Kayaking on the Chuzenji-ko lake, Nikko, Tochigi prefecture

Hi! Long time no see. How have you been? All of my family, including Lee, are all OK.

It's already been mid September, but even now the highest temperature are over 30 degree Celsius here in Tokyo. Zee. Where is autumn?
喂，好久不见了。你好吗？我们一家，包含Lee，都很好。
已经九月中旬了，可是天气还闷热，在这儿东京最高温度还是30度以上啊。嘿, 秋天在哪里呀？

To escape from such hot weather, I went to Nikko Chuzenji-ko lake with my daughter and her friends on September 2nd, yeah, just like a teacher of a summer school. We joined a Kayaking school there.
为了逃避这些闷热的天气，9月2号我带我女儿和她朋友去日光中禅寺湖玩玩儿, 对了，好像暑期学校的领导老师。在那里我们参加了皮艇班。

We joined a beginner class. At first, we learned how to use a paddle.

The weather of Chuzenji-ko area was cool，but unfortunately, heavy rain, but it was no problem, we were going to get drenched to the skin on the lake anyway.

我们参加了初学者班。最先，我们学了怎么划艇。

那天在那里的天气比较凉快，但是很遗憾，下大雨了，可是没关系，反正这几分之后我们在湖上成了落汤鸡。

   

The beginner's kayak is very stable and easy to control. You can enjoy it from the beginning.

初学者用皮艇是非常安定，容易活动。你肯定从开始高兴地划艇。

It was calm and beautiful on the water, I was satisfied wonderful nature, felt relaxed,,,,

湖上又非常平静又很漂亮，我高兴地欣赏了大自然，觉得很放松，，，

,, then, suddenly, girls and kayaking staff started a water battle!
，，然后女儿们和导游突然开始打水仗了玩儿了！




You can join this kayaking course from the website below.
要是你们想参加这个皮艇班，从下面记的网页能预订。

Tochigi Kayak Center  (Sorry! Japanese only)

They provide a half day course for beginners, and a full day touring for experiencer. If you have any experience of riding kayak, you can join a full day touring.
他们提供“初学者班（半天）”，和“有经验者班（整天）”。你只要有只一次的划皮艇的经历，就可以参加有经验者班。

Well experienced and trained staffs support our activity safely. Oh, I almost forgot to add very important thing. They kindly take photos during the kayaking. All of the photos placed here are provided by them. Many thanks for all of your support, Tencho and Yukarin!
有多经验的、培训的导游安全地陪我们去到湖上玩儿。对了，我差一点忘记了很重要的事情。划艇之中他们给我们拍照。这儿的照片都是他们拍的。Tencho, Yukarin, 谢谢你们的帮助！

You can enjoy kayaking from the end of April to early November. Chuzenji-ko area is very famous for that beautiful autumn leaves. Enjoying the red and crimson colored mountains from the center of the calm lake, that must be gorgeous!
皮艇班的营业期间是从4月底起到11月上旬。中禅寺湖地方以那儿的红叶也很有名。从湖上欣赏漫山遍野的红叶，那一定让人陶醉了！

(Today, I tried to write this blog in English and Mandarin. I’d very appreciate it if you would point out my grammatical error or inappropriate word usage for both descriptions (English/Mandarin). Xiexie!)

Sugamo Walking / Tokyo SC, Roku Jizou

I always get up late on weekends normally, however, now in the summer, I have to get up early like weekdays because Lee can not walk outside in the daytime. Currently air temperature has been raised around 30-35 degrees C, and the road surface become hotter than that. It is too hot to walk with his bare feet, and also might be a cause of the heat stroke.
Of cause I like early morning walk. That is fun. There is no exhaust gas and no crowd. Let me introduce the scenes which were taken during our recent walking.

Tokyo Swimming Center (Tokyo SC)

One of the oldest swimming school in Tokyo. This is the home ground (home pool?) of Kosuke Kitajima; the Gold Medalist of 100m and 200m breaststroke in Athen(2004) and Beijing(this week!) Olympic games. Kitajima started swimming here when he was just 5 years old, and even now, he belongs to this SC.

