Toeicho 東栄町

Last weekend, we went with some friends (part of JLA) ;) to Aichi-ken. When you talk about Aichi-ken, everybody thinks about Nagoya, but actually, we went to the border area between Aichi and Shizuoka, and Nagoya was pretty far away. The objective of our trip was to meet a friend who has just been mother and to meet her child too.

On Saturday, it was raining all day pretty heavily, but still we managed to do some sightseeing and see some color changing leaves (kouyou 紅葉) in Yuya onsen 湯谷温泉.

We got to our friend's house pretty early and we could enjoy a nice time with her and her family.

Her mother also prepared some of the local delicacies...

...including rice with bugs, which was actually delicious!!!

The house was really cool, with a large orchard and gardens.

After visiting her, we went to the place where we would spend the night, Star Forest. The place was really cool. It is like a little astronomical observatory in the middle of the mountains. They even have a planetarium and a 60-cm telescope to watch the beautiful sky in these isolated mountains. Unfortunately, because of the rain, we could not use the telescope and we could just go for the planetarium. We stayed in some pretty bungalows...

and had a nice nabe dinner after the planetarium session.

On Sunday, the weather was perfect, with blue skies, and we could enjoy our time in Aichi much more. In the morning, we went to a local festival (maybe the town did not even have 1000 inhabitants!!!) which consisted of some guys dressed up as demons and dancing to the songs the crowd was singing. 

Later on the day, we went to a famous color changing leaves spot, Assuke 足助, in Toyota (yes, the original place of the largest car marker in the world). The next photos show you how beautiful that place is in autumn. No further descriptions needed... :) Enjoy the weekend!

Mt Fuji from NAOJ 天文台から富士山

Today, weather was great in Tokyo and Fujisan could be seen clearly from the city. According to one friend at work, Miyachi-san, the roof in our building is one of the best places to see the famous mountain! So today I asked him to show me if the view was so great, and it was! I took the lab camera and took some photos. These are some of them.

Mammoth Lakes

After visiting Mono Lake and before heading for Manzanar NHS, I wanted to go to Devil's Postpile National Monument, near the Mammoth Lakes ski resort. When I got there, big surprise... Devil's Postpile was already closed for the Winter and I could not visit it! Anyway, I was there, so... brief stop at the Visitor's Center and visit to some of the lakes there.



This is one of the lakes in Twin Lakes.



And the following are photos at Lake Mary.





It was a short but nice visit.

Manzanar NHS

Manzanar National Historical Site is in the middle of nowhere in California. It represents one of the darkest moments of US history in the 20th century. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and World War II started in the Pacific, the US President decided to put all Japanese American in concentration camps in very isolated areas. Japanese Americans were deprived of their liberty for as long as the war continued. They had to leave all their lives behind and when the war was over, they were forbidden to come back to the 3 Pacific coast states. They had to start from scratch.

Manzanar NHS is one of the only places which were kind of preserved.



These are the police posts at the entrance:



And the lunch hall:



These are the remaining of a Japanese garden the "inmates" created.



And the following are photos of the cemetery:

Mono Lake Tufa Reservation

We left Yosemite using Tioga Pass and drove back to Los Angeles along US-395. That road is sandwiched between two ranges of mountains, in the middle of nowhere, and it is designated a scenic route. Just at the beginning of the road, not far from Yosemite's entrance (Tioga Pass), there is a beautiful lake: Mono Lake.



This place is so remote that housed a secret US military facility during the Cold War. Nothing remains of that facility now. The lake is interesting because it is a tufa reservation. Tufa are strange calcium based structures which grow from the bottom of the lake to its surface. This lake has been used by LA for water supplies and the level decreased dramatically in a few decades. Now, that is not allowed and the lake is protected. Anyway, these excesses made the tufa get exposed out of the water. Their shapes are quite interesting and many times surprising! Enjoy all these photos I took!

Yosemite NP Revisited

Yes, last weekend, I went camping to Yosemite NP, one of the National Parks I have liked the most. I came here last Spring and wanted to see now how Autumn affects the landscape. Not many trees change leaves in Yosemite, but still some do and it is really spectacular. I spent two days there and therefore, had time to visit places I did not visit last time: Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, Tioga Pass Road, some longer hikes...

And above all, it was great time for photography. Have a look a the following photos! :)