Kushiro National Park

Wetland area.

Mount Iouzan

Steaming sulphurous hillside.

Blakiston's Fish Owl

OK. So this is a photo on the wall, but this magnificent bird's favourite fishing perch is right outside the hotel dining room and it is completely unfazed by the excited guests eager to watch it deftly snatch it's prey from the river.

Yuyado Daiichi Spa Resort

Very high standard hotel.

Onsen

Great room.

Diving with Seki Katsunori

We went under the waves with Seki-san. His photographs are in this months National Geographic.

Evening meal

Food was excellent at the Chieftans Cabin.

Kamuiwakka Falls

Seagull

Aurora

Onto the sea of Ohktosk for a trip along the Shiretoko Peninsula.

Shiretoko Boat Trip

Walked yesterday. Boat today.

Utoro Onsen

Chieftans Cabin

Shirotoko Shari

leave train. Get car

Kushiro

Church beside Kushiro station.

Hakodate

First stop. Hotel Smile. Interesting port city. Good photography museum.

Tokyo

Shinkansen

Blog Posts from my Mobile Phone

The post below, with the small map of the island of Hokkaido, was sent direct from my phone. It's an example of the posts coming up in the next two weeks. Here's a better map.

We leave on Saturday, heading for Shiretoko National Park on the North Eastern coast of the large island in the north of Japan. The plan is to take the train there and then fly back to Tokyo. I'll be taking mini photos as we go and emailing them from the phone to the blog so you can see where we go on our trip.

Hokkaido Holiday

We are off

A Car Called FREED

I was intrigued by the large number of signs and preparation this week in Ebisu for something called FREED from Honda. A little bit of research let me to the Honda Blog and that fact that it's a new minivan.

I thought there would be huge fanfare and lots of people at the launch at 1pm today, but when I arrived it seemed to already over. Maybe this wasn't the main event ?

Here's a low res photo, from my phone, of the new car :

Shame about the rain.

Update:
Well I guess I was in the right place. The Japan Times had a brief story on it this morning.

Maybe the fact that car sales in Japan declined for three years in a row means cars are getting less important these days.

East West Discussion Group : Trains of the World

I have recently starting going to the "East West Discussion Group" in Tokyo. I saw an announcement in the Japan Times about one of the discussions which was of interest to my wife. She went the first time and persuaded me to come to subsequent meetings.

It's a small group of mostly elderly but knowlegable and interesting Japanese Ladies and Gentlemen with some Americans. The weekly meetings take the form of a presentation by one the members on a subject of interest, followed by a discussion on the topic.

On my second visit, when the future meetings were being discussed, I was persuaded to do a presentation. I am a bit of a 'railway enthusiast' so I chose to do a talk about 'Trains of the World'. A rather wide subject area I know! I will be showing some photos of trains from around the world and we will be discussing transport related issues.

The talk is on this Thursday 22nd of May, 2008. If anyone in the Tokyo area would like to come along you will be made most welcome . There is no membership requirement or fees, just pay 500 yen on arrival.

The venue is the Hongo Satellite of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 7th Floor, 2-14-10 Hongo, Bunkyo Ku, Tokyo. It's less than five minutes walk from exit 1 of Hango Sanchome subway station and looks like this when you get there. The meeting starts at 6:30pm, the presentation usually starts at 6:45 and the meeting finishes at 8:30pm.