This below is only Noch product in the package I got yesterday from Germany
Figures are all glued to the base paper. I decided not to take them out of the paper after thinking of it for a while
Is cow bigger than a car!? I've seen cow in outdoor only once around Mashu lake in Hokkaido. Exactly they looked as tall as my height when got close to one. It threatened me with its snort and mooing.
As leeks were grown a lot in our tiny field, we cooked something with them. Gyoza
Shiroae - bases on Tofu. You can add whatever you like, but there's always combinations with tofu. Bad or good, it really depends on your tastes and favorites. I add some cloud ear mushrooms, lotus roots, spinach, glinded walnuts etc together with some seasonings. The lotus roots worked good, it was very yummy.
Sprouts from angelica trees mixed with tiny baby fish what we call "Shirasu".
I orderd something at the first half of February and got it now, almost took 3 months and a half!!!!! Huh? A TRIX catalog is endlosed in this package though I didn't order it. It took only 4 days to get a package from Canada when I ordered something to a shop there, so I expected that it would arrive at my place around May 6th as they notified me that they shipped it on May 2nd. I e-mailed them a couple of days ago to make some joke saying " Did you kindly deliver my order through Syberian railway because they are all model train stuff? :-) "
Oh? Was it delivered by sea-mail?
Seems like that. It seemed to take 13 days for this package to travel from Germany to Yokohama as this document says the arrival date is May 15th while the shop notified me that they delivered it on May 2nd. Much faster than I supposed if it's by sea mail. Where do they travel through? Maybe from Hamburg or Rotterdam -->the Gibraltar Channel -->the Suez Canal-->the Strait of Malacca-->Yokohama ? Or perhaps carried by land transport to somewhere Genova or Athens then ship there to save some time.
As birds in the forest around my house were singing a lot this morning, I went out to see what birds they were.
As is often the case with watching birds around, it's very hard to find even when you hear them singing. Looked around a bit and finally found a male Narcissus Flycatcher at a branch. A male Narcissus Flycatcher looks like this. A female one looks very different. Female ones look like Nitingales. As is often the case with Flycatchers, female ones look very similar. It's easy to specify which is which if it comes to male flycatchers but it's not if it comes to female flycatchers.
Japan North Alps view from Shirasawa tunnel Hakuba side exit on Route 406. Damn, the peaks were hidden in the clouds :( We went to Skunk cabbage nature park in Kinasa after a long interval.
Route 406 is a very curvable one, you have to be careful to drive a car there. We arrived the tourist center 1 hour later we left our place. Someone stops your car on the way to charge 400 yen per person for the entrance fee to this natuer park.
It's roughly 40-50 minutes on foot for one way from the tourist center to the entrance of the nature area, we got on a bus to save our time ( To be honest, we are too lazy to walk! ) It took 5-6 minutes ride. The path buses run is very tiny and narrow, buses have to meet at a place where they cross each other. After getting off the bus, the path we walked was still paved one.
Cherry blossoms there just looked like they started blooming.
Birds were singing there noisy! How many kinds of birds can you recongnize? I did only nitingales lol...
Found something in a pond. Frog coes??
Finally they provide a signboards not only in Japanese but also in English :-) But I wonder does it really need "The" for the trees described there? ("The" Horse Chestnut, "The" Japanese Oak etc) Anyone tell me please! lol...
Pathes there are unpaved which I like!
Water runs inbetween big trees, skunk cabbages are here and there along the running water. Skunk cabbages are called " White fairies"
Skunk cabbage flowers (Mizubasho in Japanese) Do you know which part is actually a petal? The white ones look like wrapping somehing like cores are NOT petals, the tiny yellow ones around the green cores are exactly their petals.
I have ever visited this place some times, but that was the first time for me to get in Koumidaira area.
The reason why we Japanese call this flower "Mizubasho" is their leaves look like basho. But I think I have to google to know what basho is :o lol... :p I like this water noise, even if it's my bedroom side, it would never bother me from falling asleep. Probably it's an alpha wave.
A signboard which explains some virgin forests of beeches here.
Maybe a white birch? Looks cool.
There are so many tall trees here and there. They are too tall for me to take pictures of entire their height. So I took pictures of this tree by deviding it into 3 parts then editted them to connect. Not a good skill lol... :p But I hope it helps to show how tall they are when you find some people at the left bottom of this picture for comparison.
Skunk cabbages in bloom along the wood path.
Trout?
They are perhaps "Sukanpo" we took along pathes when we did picnic there.
I hear leaves exhaust tannin when they get deep in water. It looks like they make the water dirty but actually tannin provides some nutrition for microorganisms to grow which is the start of a food chain. Nothing wasteful there.
Many big trees of 300-400 years old here and there. This signboard explains that the tree behind the signboard is what we call "Shinanoki" in Japanese. Also explains "Shina" for Shinanoki means "to connect" something in Ainu language which was spoken in Hokkaido among Ainu people. Another interesting thing this signboard says is people in Nagano prefecture in old days offered pieces of paper from this "Shinanoki" tree to the Imperial Court in Kyoto, that's why they named this region "Shinano" which is an old name for Nagano prefecture.
Yachidamo tree which has an unique skin. Not sure what they call this tree in English :(
It's a big place to walk around, feel a presence when birds sing.
Water from the mountains on this background must support all the ecosystem here.
Found a dying tree with a hole on its side. Wondered what lives there. A flying squirrel family or an owl family??
Though I live in a kind of countryside Hakuba, if I go deeper in mountains and nature, I am always impressed by them. I guess probably this post is a little bit longet than you expected, I appreciate for your time and patience to check this out all the way to this end :-)
