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posted: August 31st, 2011 |
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This page begins with August 12th and a trip to Yamadera (= Mountain Shrine) in Yamagata Prefecture. Then we go to Mt. Zao and visit a Hot Spring (actually 2 Hot Springs, but there are only photos of 1 of them). After that we didn't do anything worty of note for the remainder of the month, so this month ends with the photos of August 12th. Click on any thumbnail to begin.
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| Begin August 12th |
On Friday, August 12, we hesitated to go out because the weather forecast was for rain. We decided, however, to take a train and head for Yamadera (= Mountain Shrine). So, we headed off. We arrived at Yamadera Station at about 9:15 AM and the weather, although pretty cloudy, was not rainy. The first photo here shows what the mountain looks like from the Train Station. The 2nd shot is of Yamadera Train Station. The 3rd shot shows the entry area to the Shrine. By the way, we also came here in January 2006 - the dead of winter and lots of snow. You may want to look at those photos HERE beginning with the 3rd shot in Row 6.
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Here is a map of Yamadera - you can't really read anything, but you can see that there are many shrine buildings on the side of a mountain. The 2nd shot shows one of the sets of stairs which climb the mountain and the 3rd shot shows another part of the path which climbs the mountain.
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The 1st shot shows some caves which were, apparently, excavated by monks many years ago to place the sacred bones of even older monks who had passed away. The 2nd shot is another shot of the "trail" which climbs up the side of the mountain. The 3rd shot is looking back down to where we started.
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Here is another shot of "grave" caves and then another shot looking down at the town.
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Now we're going to change locations - a big change too! After we finished up at Yamadera we scratched our heads and wondered what to do, as it was still only about 11:00 AM. So, we took a train to Yamagata City and then managed to find something to do there - we found a bus which would take us up to Mt. Zao and the Zao Onsen (Hot Spring) Area. So, that's what we did. We took the bus and arrived at the hot spring area a while before 1:00 PM. We found some maps of the area and went to a very beautiful rotenboro (= outdoor hot spring bath). There were far too many people bathing to be able to get any photos, but it was an amazing place - it even had 2 levels, separated by a waterfall. Hard to imagine, but anyway, it did. After we finished there we decided to visit a public bath - we went to Kawara-yu (= Kawara bath). The first shot in this row shows the beautifully clear hot water in this small bath. It comes up from the bottom - there are no pipes, this hot water just bubbles right up out of the earth! The 2nd image is a 2 shot panorama showing a portion of the bath and the nice new appearing floor.
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Here is Kawara-yu from the outside, the left door is for males and the right door is for females. The 2nd shot shows Kazuya walking back towards the bus terminal. Now we have to take a bus back to Yamagata City and catch a train back to Kazuya's hometown. We didn't get home until nearly 7:00 PM this evening.And, that's all of the photos from our 2011 August vacation. The photos of vacation you have seen on these 4 pages were carefully selected from about 2,453 photos which we KEPT. We deleted a goodly number of poor photos too - surely, we took over 3,000 photos in these 7 days. |
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| End August 12th, End Page 4, End August 2011's Photos |
Here are links to separate web pages - all of them will open in a new window (or new tab). The first link shows some photos of our DVD Collection, an AVI Movie of our Home Theater System and 9 photos of our Sharp Aquos TV. The 2nd link shows our entire DVD collection in DVD Profiler (if you're asking yourself what might be good to rent for the weekend). The DVD's will be sorted by date purchased. You can click on the "Title" Column to sort that way if you desire. The 3rd link shows our entire DVD collection in php DVD Profiler, which is much more sophisticated than the plain vanilla DVD Profiler just above it. The 4th link takes you to a set of pages which show you the FRONT cover-art of our entire DVD collection.
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 February 22, 2009 - DVD Collection & Home Theater System   
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 Please check it out by clicking on the above button. (Click on the "Studies of Plants and Wildlife" link in the new window.) |
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| Here is the front and rear cover of Daniel & Kazuya's Outdoor Photography of Japan: Through the Seasons. |
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| Here is the front and rear cover of Daniel & Kazuya's Some Violets of Eastern Japan - 2nd Edition. |
| Thanks so much for taking the time to look at the website this month. We hope that you found something which you enjoyed. You can use the e-mail link below to respond with any feedback you might have. |
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