, but it was well worth it! We started at the bottom and it took 4 hours to get all the way to the highest peak. We did some hiking through what felt like a jungle and also did some very tough rock climbing, where there was a lot of "Be careful, Trav! Please don't die!"








Here is a picture of part of the rock-path that we had to climb on to get to the top. It looks innocent, but trust me, it was pretty rough!












Once we were at the top the clouds were coming in! Everyone always says you don't want to climb mountains on cloudy days because you don't get much of a view, but it was so neat to have the clouds going through us. You could literally see them coming up the mountain and go right past you!













Although we hiked all the way from the bottom to the top we did cheat a little on the way down the moutain. There is a ski lift from the bottom of the highest peak (maybe an hours hike) that takes you down about another 30 minutes of a hike to a parking lot that you can start at if you don't want to hike all the way from the bottom, and we decided to take the ski lift to the parking lot and then hike 2 more hours to the bottom. So it took about 3 hours of hiking and a 10 minute ski-lift to get back down to the bottom.


For the next two days we are going to destroy Hakkoda Mountain as we will be camping there. There are more pics of us conquering Iwaki-san on our Picasa albums!

TachiNeputa & Nebuta

This week we traveled to Goshogawara and Aomori for their lantern festivals. Each city in the area has a lantern festival, but Goshogawara, Aomori, and Hirosaki are the biggest. Each city has their own unique style of float and also their own melody.


On Monday we went to Goshogawara, whose floats are as tall as 7-story buildings! They are huge! Their melody is very upbeat and there is a lot of dancing and yelling.






















On Wednesday we traveled to Aomori whose floats are 3D (very detailed!) and very wide. Aomori is the most touristy neputa festival. The Aomori parade is supposed to be symbolic of the return from battle.
















Their melody was even more upbeat and there was even more dancing! We got pulled out to dance many times! Here is an example with Angie and Haruna.

















Also, on Tuesday, after staking our ground for the parade hours before it started, we watched the Hirosaki Neputa again. This time Travis got pulled in to help carry one of the floats! Luckily, it was only for about 20 feet!

There are more pictures in the Picasa Web Album if you want to see more of the parades!

Neputa

On August 1st, the Hirosaki Neputa Festival began. Basically it is a very large and long night parade (3 hours!!) of large lit-up paper lanterns. The Neputa Festival in Hirosaki is to symbolize the farewell to soldiers going to battle. It is a very solemn yet proud festival. Although all the lanterns may be different from one another, each group plays the same tune along to screams of "Ya-ya do" which means something like, "hurray" according to one of our teachers.

Here's a picture of one of the massive lanterns. People ride at the top and put down the flaps when they get to the street lights. There are also people at the bottom pushing and pulling the lanterns down the street, as well as running around the lantern with ropes to make the lanterns turn, often jumping over onlookers sitting on the edge of the streets!

Every float also has drummers and flute players that play the melody. Sometimes the drums are huge!


















They continue with the parade even if it rains, as you can see here, they just put a clear tarp over the lanterns. It has rained both nights of the parade so far.











And, even little kids join in on the festivities and walk along with the parade, playing drums, flutes, or running around with miniature neputa lanterns.


















We will be traveling to two other cities (Aomori & Goshogowara) for their festivals so check back soon to hear the highlights!