Autumn Colour in Nara

My Home Town

Nagano

The above picture is the called as Matsumoto castle in Nagano prefecture. I took this picture in September 2006. Matsumoto castle is one of well preserved historical build in Japan. There’s always many tourists there. Well I’ve been to the castle three times in my life. The first & second time was when I was around 12 years old. I was big fun of Japanese history and visiting historical towns like Matsumoto. My parents would always take us to good excursion for learning Japan. From their education, I became to travel very much. Now I think the reason why I love traveling is coming from my parent’s idea to educate.
Matsumoto city in Nagano is not far from my home town Gumma prefecture. Nagao is well developed with good nature and history. You can enjoy a lot the landscape. You can see the higher mountains. The climate is not so much hot in summer. One of city in Nagano called Karuizawa is very famous as summer resort.
I can give you some words if you are interested in Nagano
1 You can enjoy the beautiful landscape, mountains, rivers, and forests.
2 can enjoy skiing and skating.
3 can see the volcano with smoke out (if you are lucky.)
4 can enjoy hot springs anywhere.
5 can enjoy tasteful noodle with walnut called Kurumi-soba.
6 can taste Japanese Sake.
7 can enjoy various arts. So many artists settle down to Nagano.8 can enjoy seeing castle; Matsumoto, Ueda and Komoro city.

Matsumoto Castle

The above picture is the called as Matsumoto castle in Nagano prefecture. I took this picture in September 2006. Matsumoto castle is one of well preserved historical build in Japan. There’s always many tourists there. Well I’ve been to the castle three times in my life. The first & second time was when I was around 12 years old. I was big fun of Japanese history and visiting historical towns like Matsumoto. My parents would always take us to good excursion for learning Japan. From their education, I became to travel very much. Now I think the reason why I love traveling is coming from my parent’s idea to educate.
Matsumoto city in Nagano is not far from my home town Gumma prefecture. Nagao is well developed with good nature and history. You can enjoy a lot the landscape. You can see the higher mountains. The climate is not so much hot in summer. One of city in Nagano called Karuizawa is very famous as summer resort.
I can give you some words if you are interested in Nagano
1 You can enjoy the beautiful landscape, mountains, rivers, and forests.
2 can enjoy skiing and skating.
3 can see the volcano with smoke out (if you are lucky.)
4 can enjoy hot springs anywhere.
5 can enjoy tasteful noodle with walnut called Kurumi-soba.
6 can taste Japanese Sake.
7 can enjoy various arts. So many artists settle down to Nagano.8 can enjoy seeing castle; Matsumoto, Ueda and Komoro city.

Shizuoka Green tea farms

At last I visited Shizuoka Green tea plants. The wide view of green tea plants in maintains, it is wonderful with ocean view far distances. It was nice sunny day to visit the green tea plants. I made a small trip to Shizuoka prefecture that is very famous place for green tea. The place is having proper weather for green tea trees. That was Japanese governmental idea to grow green tea field there. At the end of Edo period in 1853, Japan opened ports again after 250 years except China and Nether land. Japan wanted something to export. Green tea was one of good commerce tool for foreigners. Then Shizuoka was elected to cultivate fields for green tea. The prefecture has one more advantage. That was port. The port is very close from green tea plants. So Shizuoka was very suitable place. Still you can see so many famous companies there like Yamaha because of port merit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shizuoka,_Shizuoka

The Silk Road

When I was 20 years old, I traveled the Central Asia. The ship took me to Shanghai from Osaka. I still remember my neighbor in the large second room was Estonian guy. He seemed to see his friend in Kyoto then on the way to Shanghai. Anyway the chance to meet him became to reason for me to close the country called Estonia. The summer in 2000 I visited Estonia, and it was my first trip to foreign country. At the time I really didn’t imagine I would go back Estonia very soon.
Ok I have to write about the Silk road this time. I guess I will write about Estonia in other day. When I was a kid, my parents took me an exhibition about silk road. So what is exactly Silk Road?? Some time it might be called as “East meets West”. In my opinion, it’s trade road to connect Asia to Europe. I guess you know the name Marco Polo. Thanks to my parents, I’m so interested in the silk road, and then promised for myself someday I traveled the silk road.
It was amazing. If you’re also interested, then please just take yourself to the great journey. I remember all of days in my journey. I started from Shanghai. My route was heading to the central Asia; Kazak, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Trukmen. Everyday little by little the faces of local people are changed. I mean the people of west coat China, their face is very similar to Japanese like me. But you move to west. Then everyday you will find difference in their faces. Anyway I can’t write everything about my experiences there. So I introduce the excellent blog about the central Asia. Her blog is in Japanese.But don’t worry, I promise you will really enjoy the pictures. She helped me a lot in Kazakustan. Thanks to her coordination, I could travel with satisfaction. I don’t know when I can travel silk road again. But whenever I feel dropping out my job, I’m always on her blog. It makes me remind of memoir in the central Asia.

http://yksilkroad.exblog.jp/m2006-07-01/

The Japanese old house

The couple of weeks ago, I visited one famous place in Saitama prefecture next Tokyo.
The city called Honkawagoe is well preserved old one. In my experience this type of house above picture is very rare to find around Tokyo. But it is near Tokyo. Kyoto & Kamakura are very popular among tourists. Honestly I really didn’t know anything of Honkawagoe. It is called as small Edo; Edo was Tokyo’s previous name. One of my colleagues from India taught me the place!!! So I decide to go there with my girl friend.
You know, learning culture is my favorite hobby. When I was an university student, I always traveled so many places. Many times my journey was boundary Japan.
My girl friend and me were really excited there. She likes taking photos and enjoying walking around. We really recommend you to visit there if you want to have small trip to learn Japanese old tradition; tea shops, sweat, clothes, pottery so on. Honestly Honkagwagoe is not big like Kyoto & kamakura. But still worth visiting. Here the above picture is a tea house. In inside there’s so many traditional potteries for selling. I’m sorry that I can’t show you the inside of this house. I just didn’t take photo the inside. Anyway there we enjoyed a lot of arts. Of course Japanese green tea and Matcha are available. If you have an opportunity to visit Tokyo, please check “Honkawagoe” in web search engine. It’s near Tokyo!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawagoe

Pick leaves up three times per a year

Basically the green tea plants farmer, they are going to pick leaves up three times per a year. The fist period is approximately in the end of April to the end of May. The most excellent green tea is made from leaves in this period. Please just imagine the tea trees (guess it looks like bush having many leaves). They pick up the top places of trees that indicate buds. Maybe you can think like it’s not good to take buds to keep tree’s long life. But it is worry that we don’t need to think about. The green tea’s tree is said to have very strong life. So from this first picking, the tea is called the first tea or new tea. These buds have nutrition preserved from Autumn to Spring, including very good flavor and taste!! You know in Kyoto, Gyokuro and Tencha (high grade green tea) is only made from the first tea. It means there’s only one time to pick leaves for the high grade teas.