This picture was taken just before the Beijing Olympic. There are the messages for the Olympic swimmers here on the window.

It says "Go in and win! / Kosuke Kitajima / Reiko Nakamura / Haruka Ueda / 2008 Beijing Olympic Game".

And this is the current picture.

“Congratulations! / Reiko Nakamura _ 100m back _ Bronze Medal _ Japan record./ Kosuke Kitajima _ 100m and 200m breast _ Gold Medals, two consecutive win _ World record of 100m breast: 58.91sec.”

Tokyo SC is located in the north east side of the JR Sugamo station. It takes about 10min on foot. Go and see the lesson If you want your kids to become Olympic swimmers!

Rokujizou / Shinsho-ji temple

Go out the JR Sugamo station, cross the multilane roadway(Hakusan-dori), and turn to the right. Walk through the pavement several minutes, then, you will see a big Jizou statue on your left side.

Jizou is a kind of buddha. I explained about it simplistically in the previous post, so please check here for further infomation.

In Tokyo area, there are famous six big Jizou statues, and they are called “Edo Roku Jizou”. And this is the 3rd one of these six(roku) Jizou. They are in Shinagawa(#1), Asakusa(#2), Sugamo(#3), Shinjuku(#4), Fukagawa(#5) and Ueno(#6).

According to the guideboard, this statue was built in the year 1714.
Actually, Sugamo is famous nationwide for "Togenuki-jizou". So, sometime people who watch this statue are confused this statue with togeniki-jizou. Togenuki-jizou and this roku-jizou are different Jizou in different temple.

Urgent Information!!
I was surprised when I walked by the Sugamo Roku Jizou this morning, because there were no Jizou statue. Actually, he was here when I saw him in the end of July. Where has he gone?!

The sign board said:

“The Jizou statue was built 294 years ago and there are some corrosion damage in his body now. He needs some fixing. So Jizou has gone to Kyoto for repair since August 2008 until May 2010.”

A new miniature sized Jizou was there on behalf of him.

Ice skating / Nikko, Tochigi pref.

We joined the ice skating tour to Nikko from 12th to 13th January.
This is an annual event what my parent’s friends have held every January for several years (decades?) (Last years tour is here (click)). We stayed again at Nikko Kanaya Hotel. Old but well maintained facilities, great services and comfortable atmosphere of Hotel welcomed us as usual. The only thing what we surprised because it was “unusual” was that … the ice skate rink of Hotel was not available! It was not enough for skating. The skate rink there is a natural rink where you can enjoy skating in crisp air. We were looking forward to skating there, but we could not. It might be the effect of Global Warming.
So, we went to indoor skate rink, which is located in Imaichi city.

Anyway, despite the rink, another highlight of this tour was the hotel dinner. Every year I had tried to take photos of the full course, but I could do that because it was very tough to control my mind when I saw big meal. Every year, I had to say “AH!” after enjoying the dinner. But finally, this year , I could manage to control myself and took some photos of them. OK, I will introduce the Kanaya hotel’s preimier grand gru dinner!

This is the Menu for Today

1. Hors-d’oevure

White material on the plate is Yuba. Tofu skin. You can produce it from the boiling soy milk as film like material. This is the coagulation of the soy bean’s protein. Kana and I (and many Japanese and Chinese) love that texture and the flavor. This is one of the Nikko’s specialties.

2. Gobou (Burdock) potage soup
I am sorry there is no pic of this soup. I forgot about taking photo. To tell the truth, I had assumed that gobou (burdock) was the foodstuff for Japanese food, this French style soup with gobou was a kind of sensation for me. It was delicious with great flavor.

3. Saute of Rainbow Trout Kanaya-style
I am so sorry I could not stop eating before taking picture! Please allow me to introduce the skeleton model of rainbow trout.

Instead of that, let me introduce the looks-delicious photo from the Hotel broacher.

This is my most favorite fish cuisine. The detailed explanation is in the photo (please click the photo to read it). You can also have it for lunch, too. I think its worth more than the price. Please try it!

4. Fillet steak
This beef is also the specialty of Nikko area.


5. Dessert

Gochisousama deshita ! (We really enjoyed the meal)

It was snowing during the night.

