april-rainer-travel

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Takoma の春

#ワシングトン #桜 #花見 #春 #washington dc

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International Snow Sculpture Competition

Truly amazing snow art for just a few days work. The face is from the Swedish team I think — it looks simple but lovely. The bubbles are Norwegian maybe? Definitely Scandinavian. The dragon is by a team from Macau and the girl with the pet griffon is Chinese. The surfer is from a Hawaiian group and my favourite goldfish are Thai.

It was awesome watching them work over the week to go from rough shapes to such lovely details!

#日本 #札幌 #札幌雪まつり #japan #sapporo #sapporo snow festival

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Some of my favourite snow sculptures, small and large. There were 190 small ones, so it’s hard to choose.

#日本 #札幌 #札幌雪まつり #japan #sapporo #sapporo snow festival

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札幌雪祭り

Sapporo Snow Festival

So in Sapporo, they don’t just tolerate winter, they celebrate it. Naturally, I approve entirely. The main park (Odori) is entirely covered with food stands and snow art and souvenir shops and festival things. The art is AMAZING. The big pieces posted here (there are five total) are built over the course of a month by the Japanese Self Defense Force. They are taller than most buildings and very detailed!

There are two other festival areas: one for ice sculptures which was right near our hotel and one for winter activities. I think the winter activities were mostly for kids but we had fun on the snow tube slide anyway. The ice sculptures were also astonishing. There were some that were commissioned or ads (the emperor and empress dolls and the frozen aquarium for example) but there was also an ice carving competition that was absolutely mind blowing. A lot of the designs looked like they SHOULD NOT be defying gravity like that. The competition runs over night so when I went for my early morning jet lagged wander I got to watch some of the artists putting the finishing touches on their work. In particular, watching this turtle get fins:

Sadly he didn’t win. The winning piece was fairly amazing though.

#日本 #札幌 #札幌雪まつり #すすきのアイスワルド #japan #sapporo #sapporo snow festival

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Today was a nice day around Tokyo — that’s to jet lag I’m still waking up well before anyone wants to do anything so this morning I went up to Asakusa to putter about and visit the temple before it got too busy. I had breakfast on the river (steamed buns from a convenience store and those delicious fried things they sell by Senso-ji). Skytree is definitely growing on me — when you catch it opposite the pagoda it’s like being loomed over by the past and future of cultural monuments.

After breakfast I met up with some kyudo friends to go to a traditional Japanese martial arts demonstration. There was only one kyudo group sadly but all the sword work and wrestling was very cool. Afterward ヨ and I went to find lunch and go to a flea market, where we looked through all the kimono stalls and made some debatable impulse purchases (yes I kind of wanted zori; no I definitely don’t NEED zori, whoops).

The final photo is of Meguro after dinner — nice comfortable residential Tokyo. I miss this being my normal a lot; it’s so pleasant being back the only thing I miss from “home” is my cats.

#japan #tokyo #東京 #nostalgia for my most recent home #always a thing #i’m sure i’ll feel that way about dc when i move on

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Mt Fuji

富士山

Yamanashi Prefecture: We went out to visit the Kubota Itchiku Museum the first day, which was spectacular. Kubota Itchiku was a kimono maker who recreated a Heian Era sting techinque and made the most astonishing art, kabuki, and noh kimono. I saw part of his life-work of seasonal kimono on tour this summer and seeing his other work at the Museum was amazing. We could have stared at them for hours, the way the texture and the colours and everything looked. The museum was one he designed himself, on hill overlooking Lake Kawaguchi and Mt Fuji. It’s made from local volcanic rock in a kind of avant-garde Mediterranean style with extensive Japanese gardens going up and down the hill. Mt Fuji was also gloriously visible that afternoon so we walked back along the lakeshore taking dramatic sunset pictures every few feet.

Yesterday we went to Fuji-Q Highland, an amusement park in the shadow of Mt Fuji. K and I, both fond of roller coasters, rode all four big coasters in the morning — they were awesome! I had never been on most of them before and had a great time. We then joined D in the afternoon to play on the smaller rides. For lunch we tried ほうとう (houtou), a local Yamanashi soup dish with fat noodles cooked at your table like a personal hot pot. K and D got the pumpkin kind which it traditional; I tried it with mushrooms, which was amazing.

#fuji #yamanashi #japan #fuji-q highland #富士山 #山梨県 #富士Qハイランド #ほうとう

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The Mohawk and Hudson Rivers from the train home yesterday. Upstate was being beautifully photogenic.

#upstate new york

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Got sent to Las Vegas for work. Very large, very shiny, very busy. The mountains were stunning, though. I wish there had been time to go hiking.

仕事のためにラスベーガスに行きました。キラキラな町でした。私には少し忙しすぎて少しインチキの気持ちがあります。でも、山は粒らしいです。ハイキングに行きたかったけど時間がありませんでした。😿

#las vegas #ラスベガス

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Montréal: they have winter.

誕生日のために長い週末、モントレアルに行った。本当の冬あるよ！

#Canada #Quebec #montreal #winter #a season I miss having

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I’m in Thailand on holiday at the moment, staying in Bangkok. My first major impression is of markets and crowds and water.

