We sat for awhile on the deck of the ferry across the Uraga Channel at the mouth of Tokyo Bay, then enjoyed the comfortable chairs inside. This ride took us to the Port at Kurihama where we headed up Mount Noko giri on the Chiba peninsula south of Tokyo, actually probably all still part of Tokyo.
Sauntered through the town past a lot of abandoned buildings and wondered what happended to the Onsen that was supposed to be nearby. Soon got on the trails that led to the mountain that had been quarried for its hard granite for hundreds of years. The men chiseled away at the face of the mountain on steep slopes while the women dragged pallets of rock down the mountain.
Loads of wild flowering shrubs everywhere for every season, like this hydrangea.
Reached the view points then turned in towards the mountain.....
Then met the amazing guardian...
Then the largest Buddha in Japan.
AND totally mesmerizing, all his attendant arhats, expressing every emotion & attitude.
Our river way walls held here in Tokyo but Dan & I did go out to check often. It totally devastated the area north of here. 18 helicopters trying to get people off their rooves, people's houses crumbling underneath them. So far only one death but I believe their were people stuck overnight in the water, which was raging!
Emergency preparedness is part of regular life here. But nobody could have foreseen their house crumbling and being swept away in such a short time. Meanwhile, our less emergent prep means we now each have rain jackets, pants, rain capes, and long plastic coats. Dan has not given into buying boots as I did before I came. Even now with sun today his shoes may take a week to dry. Our entrance closet stinks already. Minor threat.
I didn't get a picture of the standing waves I saw in one of our rivers but stopped when it wasn't pouring too hard to get these pics. As you see I continue to be a bag lady.
This part of the walkway was flooded yesterday but they must have a way to open more flood gates to the ocean as the next day the lovely white egrets were back walking in a reasonable amount of water.
Anyone know what this flower is ... Part of the fall flowering in this semi tropical area.
Coming to Japan we knew very little about the people, the culture or the history. We now know what a broad swath over-view we had of such a vast and complex culture, country and people.
One of the things we often heard about 'the Japanese' before coming here was how hard they were to read because their body language was so controlled. We also heard that they were hard to get to know though always polite and that they did not express their emotions much outwardly.
Our time here keeps proving these stereotypes to be just that... stereotypes.
Check out some of these videos and photos taken at one of the great festivals that happens in our neighbourhood at this time of year. It is called the Koenji Awadori and if you click here you can see some of the background to this. 10000 dances... a million spectators!
Once again we were struck but what a fun event this was with none of the anti-social behaviour shown in many of our cities with such huge gathering.
We arrived early to get a spot on the street and immediately the people next to us offered us part of their tarp to sit on and offered us a beer (liquor can be freely drunk here in public and can be bought in vending machines; you will see public drunkenness but everything we have seen is always being 'happy drunk'). We chatted with everyone around us in our broken Japanese. Everybody was up-beat, excited and very chatty.
A massive drumroll announced the beginning of 10,000 dances coming by us in wave. Skim these photos to check out how proud, how alive and happy the dancers look.
As the event wore on, we got a real kick out of looking up at the bars and restaurants on the second floors full of people totally enjoying the event. Check out the guys hanging out of the windows. This is totally not the kind of ebullient, open and loud enthusiasm we expected here.
This was another great (and a little overwhelming) day in this amazing city of Tokyo!
