Inakadate, Tsugaru Earth Village and Takayama-Inari.

Maybe because I posted some of these pictures on Facebook or maybe we were too busy with our preparations for Tokyo Disney trip, but we completely forgot to write a post about one of our favorite places in Northern Tohoku.

This was the very end of September. Our very brave friend Liz decided to follow us on our adventure with her four kids. We drove the scenic route through Hakkoda mountains and over the longest wooden arch of Japan—Jokagura.

We didn’t see any animals on the way, except this guy who was hanging out near rest stop bathrooms.

The first stop of our trip was in Inakadate. We wanted to see famous Inakadate rice fields. Every year, different sorts of rice are planted in the spring to form a picture that you can view in the fall. For about a month, you can climb up the observation tower in Inakadate and see this amazing view. This year there were two pictures there.

This is our group of travellers plus Robert taking the picture.

Enjoying the view

Since everyone was behaving well (especially Robert), we decided to keep going to our next stop—Tsugaru Earth Village. Please don’t ask me how I find out about all these places around—I just look at lots of maps online and Northern Japanese tourism sites, trying to find some off the beaten track spots.

It took us about 30 min to get from Inakadate to this park, and we did not get lost. This place is right of route 101 between Goshogowara and Ajigasawa (for those are going to try to find it).

The main attraction is this unique slide. You cannot really see that on the picture, but it’s a 90 degree angle drop…still don’t know how, but it works.

For approximately $3 per person we could ride any “vehicle” that was in the park for thirty minutes. They had some really fun bikes shaped as all sorts of things. Kids had a blast!

So did the grown ups, although Robert might have been a little bit too tall-haha.

Fun swings..

We spent a couple hours at the park—playing and eating our picnic lunch. It was a fabulous warm autumn day.

By the way, Tsugaru Earth Village also has a place to camp.

About 30 minutes away form this park was our next destination. We followed route 101 towards the west coast of Japan (so we basically were crossing Japan from East to West in one day). About 12 km before Ajigasawa (a city on the coast of the Sea of Japan), we turned North and followed a straight road to Takayama Inari, also known among Americans as “100 torii gate shrine”.

I must admit, this is one of my most favorite places in Northern Tohoku. Maybe it was the beautiful weather, maybe it was the fact that all kids were behaving so well, but I just loved this place.

As you drive towards the parking lot, you are welcomed by a humongous torii gate. 

After climbing a pretty amazing stairway up the hill, you get to the main garden of the shrine.

We were in the area right around 4 pm, so the sun was just beginning to go down. The atmosphere was simply serene, even with seven kids around.

We managed to take one picture of our family, although everyone was squinting.

Now enjoy the rest of the pictures—a truly amazing sight. This reminds me a lot of Fushimi-inari that is in Kyoto (although that one has a 2 km trail of torii gates).

And of course, foxes’ statues because this shrine is dedicated to Inari, god of rice. Foxes are thought to be Inari's messengers, resulting in many fox statues across the shrine grounds.

After a full day of adventures, we headed home. Seeing beautiful rural Japan in the light of the setting sun was a picturesque view in itself. It took us a little bit over two and a half hours to get back to Misawa.

Another successful daytrip.

Oh…how I miss warm days….It is the last day of March tomorrow and we have snow in our weather forecast. The snow in my backyard is going to take at least another couple of weeks to melt completely if the weather doesn’t warm up suddenly.  This year, Misawa AFB got more snow than military bases in Alaska!

Looking forward to cherry blossoms—they should appear sometime the first week of May this year.

Lake Towada—to swim or not to swim

As I am sitting here listening to the sound of the rain pounding on our windows….for the fourth day straight….I cannot help but think back to our sunny hot days…with no A/C. It’s chilly suddenly outside—mere 60 F and tomorrow tropical storm is rolling in for two days with winds and rain. Fun.

