Weekend in Nikko.

Waterfall in Nikko
Originally uploaded by k.blueice

We just spent the weekend in Nikko, a really popular mountain area famous for National Parks and temples. We stayed in a nice little Ryokan that had private indoor and outdoor bath, and our room was looking out over a little creek with some waterfalls, just the ticket for a nice relaxing weekend out of Tokyo.

We spent Saturday out and about up in the mountains enjoying the nice cool weather - it was rainy and really foggy so the views weren't as spectacular as if it was clear, but the cool temperature (only 17 degrees!) was damn good after how hot it has been in Tokyo lately (over 30 degrees every day!).

One of the waterfalls Ryuzu-no-taki had a little tea house right in front, being overcast it was great for getting longer exposure photos like this one.

We also went to Kegon falls, this place is cool, there is an elevator which takes you 100m down the cliff so you can see the waterfall from the bottom. Cool.

Heaps of other cool stuff over the weekend as well, including Edo Wonderland, which is like an Edo themed cross between an amusement park and a museum.

All up, a really cool place, will definitely have to go back there some time.

Hanabi ! (Fireworks)

Hanabi is very popular summer activity in Japan and tonight was Tokyo Bay Hanabi. What a show! And really really loud. In fact so loud you could feel the explosions shaking the glass of our apartment. I've put quite a few photos on flickr, in this photo stream. But had to post two favourites here... I love the shapes in this first one, with the cool little white stars above the red circle one.



And another one.



That is a big firework to blow up at ground level, pretty glad I wasn't on the barge they were setting them off from when that happened!