Next morning, we went to the Hotel skate rink to check the ice condition.

My daughter stand by the closed ice skate rink with regretful look..

You can see the skating scene here(last year's posting).

Anyway, we were satisfied the stay. We will come again for skating here next January.

Hotel homepage is listed at the end of the previous Kanaya posting (click).

BTW, according to the weblog of Hotel staff, the ice skate rink is available now.

Ice skating @Nikko Kanaya Hotel / Tochigi pref

My daughter and I went to Nikko to go ice skating with friends,,, strictly speaking, with my parent's friends and their kids or grandkids. We stayed at Nikko Kanaya Hotel where one of the oldest resort hotel in Japan. There are many interesting interiors. I'll show you some of them.

The ceiling of the old dining room.

This kind of ceiling art is often found in Japanese shrine or temple. You can also see it in the main dining room of the Hakone Fujiya Hotel.

The "real" art deco lamp which was made in Meiji era.

We stayed at annex. This is the front door of annex. Cool carving, isn't it?

There were old photos(around 1900) of the hotel. It seemed the exterior was almost the same as the present Kanaya Hotel.


We enjoyed skating in the hotel rink. It's an open air natural rink. It was sunny, the air was crisp and the ice condition was great. I'm not a professional skater and don't have any knowledge of ice condition, but I feel more comfortable when I'm skating there, rather than the machine controled indoor skate rinks in Tokyo.

There is a cozy cottage in the rink side. Grannies see their grandkids skating through the window, or have a tea around the fireplace,

but the cottage was used as a photo gallery this winter, so the grannies were waiting in here.


From the rink, you can see the Nantaisan mountain; one of the "Nihon 100 mei-san (best 100 mountains in Japan)".


I really regret that I didn't take any photos of dinner/breakfast/lunch, although dining was the highlight of our trip. I should've taken them but I had forgotten about photos until I ate up them all because they were so wonderful.
If you have a chance to visit Nikko, I strongly recommend you to have a lunch or dinner at the main dining room in this hotel. Especially, the trout is best! Actually, it's a little bit expensive (for me who have a 500yen-lunch-box everyday), but I believe it's worth more than the price. Don't miss it.

Nikko Kanaya Hotel
Nikko Kanaya Hotel -Dining room- (including breakfast, lunch and dinner menu)

New Year days

Yeah, I know it's toooo late to post such topic, but I'd like to start this 2007's posting with the Oshogatsu photos. Please allow me to introduce our New Year scene.

Let me start with food.
< >
There are variety of Ozoni in Japan, white miso-based soup, red miso-based soup, chicken-based soup or bonito-based soup / round-shaped Mochi or square-shaped Mochi / baked or not baked. My wife is from Osaka, a white miso-based soup with round-shaped Mochi(not baked) is popular there. Meanwhile, I was raised with Ozoni with chicken soup and baked squre-shaped Mochi. Of course I love both.
I heard that the Ozoni of Shikoku-area(southwest Japan) include Mochi with Anko(sweet bean paste). I've never had that and I cannot imagine the taste. Does anyone know the taste?

Janualy 2nd, we visited my parents in the suburbs of Yokohama.
BTW, do you know the Hakone Ekiden race? This is the intercollegiate marathon relay race which held on 2nd and 3rd Janualy. 10 runners of 20 teams from Kanto-area relay the Tasuki baton between Tokyo and Hakone. This race began in 1920. It has become a signature event of New Year.
Our parents house is located near the Ekiden course and I went out to see the live race.

During the Ekiden, the Route #1 is occupied by runners, staffs and broadcasters.

Hurrah!

Hakone Ekiden has produced lots of great runners, including Olympic medalist.
I reckon some of guys who entered this year's race will perform great run at the Beijin Olympic game 2008.

Let me introduce the guests who visited my parents house.
My father put a cut orange on the tree for birds. Two Mejiro came to the yard.

Please click the photo to enlarge. You'll can see 2 Mejiro in this pic.

I took these photos from behind the window. Not bad, is it?


I hope this year 2007 will be a happy and successful one for you all!