Shukkei Gardens, Hiroshima

Shukkei Gardens, Hiroshima, Japan - 5th January 2007
縮景園

It was a fairly cold winters day but I was bored of staying indoors so I decided to hop on the tram and head into Hiroshima. I went to the Prefectural Art Museum where they had a special exhibition on childrens picture books which had some marvellous exhibits on display from Europe, Asia and Africa. After spending a couple hours looking around I entered the Shukkei Gardens which is attached to the museum itself. The gardens are very well kept and you can walk around the entire garden as well as through it. The garden itself contains bridges, lakes, mountains, walk ways, tea houses all in miniature scale giving the impression that it covers a lot of area. There are various spots where you can sit down, relax and forget that you are in the middle of Hiroshima! I am sure that the gardens look beautiful in Summer and will try to go back during the year.

New Year's Eve 2006 - Osa Ski Resort

Osa Ski Resort, Geihoku, Hiroshima, Japan - 31st December 2006
大佐スキー場

Since I have been in Japan I have spent New Years Eve/New Years Day watching the NHK kohaku 紅白 music show, drinking sake at a shrine as it turns midnight and climbed a mountain in Mie Prefecture in the early hours of the morning to see the first sun rise of the year but I hadn't experienced a new years eve at a ski resort! So after Naomi finished work on New Year's Eve we ate dinner, jumped in the car with the snow boards and drove 100km into the moutains to Osa Ski Resort where they held a Reggae Countdown Party! We arrived just before 11pm and got onto the slopes as quick as we could snowboarding up and down in the cold dark night. The Reggae band at the bottom of the slope was drawing a crowd and people seemed to be enjoying drinking beer and dancing on the snow. Just before midnight they closed the lifts and turned the lights off temporarily and had only the moon and star light to see through the last minutes of 2006. The crowd gathered around the band and we all counted down the remaining seconds and were treated to a small but spectacular fireworks display to mark the beginning of 2007! The lifts and lights restarted and we were back on the slopes in -8 degree temperatures! With the line for getting on the lift getting longer and the wind chill becoming unbearable we decided it was time to go home around 3am. Luckily, except for some sections on ice, there was no snow on the roads which made the 100km trip back home easy. It was an amazing way to spend New Year and am keen to do it all over again!

Happy New 2007!