Kyoto

Well the one disappointment of Kyoto is the hostel PCs have their
USB ports blocked up, so I won't be able to upload pictures for two weeks.
But aside from that Kyoto is as great as it was when I left it. Spent yesterday
running postal errands, buying a cheap bike for the two weeks and settling in,
and this morning I woke up at 6.30 and cycled out to Ryoan-Ji, a temple with an
iconic rock garden. Really beautiful and made all the better for being so quiet
at that time of the morning.

Backlog:Soba and Mochi

Forgot to put this up, here are the photos and videos from the noodle-making party I went to at Akio-san`s friends house a few weeks ago.

There was a full count of ten digits after believe it or not.
We were trying to make soba (round thin noodles) but when old muggins here

tried they came out as udon (flat thick noodles). However I got to hold a huge noodle blade!

And there were great soba noodles to eat after,

accompanied by the largest beer I`ve seen.

In terms of amazing kitchen weaponry this noodle knife comes second only to the mochi (rice condensed via constant pounding) hammer.

I had a go but I think I have to work on my degree of ferocity.

Im leaving the Matsumuras for Kyoto in a few hours, I dont trust myself not to cry on the way out, its been amazing here.

A stream of photos

Signs on the train to Jigokudani

Crows flying over the apple trees

The delicious bento (boxed lunch) I had at the band rehearsal.

Ogurayama Farmhouse (and I live in the Wwoofer house, the orange one on the right)

The local onsen which always reminds me of Tracy`s Island from Thunderbirds

Laidback Monkeys galore

Night shot of the driveway (this was moonlight under a 1 minute exposure)

Fairly self-explanatory photo.

The mascot of Nagano train stations, though it occasionally changes hats.

Jigokudani

My Christmas present to myself was a visit to Jigo Kudani monkey onsen. More pictures and words soon.

EDIT: Jigokudani is about 3 hours by train from where I am in Nagano. I`ve seen these iconic monkeys around the pages of national geographic and most spectacularly in the film Baraka (thanks Hari!) so its been on my list of must sees, so glad I managed to accomplish it, owing largely to the efforts of Kate-san who I went there with.

The rules at Jigokudani with regards to not feeding or otherwise interacting with the monkeys must have been laid down pretty hard because they completely ignore people, you could literally put the camera five inches from their face and they wouldn`t mind, as you can see from the photos in the next post I got pretty close.

Mushroom Kingdom

Here`s Hide-san and I gearing up for our favourite pastime- throwing mushroom fertilizer on apple trees.

Mystery crop

I don`t know what they`ve got growing in here but it certainly looks cool.

Fruits and a manhole cover.

Just to sum up the last 2 weeks or so (yes they were quiet enough to be summed up by the above subjects).

Here are some apples that Fuwa-chan and Wara-chan put opaque tape on to block the sunlight and make these pictures. Try it at home!

Whilst we`re trying things at home the persimmons continue to shrivel well.

I ate one on my tea break yesterday, it was truly delicious.

And just to show you how proud Misato is of its apples- its written on the manhole covers.

Yuki and some machines.

The snow has finally turned up- don`t believe me? Here.

Its actually all melted but I`m sure there`s more to look forward to soon.

Now I wanted to show a few of the machines you see about the place. They`re either conventional things but a lot smaller like this tractor (with hand and shadow for scale)...

...or this digger (modelled fetchingly by Hide-San).

Or they`re in this strange category of farming machines that seems to owe a lot to George Lucas`s first 3 star war films.

This one is a close relative of R2D2 for sure. I haven`t seen this machine in action but the name Skyroad Ace makes me want to.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how many worlds this thing has destroyed.

And this to me looks just too menacing to be a run of the mill cherry picker- obviously waiting to have its laser cannon attached and sent out of the hangar.