The first day I was here, S and I went for a ramble through the old city, and due to a wrong turn ended up following a sign reading “Passage to Chinatown” into the street (? Is it a street if there’s no room for cars?) in the first photo. I have no pictures of markets, because there are so many people and so little space stopping for any reason seriously impedes the flow of traffic. It was very dense, and very interesting to look at the wide variety of things available, although over all, the whole thing is terrifyingly large. We walked for nearly an hour going straight, and didn’t reach the end of the passage we chose.

Yesterday, we took a car out to a floating market with a Thai acquaintance. Although floating markets are solely tourist attractions these days, it was fun to visit. Fried street food (canal food?) came from other different boats, and you could pull up against storefronts on the water to buy knickknacks if you wished.

#Thailand

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Thai houses used to be built onto the river (you see the older ones everywhere, with half of more of the house over water), and the rivers and canals we as much roads as the actual roads. You don’t see any private boats tied up at residences now, but even new, fancy houses still seem to be built with launches on the river, done up like decks. Companies, churches, and organizations in general still use their launches for collecting goods and people (not pictured: crates of water being loaded from a random dock in Thonburi; naval people waiting at their dock for a shuttle ferry to pick them up). We were all of us fond of getting places by boat (Z, pictured, is living a life of delicious indolence), but the normal ferries were just like any other commuter/tourist public transit system (commuters wait for the ferry in the rain).

The main traffic on Bangkok’s rivers and canals are tourist boats, often the long-tail type in these pictures. Some of them are going places empty, sometimes they’re moving goods, but mostly they’re full of tourists. The canals in Thonburi are a fascinating look at one side of residential Thailand. There don’t seem to be discernible socio-economic boundaries that I could group from the boat – saggy, poorer houses directly abutted fancy new modern Art Deco developments and lovely traditional teak homes.

The canals connect to the river via a lock system. It’s hard not to enjoy locks.

#Thailand

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St Stephan's

It's very tall, and the square is not large, hence the rather dizzying photos. There's a semipermanent little craft market right next door that I'm a little in love with.

#vienna #austria

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Frankfurt, Germany

I only spent the night as a break from the train between Paris and Vienna, but it’s a great city for walking and biking. I loved the river (I think half the city was out picnicking) and all the medieval buildings and churches. I’ve recently been reading a lot of WWII fiction and non-fiction, and it’s so nice to see Germany and France beautiful and peaceful rather than war-torn.

I stopped at a pub thing for supper. Informational: sauerkraut is really good in mashed potatoes. Juniper berries are likewise tasty, although somewhat surprising if you’re not expecting them. The sausages were delicious. After dinner, I had a bit of a ramble and stumbled on a very beer-focused street fair thing. (No idea if Germans just have beer tents and music in their squares all summer long or if this was a special occasion.) So I tried the local cider (Apfelwein), which was nice, and had crepes for dessert.

My German is terrible. I can read the signs and understand informational announcements for the most part, but I’m pretty sure my pronounciation is a nightmare. Storekeepers always have to switch to English after my first attempt at ordering – I never understand the follow-up questions, and often they don’t even understand my order. It’s a bit embarrassing. I am trying to look up useful words ahead of time, although I know little enough of the language that sometimes even the dictionary is no help. :-/

フランクフルト・ドイツ

パーリィからウインナまでの電車はフランクフルトで一宿止まった。古くてきれいな町だ。おいしいソーサージを食べた後に、小さい祭を見つけた。地域的なりんご酒(apfelwein)を飲んでみた。実は、ケベックからのがこれより好きだけどおいしかった。

先に、色々な第二次大戦について本や記事を読んだ。(今学期の日本史の内容は「70年後:考え」から。) 安全なドイツとフランスを見ることはいい気持ちだ。世界で治癒や平和が可能性があるの気持ちかな？頑張ろう、ねぇ。。。

でも、ドイツ語を話したらずっと恥ずかしい。発音はとても下手だや頼む時に店さんたちの質問が全然分からない。😣

でも、旅行はすばらしい。一人で世界を見られる気持ちが好きだ！

#Frankfurt #Germany #フランクフルト

[april-rainer-travel]

週末に弓道の特訓を参加した。 練習はすばらしかった。教官から色々ないい助言をもらって、アメリカの東北にいる学生に会った。 新しい他の人と一緒に引き方を勉強した。三人礼者と言う。気持ちはすごかったけどあたしの跪座をもっともっと練習しなくちゃからない！ それに、弓作りさんは私に弓を作ってくれる。とても楽しみだ！終わった弓を引いてみたかったでも13kgは重すぎる。私は弱い。😣 ☺️

Spent the weekend in Garrison, NY at a kyudo intensive. It was a great weekend! The Hudson River feels very homey to me, and it was glorious to be out of the city for a few days.

My shoulders hurt like crazy, but it was a great practice, and I learned a new form. :-)

It was really nice to meet at the other kyudo people in the north east. I guess I see where my summer vacation will be going in future...

#弓道 #Garrison #kyudo

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Hiking in Great Falls with A, C, and S (not appearing in any of these photos). It was gorgeous, and the perfect temperature today...

#washington dc

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DCの春

#花

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春が来た。

Early spring is here, and I want to do nothing but breathe deep and see the flowers and sky.

#spring #washington dc #春 #花 #花見