Happy New Year!

It's almost time for us to head to the shrine for the midnight ceremonies.

See you next year!

Sacred mountains

around Tochigi as seen from the top of Mt Kogashi

Kanuma Inter Dori

The road leading to the Kanuma Interchange on the Tohoku Expressway.

Is it safe to cross?

Family Album Sunday - Utsunomiya in 2005

Happy Hogswatch everybody

Or Merry Christmas.
Or whatever it is you celebrate. And even if you don't, you can still enjoy delicious cake.

Lights!

At Ashikaga Flower Park:

In Nikko in 2003

Futaara Shrine in 2003 perhaps

Because I'm in Malaysia right now, I thought it would be a good idea to prepare some posts for you while I'm gone.

This one is from 2003, I guess.

Goodbye fall, hello winter...

Preparations before building a house

At an udon restaurant

The food was tasty.

At Tobu Tochigi Station

30 minutes to kill. What to do?

Let's look around

Oh, wait, a train is coming...

Nah, it's leaving...

Let's investigate the station...

There's a water fountain...

And plenty of train tracks...


Let's go downstairs... I need to pee anyway.

Caution! Hold the handrails and blah blah blah...

It's a long ride downstairs:

But where's the ladies room?
Oh, here!

Don't forget to flush!


Meanwhile, on the platform:

A train, yay!


Let's get out of here:

This is a Show Me Japan entry.

Kinu river once more

Hard to believe this dry soil is right on the banks of a major river (non-cemented river at that!)

Otariya at Futaara shrine - December edition

The other Otariya festival is held on January 15th.

At a nearby funeral home

Looks like there's a funeral going on:

Kinu river

Twisted tree

This is a Black and White Weekend entry.

Meanwhile in Tsuruta...

everyday boring life...

with everyday boring views...

This is my very anti-climactic Show Me Japan entry.

EF 577

The Kanumans

the official action figures of Kanuma City:

The colors of their outfits symbolize various things that the city of Kanuma is famous for:
pink - azalea flowers, red - strawberries, blue - garlic chives, and yellow - the super famous Kanuma soil (exported all over the world, great for growing bonsai).

All decked out for the holidays

Utsunomiya's famous gyoza statue ready to spread some christmas cheer.

This is a Ruby Tuesday entry.

Plastic

Plastic food

Even plastic pizza...

The chicken? Plastic. All plastic... It's fantastic...

Ginko leaves

Ginko trees smell bad, the whole street stank.

Kids of Tochigi city autumn festival

The festival took place last month.

It was big but not particularly interesting.

The participants seemed bored.

All the kids looked terribly serious.

I'm sure they'd rather be playing with their friends.

Nobody was smiling, not even the little ones.




This is a Weekend in black and white entry.

And also a Show Me Japan entry.

Provincial life

Eating out

My friend had all these coupons to a belt sushi restaurant. They were going to expire the last of November. So we had no choice. The last day of November, it was sushi time.

This was my first time at this particular chain.

We ate and ate. And then ate some more.