Once upon in August, we have decided that we should go back to the same place by lake Towada where Robert and big kids went the first two weeks we were here. So the G. family agreed to go with us, for fun.  It’s a beautiful drive through Oirase Gorge, no matter where you are from. Once you get past it, you come out to a spectacular view of lake Towada. 

Robert took us to the spot where apparently he and a ton of our friends went swimming and playing in the water two years ago.

Beautiful!

We didn’t find any “standing” signs around about whether or not we are allowed to swim. We did find some kind of sign that was just lying in the sand. Ignorance is bliss, so the kids kept swimming.
After picnic lunch, we decided to explore some more—we drove towards one of the campgrounds nearby, thinking that there would be a swimming beach there. Unfortunately, all we found were big maps and signs by the campgrounds that told us we are not allowed to swim anywhere. Bummer. And I am still not sure why.

So we drove towards a more touristy spot of lake Towada. People from all over Japan flock to this lake—they have tourist buses that give you tours, boat rides across the lake, a visitors’ center, lots of shops in that area.

We asked a worker at the visitors’ center if there is a swimming beach at the lake. And she said we were not allowed to swim anywhere. We hope we didn’t look too obvious of having broken any rules wearing our swim shorts (well, the boys wore swim shorts).

We took a walk towards Towada shrine—a surprisingly serene place. The walk was easy and not very long. Katya and Alex left their flip-flops in the car…actually, no—Alex left his flip-flops on the “beach” where we swam. So the kids were barefoot but still survived.

Here are Katya and Alex with their friends Abbie and John. Katya is wearing Alex’s shorts because…for some reason I brought two pairs of swim shorts for Alex and thought that Katya would pack her own swimsuit. 

Our little family. 

As we were walking towards the shrine, we saw lots people playing by the water, kids splashing, practically swimming. So we are still all confused about whether or not lake Towada has a swimming beach. 

Kids washing their hands by the shrine.

Alex decided to perform “Fairytale” for us. Mark wanted to be a part of it. 

This is the famous “The Maiden Statue”—work by Kotaro Takamura, well-known Japanese sculptor. It was added to the park in the 1950s to make the lake more popular. Interesting, isn’t it?

On the way back, since we promised the kids ice cream about a hundred times (because they kept asking a hundred times), we stopped by at Roman Park. We were hoping for a shop with many flavors, but we had to settle for chocolate/twist/vanilla kinds, although made with organic fresh milk, with cows possibly raised right in their backyard-haha. 

It was a fun daytrip with fun friends. The G. family is one of the funniest families I know. Friends is what makes Misawa experience for us as fun as it is. 

Lyana

Video is worth TEN thousand words

I wish I could have posted these while we were in Australia, but we didn’t have access to fast internet so it would have taken forever to upload the videos.

These are just for fun. The first video was taken on our way to the Great Barrier Reef. It goes along this story.

Boat ride to the Great Barrier Reef

It’s okay to laugh at this second video. Yes, I know I look like a professional throwing the boomerang. Read more about our visit to Tjapukai here.

Lyana’s throwing boomerang

The next two videos are from probably one of the most fun days of our lives Read more here.

Brave Robert

Josephine Falls Fun

I hope by watching these short videos you’ll get a feel of what it was really like there. I’ll say it again--best trip ever!

Ten years? Really?

Seriously, we got many surprising looks from people in Australia after telling them we were celebrating our 10-year wedding anniversary. They would look at me suspiciously, then at Robert. And then I would add more fuel to the fire and tell them we already have three kids too. I know…we are still very young. Young and crazy considering the fact that we just took off for a week to Australia and left our kids behind (yes, I was worried about them although I knew they were in trusted hands).

By the way, this is Lyana writing. I think I’ll have to mention it now from the very beginning. Some people told me they would be reading one of our posts thinking it was written by me and then at the end it would be signed by Robert, and the whole post would then seem even funnier. Anyway, I am sure you can tell from the way we write who is writing, can’t you?

