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posted: January 31st, 2010 |
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This page starts with January 1, 2010 and takes you through the end of the New Year's Holiday Trip. It then continues on through January 9th. Click on any thumbnail to begin.
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| Begin January 1st |
HAPPY NEW YEAR! It's now 2010! The first shot in this row was taken by Kazuya at 6:25 AM from the window of our room. The next shot, of the Rotenboro, was taken at about 8:30 AM and the 3rd shot - of the "white bath" - was taken at 8:40 AM. Until now it's possible that I have given you the impression that the only Hot Spring at this place is the Rotenboro. That is not the case, there are several different baths inside of buildings, there is only 1 outdoor bath though.
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Here are 3 more photos of the Rotenboro - all taken from different angles. The 3rd shot, by Kazuya, was taken while sitting in the hot water. I didn't have the guts to take my camera into the hot pool for fear that I might drop it.
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The first shot in this row is me hurrying from the Rotenboro to get inside. The 2nd photo is me sitting in the Rotenboro with my towel on my head. As you can see, the snow is falling quite heavily now. It snowed several inches during the night. The 3rd shot is the final shot of the Rotenboro and is also the final shot of Tsuru Hot Spring (Tsuru-No-Yu). We left on an 11:10 AM bus for the main bus stop and from there back to Tazawako Station, where we took a train. We were then headed for Kazuya's House in Funagata, Yamagata Prefecture. We spent the night of January 1st there with his parents.
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Here are 3 shots of the train which we took to Kazuya's house. The first shot is from inside the train car and it shows how iced up the windows were, we couldn't see much of anything. The 2nd shot is what it looked like from outside of the train. The 3rd shot is what the front of the train looked like.
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| End January 1st, Begin January 2nd |
On January 2nd we took a train from Funagata (Kazuya's hometown Station) at 6:03 AM headed for Yonezawa. It was snowing heavily again, or still, and we had several delays. We finally did get to Yonezawa Station though. The first shot here was taken at a shop inside of the Yonezawa Train Station. I'm sure that you have heard how expensive Japanese Beef is - here's a great example. The package is 720 grams (1.587 pounds) for $169.75, or $106.96/pound! The 2nd shot is Yonezawa Station. We had a wait of about 1.5 hours at Yonezawa before our next train so we took a walk and it started snowing like hell again. The 3rd shot is what it looked like as we walked down the street.
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The first shot here is Uesugi Shrine in Yonezawa - as you can see, it's still snowing heavily. The 2nd shot is a Samurai Warrior Statue inside of Yonezawa Station. I took this picture while we waited for our train. BUT - our train was canceled due to deep snow on the tracks and they put us all in buses and took us to a station about 1/2 way to our destination. From there (Ima-Izumi) we were able to pick up the train again. The 3rd shot here is a shot from the bus at a station where we stopped to pick up some more people.
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Here is another shot taken from the bus on our way to Ima-Izumi Station. The 2nd shot is our train - at Ima-Izumi Station. We were now delayed by about 1 hour.
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We finally did get to the end of that train line and got on the next train, BUT - again due to heavy snow - that train stopped totally and we had to get off and take a Shinkansen Train for Echigo-Yuzawa. Seeing as Shinkansen passengers pay a lot more than people riding on local trains I guess that they work harder to keep the Shinkansen tracks clear. Seeing as our discount tickets only allowed us to ride local trains, we had to shell out some additional hard cash. We arrived at Echigo Yuzawa at about 6:30 PM and went immediately to the Information Center and the nice people there managed to find us a room in a nice Minshuku for a fair price. And, it had it's own Hot Spring too! These 2 shots were taken from the window of our room in the Minshuku during a brief lull in the snow-storm. That's a ski area out there in the first photo. The 2nd photo shows the train station on the left side.
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| End January 2nd, Begin January 3rd |
On January 3rd we were headed for home. We hung out in Echigo-Yuzawa until a 12:49 PM local train. While we waited we went to a local Public Hot Spring which was quite nice. The first shot here is a morning shot from the window of our Minshuku. The 2nd shot is from the Hot Spring where we went to bathe once more while we waited for our 12:49 PM train. As you can see - the snow is deep AND it's snowing heavily again.
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Here is a shot of Echigo-Yuzawa Station as we returned there to catch our train. The 2nd and final shot of this adventure is our train as it pulls into the station. We got home about 5 hours later - not a single flake of snow here in Tokyo! This was our snow adventure for this winter I guess.
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| End January 3rd, Begin January 9th |
On January 9th Kazuya and I went to our local Nogawa Park and checked out the earliest spring flowers. We actually found that the Shibateranthis pinnatifida (Setsubun-sou in Japanese) was blooming. There were only a very few blossoms at this early date, but they show us that spring will (probably) come. The first shot is a bud which is just starting to open. The 2nd shot here is a nice blossom. The 3rd shot is a beautiful reflection on one of the ponds. The water was perfectly still on this date. I took one shot which was underexposed and one shot which was overexposed and used the Photomatix software to Tone-Map the 2 images into this one image. It's an interesting thing to try. It's called HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography. I tried it with several shots - an overexposed shot, an underexposed shot and one exposed about correctly and then tried to combine them into a single HDR photograph - this was the only one which came out kind of nice. The technique is tougher than it sounds. If this type of thing interests you, check out this thread on the Digital Camera Resource website. (Click Here)
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We also found that the Asarum sp. was blooming, but that flower is not as impressive to find as Shibateranthis pinnatifida. The 2nd shot here is some seed heads of some unknown plant. I Tone-Mapped this image using Photoshop with just one image (True HDR requires more than 1 image). The 3rd shot was Tone-Mapped using the Photomatix software. After the Tone-Mapping this shot shows the colors just about exactly as they truly were, which neither of the photos it was mapped from do!
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| End January 9th, End Page 2 |
| Thanks so much for taking the time to look at this page. Now, please go on to Page 3 for the continuation of this month's adventures. |
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