Mother's Day Special!!!!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!!!!!!!! This post was mainly created for my mother. I LOVE YOU MOM!! YOU'RE THE BEST MOM EVER!! But, I wish all mothers a Happy Mother's Day, including my Grandma, Aunt Jenny, and ...and......CHRISTY!! Have great mother's day everybody!! I love you all very much!

So, the cherry blossoms here in Japan just so happend to bloom during Mother's day! HOW AWSOME IS THAT!? So, I took some pictures for all of you wonderfull mothers to look at and hopefully enjoy. The weather was a little bit rainy, so I am sorry if they arn't the sunniest pictures in the world. Hopefully I will go again tomarrow and will be able to get some better pictures. Anyways, please enjoy!



Hana-Mi (Looking at flowers) began a VERY long time ago in Japan..I think about 1000 years ago or more..(I will look it up later and try to add better info). Originally, only noble-men could go to go to look at cherry blossoms. Eventually, after Japan was united by one emperor, he held a grand...umm..Picnic, where many noble-men, and warriors, and other people came to see his cherry blossoms and enjoy the life of such a frail flower. Later, this was eventually opened to anyone and everyone and has been continued sense then.




Cherry blossoms are unique in not only the fact that they are one of the earliest blooming flowers, but they are also one of the fastest blooming flowers. They have a very short ..umm..lifespan of about one week. Then, most of the flowers all fall of at once. It looks a lot like snow and is called sakura-fubuki. Or Cherry Blizzard. I can't wait to see that. Hopefully I can get some pictures for all of you. There life-span is sooooo short and yet, they are some of the most beautiful flowers in the world. This really goes to show that it doesn't matter how short, or insignificant someones or somethings life may seem, everything and anything can mean anything and everything to someone or something else. Cherry blossoms have such a short life, and yet, they try their best, and show their beauty to whoever is there to look. Millions upon Millions of people go to see cherry blossoms in Japan every day while they are blooming in Japan. It is really quite amazing. Companies will actually take time off, or let people leave just to go look at the cherry blossoms.




There are acutally many many different types of cherry blossoms in Japan. Hokkaido ususaly gets ones that are a little different colors then the rest of Japan. The color of Hokkaido is more fresh, where the color of the cherry blossoms in Honshu are more vibrant. Here are just two different types. (These were both taken in Hokkaido.)





Love you all, and HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!!!!!

Biking Hokkaido

So, there is a holiday in Japan called Golden Week. Basically, there is three holidays right in a row (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) and basically, everyone just takes the whole week off. Well, for Golden Week, Two friends and I um..creat a Bike club, yah, a club...not a gang...really...and then we traveled around Hokkaido Island for 3 days. It would have been nice to go for longer, but, Nori had some things he had to take care of. In anycase, 3 days was more then long enough. We went all over the place! It was really fun. I have diven motorcycles for a while now, but that was the first time to go for so long with more then one other person. It was really a neat experience. There really is quite the feeling of freedom. Being able to go where ever you want whenever you want. It is much much different then driving a car.

So, we drove about 8 hours a day or more and drove a total of about 1100km. So, that's about 690 miles. We went to 5 different cities and went to a Natural Herritage called Shiretoko. There, we saw all sorts of different animals including Dear, and Bears! oh my!

I can't wait untill our next trip. Next we plan to go to Otaru (Just a one day trip). Or reason for going there is just to eat ice cream! YAY!!! Then we plan to go to Hakodate (Two to three day trip). Should be fun, there we can eat more live squid if we want to. :p.

OK ON TO PICS!!

Firs, one of the coolest dogs ever!! I saw him on the side of the road and had to take a picture. He is what is called a Akita-ken. Way cool. I saw one like him once in Fukuoka, but the one in Fukuoka was Black and white! Looked just like a white tiger!!...but....he was a dog.. I WANT ONE!!!


Ok, so, at the beginning of the trip, you can tell we were in really good spirits ;). We usually ate lunch at convience stores and then would go to really nice or famous restraunts for dinner. It was great!


So, the whole trip we just had AWSOME scenery that looked like this!! This is still on the first day of the trip on our way to Obihiro to eat Butadon!! (Like a bowl of bbq meat and rice).


Then, after Obihiro we went to Kushiro, a city on the ocean, with famous Sushi..so, we ate sushi!!! Not only that, but we at Whale!!!! It was actually pritty good, but the flavor wasn't very strong..It actually didn't taste like fish or look like fish at all. It was more like beef if anything.


This is Day two, on the way to Shiretoko from Kushiro. We saw this lake that was really big and surround the road on both sides and had to take some pictures..and well as play around some..hehe.


This is at Shiretoko, basically the other side of Hokkaido from Kushiro. Sugimoto-kun, is one of the people that came with us on the trip. He actually didn't have a motorcycle...but..ehh, we didn't mention that too him. Besides, it was fast (it would get up to 80) and it had a windshield..so if me or Nori got cold, we would just ride his scooter..err.I mean motorcycle.


More pics of Shiretoko. This is actually looking back in the direction we came from.


This shot is just awsome!! This road rocked too! You have no clue how cool the feeling was to drive along this road for a while...the veiw was unbeleivable!! Oh, yah, that's Nori. He's Also got a 400cc bike, just like me, but his is a 2 stroke.


Nori, Sugimoto-kun, Me, and Shiretoko!!! YAY!!


I crystal clear lake in Shiretoko, this would have been a better picture but a bunch of ducks lander in the water as I was taking the picture..ah well..I wish I had my shotgun!


While returning to Sapporo, we drove by this moutain! How cool is that??! I like how the snow just dissapears at certain point. There is a really clear line there. Also, all of the rice feilds in fron't give it great prespective.


This is all three of us at a place called Sounkyou. It was a huge cannyon in the middle of Hokkaido. The road was great beacause it was in the bottom of the cannyon and the whole time you had these HUGE towering rocks on all sides of you! Anyways, at Sounkyou we stopped and got in an outside hot springs. It was great!



Ok, well that's it for now...It was a great trip...oh yah, the other two place we stopped at was Kitami (where we ate at a Yaki-Niku yasan .....yah, basically Japanese style BBQ restraunt.) and then also stopped at Asahikawa and had some DAMN good Ramen!!

Ok, love yuh all, leave some comments!!