So….we had the best wedding anniversary ever! First stop—the beach. I love the ocean. I love just sitting on the beach for hours and reading a book/snacking/drinking…in the shade though. Sunbathing is not what I am after, although I know it makes people look good.

That day, the weather was extremely windy! Air temperature was around 82, low humidity, water temperature was around 23 Celsius (74-76 F? right?). The wind didn’t stop us. We still ran as fast as we could into the water—it felt all right as long as you were not out in the wind. The scenery was beautiful! And because it was a weekday, kids in schools, the beach was empty.

Do you like my new hairstyle? No, really. That’s what I would like to do with my bangs every day, but they just don’t hold up to the humidity in Misawa.

After we got home, changed and ate a quick lunch of leftovers from our huge dinner before, we hopped on a bus and went to Smithfield Shopping Center—a good size mall with supermarkets.

I was craving fresh fruits….I received a price sticker shock—bananas-$14/kg, grapes-$13/kg. It seemed that only mandarin oranges and kiwis were a fantastic deal. We still bought some strawberries and one apple, although they were pricey. We also bought some chocolate “for the trip”—some of my childhood favorites that I cannot find on base (“Mars”, “Bounty”, “Picnic")-haha. We also got some savory snacks since we didn’t want to pay for our meals on the plane.

Oh, and I got three new shirts/sweaters at this one Australian shop! Since they have put all their winter stuff on sale, I bought for a very Lyana-approved price. And now I can say that I have a sweater from Australia 

The culmination of our day came at dinnertime. We went to this famous restaurant Blue Moon. Usually, you have to have a reservation o get in—so we made a reservation well in advance. One of the bonuses of staying at a very inexpensive apartment is an ability to order whatever you want, not paying attention to price, when you go out to eat (Remember, Australian food prices are expensive even compared to Japan).

I know, I know…another posed picture. We just wanted to save it for our posterity—with the date in the corner and everything.

This restaurant’s menu was like a book—a lengthy story, explanation, details about each item. It was quite fun to read, actually. For an appetizer we ordered one of their specialty dishes “deep fried oysters”. The only other time we ever tried oysters was when we were in Paris for my cousin’s wedding. Sorry, Olia and Christophe, they are still not our favorite-hahaha. But this deep fried kind tasted really good (yes, I know it’s bad for you).

For main course, Robert order chicken under hollandaise sauce with veggies, and I had crocodile with hollandaise sauce over risotto. Holy crocodile! It was the most delicious meal ever! Cannot express in writing how much we loved that food.

That’s me trying to look kind of suspicious about my dish.

And this is my crocodile dish with Robert in the background.

And rich chocolate mud cake with ice cream was a fantastic way to finish our fancy dinner.

Early next morning we woke up, packed up our stuff and ran to the beach. One last time.

This is the view from our balcony—as you can see, truly 60 meters to the beach-haha.

And just for fun—lush greenery outside our window. 

We had a shuttle pick us up at 11 am. The whole time when we were packing, I kept remembering my friend’s Emily's story about her adventures at the Cairns airport on the way back. I forgot to mention we loaded up on some toys for kids at Kmart (yes, they have Kmart and Target there) so that’s what was making me nervous we’d have to pay extra charges for luggage. But we “passed” the inspection.

At 8 pm, Japan time, we arrived to Tokyo, got our luggage. Thankfully, we had eaten all our fruit, so we didn’t have to be shoving anything down our throats like we did when we arrived to Australia—all fresh fruit/food has to be quarantined, i.e. thrown away or eaten in front of the quarantine bin in our case.

We caught Skyliner back to central Tokyo, took a subway to New Sanno and relaxed in a familiar environment. Unfortunately, we had to leave early in the morning to catch our Shinkansen back to Misawa.

The kids were so happy to have us back! They did great (since my friends only disclose positive details)! Thank you so much for all my friends who watched our kids. We had the best trip ever!