Catching up...

Boy have I been lazy about this blog... and after finishing putting this post together, I remember why! Putting in these pictures was such a pain! I still couldn't fix all the formating problems!

Time to post some Golden Week pics, now that it's nearly two weeks past!!So on Monday April 30th, we rented a car and drove up to a mountain that we can't get to by bike. I got the hang of left side of the road driving pretty quickly.

We hiked and hiked. It was my first realy one and it was a little tiring but really nice. Perfect weather for it and early enough in the warm season that there were no stupid mosquitos to worry about.

We had a lovely little picknick on top of that peak behind Maurice.

View from the top. You can't see it here but we were able to see some pretty cool storm clouds rolling towards us. We wisely decided to head down before the rain hit us.

Next day we were off to Kumamoto and Mt. Aso. The drive was pleasant and enough, though the storm clouds from the day before had left just clouds. We headed for Aso first and the clouds persisted. Then they turned into fog, and then really heavy fog. The wind was howling and we suited up in our winter gear. May first mind you and a year ago, Maurice was here with friends and they were all running around in shorts and t-shirts. Oh well. The volcano was really cool and the black sand everywhere was something I'd not seen before.

Looking down into the volcano at it's active toxic pond of death. Really beautiful between cloud breaks. Five seconds after I took this, the sun broke through and showed the true color of the lake. It was the most amazing milky blue-green that I've ever seen. By the time I whipped the camera out again, the sun had gone. Alas.

In case of flying rocks...

Exploring the near by sandy waste land...

There's a big ol' volcano behind thos clouds.

Looks like they could or should have filmed the scenes for Mordor in Lord of the Rings here. Very creepy, but so cool!

On to Kumamoto the next day! I ended up getting sick which put a bit of a damper on some of our activities, but it didn't stop me from wanting to see Kumamoto castle! We happened to arrive there on the 400th anniversary of the castle and there were festivities, complete with a stage performance of some ninjas duking it out.

Looking out a window at the moat.

And that sums up that part of the trip. We came home Wed after seeing the castle and I promptly plopped on the bed and was sick for two days. The Arita pottery fair which I had been looking forward to for a good long time got rained out on Saturday and when we went on Sunday, there were only a handful of places still open. Oh well, there's always next year.

In spite of the crummy weather and my nasty cold getting in the way of some activities, I still had a pretty good time.

*Final note to self an anyone else... when going to bars in Kumamoto, make sure you know ahead of time whether it's a pay by the hour place, that way you won't end up paying 3000 yen for two drinks and some chocolate chips snacks. Whoops.