Archive for the 'Furano & Biei' Category

From our May 2007 trip to Furano and Biei, Hokkaido

Photos of Farming in Japan for Captain Bill

I popped down to South Carolina to visit my brother Alan and to join him in a road trip back up to Ohio, and on the flight last night I sat next to an off-duty pilot for US Airways who lives on a 250-acre farm in Ohio and commutes to his flight hub in Charlotte for work. We had a nice chat.

He knows nothing of Japan, and enjoys farming, so I thought I'd put a post of random "farming in Japan" photos for him. It's somewhat of a challenge to find appropriate (but still unpublished) shots among the 130,000 [...]


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One Year Ago: Furano (Hokkaido, Japan)

"Golden Week" is about to start here in Japan, a bunch of national holidays in short order that, along with a weekend or two, gives people willing to use them a long vacation. I work for myself so it doesn't matter to me on that level, but now that Anthony's in school, we have to match our travel to the national schedule. (For a laugh, see this humorous but sadly accurate description of Golden Week.)

We had been planning to bring Anthony to Tokyo Disneyland today, but that plan got scrapped with recent events, so instead I'm showing some pictures [...]


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Amazingly Large Drifts of Snow

As I mentioned yesterday, Kyoto city proper doesn't normally get much snow, but today we had occasion to be in the mountains a bit and Anthony got a few moments to play in some snow that hadn't melted yet.

That's not what these pictures are from. 🙂

I thought to use the occasion to post some pictures from last Spring – April 30th – when we found more than a bit of snow on top of a mountain in Kitafurano (Hokkaido, in northern Japan), where the snow doesn't melt away until July.

The "bad example" referenced in the caption above [...]


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Yet More from Picturesque Biei (Hokkaido, Japan)

Taking a pause from mossy temple pictures for a moment, I'll return to our trip to Hokkaido (northern-most island in Japan) last month, and the picturesque countryside of Biei. (Previous posts on Biei: one, two, three).

More random shots from the mostly-overcast days of our visit....

I wasn't the only one to enjoy the views...


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Tiniest Train Station

While driving around on our trip to Furano, Hokkaido during Golden Week, we came across the smallest train station I've ever seen. Heck, I've seen larger bus stops.

It was at the junction of Nowhere and Boondocks, near where a road crossed the train tracks. Here's the view one direction from the road....

And the view the other direction....


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