A Visitor from Canada

Last Thursday, the 19th, Adam's dad came to visit us in Tarui. It was really great for us to see Japan again like everything is new and different through his dad's eyes.  Now that we've been here six months, we've kind of gotten used to Japan and we've forgotten how at first everything was so striking and different to us.

We had the weekend to travel around with Adam's dad.  Adam and I really haven't traveled much this since November, so it was nice for us to get out.  On Saturday, we headed for Hikone and looked around the castle and castle gardens.  Adam and I had been there in the fall, but it was nice to see it in the winter with the view of the snow capped mountain range behind lake Biwa.  The garden hasn't come back to life yet, but we still enjoyed a picnic sitting in the sun.

Hikone Castle

Snow capped mountain range.

Hikone town mascot.

At the castle gardens

 After lunch, we went to Nagahama where there was a bonsai potted plum tree festival/exhibition.  I had heard about this festival the first time we went to Nagahama and was wanting to see it.  The festival seems like an art exhibition.  There's blooming plum trees in two rooms.  The trees are really old too, we saw two that were 400 years old and others ranging from babies to 100, 150, 250 years old!  I found it really amazing how some of these trees seem to only be growing from a piece of bark too.

This tree was 400 years old.

Lots of people bustling around.

Some of the baby bonsai trees.

The garden outside the exhibition.

 After the festival, we were on our way to look at some shops and passed a micro-brewery, so we all had a beer. Who knew Nagahama brewed it's own beer?

The view from our table at the micro-brewery.

Buying some battered deep fried fish.

 On Sunday, we went to Nagashima to Nabanano Sato.  Normally Nabanano Sato is a flower garden, but during the winter they put up Christmas lights throughout the park.  We got there early and had time to walk through the gardens.  I could tell in a few weeks that place will be bursting with flowers.  I could see hundreds of tulips and daffodils poking their heads out of the earth.  The plum trees have a few blossoms with buds getting ready to open.  The park was nice and has pansies growing outside for the winter.  They also had two large greenhouses with flowers blooming which was really amazing.  I couldn't help thinking about how much my granny would love to be here with me.  I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Pansies growing outside.

These begonias were huge!

A room full of fuchsias

Check out this giant trailing petunia!  It's like a tree hanging from the ceiling.

Have you ever seen this before?  We sure hadn't.

Yes, we're sitting on a heart shaped bench.:)

This is just beautiful!

Back to the outdoors with a drizzle and only a few plum blossoms.

 We ate supper at the park which has many little buildings with restaurants around and when we were finished they had turned on the Christmas lights.  The lights were beautiful!  The main exhibition this year was Niagara Falls (last year was Mount Fuji), I didn't actually find that part very impressive, but I really enjoyed the rest.

A tunnel of lights.

Niagara Falls

Another tunnel, this time with green lights.

I hope you aren't all tired of looking at pictures of flowers now.  Believe it or not, I didn't post all the ones that I have. :P

In other news, I bought my first article of clothing in Japan, it's a sweater and it's a large.  I don't think my body shape has changed since we got married which is probably the last time many of you saw me.  From what I saw, the sizes just get bigger in terms of length and not as much in terms of width.  I thought it was pretty funny though, since all my other sweaters are "small".