Venus Transit

So we have been having a couple of pretty cool weeks, Astonomically speaking, and one day when I worked at my visit school, I tried to go and take a photo of Venus transiting the Sun. No such luck. Thankfully, Wayne came and took me out for lunch, where we headed down to the beach, and thanks to his logical thinking, used my sunglasses as a solar filter. And boy, were the photos just great.

Lonely on the Shinkansen

Going back a bit, my shinkansen from Shin-Osaka was pretty late at night, and it was just going up to a random station where I was meeting Cori and Len for our trip to Ishikawa. It was already sitting at the station, and I had reserved a seat, but I did find out, the entire thing was unreserved. And completely empty. Not a single other person on it. It was pretty creepy. But fun too!

Kenrokoen Garden in the day

After discussing it, we decided we hadn't had enough of the garden. It would be an entirely different look in the daytime, but that was a good difference, so we headed over there before we all went home. I really liked my photos in the evening, but so many of them were blurry. I know that Len took a lot of photos of me, on random bridges and such, it was nice to have a second visit just to soak in the atmosphere. It was also nice to see how vivid the purple flowers along the banks were, even though it was daylight. Japan has very traditional gardens, and then ones like this, where I think that it would be great to have near my house, to come and sit outside with a lunchbox and have a nice chat with friends. I always thought gardens in Japan were overrated, but I have really come to appreciate grass and greenery here in Japan. I can see why so many people come to Kanazawa to see this garden!

A gold leaf tea house

One of the shops along the Higashi Chaya district was a gold leaf shop. 99% of all of the gold leaf in Japan is made in Ishikawa.So, we went into this little shop to see what they sold. They had gold-leaf lotion, glasses, jewellery and everything. And right at the back, there was this gold leaf house. An entire house made of gold leaf. It was so cool. And very pretty with the maple leaves in front of it!

Higashi Chaya

After being a little disapointed with the other tea district, we knew we had to be missing something, so we headed over towards the other tea district. On our way, we crossed a giant bridge. On the banks of the river below, was grass! Tons of rolling grass covering the bank. Thankfully, Len and Cori understood my need to see real grass again (as you never see it here!)So down we went, to play and frolic in the grass. And I did, like a kid - I slipped my shoes off and ran up and down the hills without a care in the world. It was great! After myfrolicking, we ran into this nice dog which was a black lab, and tied up outside a house. It was so unbelivably adorable. We spent a lot of time petting it and rubbing its tummy!Finally, we made it to Higashi Chaya, which was a lot bigger than the other tea district. It had beautiful houses on either side of the streets, stretching along for a while. It had cute little shops and museums too. We headed into one museum, which was about the history of tea, and the lent us a cool orange umbrella so we could take our photo outside!

In the colours

As we were leaving the museum, we came across two other outdoor exhibts. Once was some sort of giant wire cage that the kids were climbing all over. Of course, we had to try too! And the second was a big swirl made of different colours. I cant really describe it well, but there were big walls, like a maze, circling up to the centre. I loved the pink ones best of all!It was great fun to see the world thought different colours, and in the middle, you could spin around and see them all!

Playing underwater

That night, we had had a lot discussion about what to do with our Sunday, before all of us headed home. That part of Japan is actually quite hard to get to, and we felt like we had done a lot of things already in Kanazawa. We decided in the end to stay in town, and so we started Sunday at a very lesurely pace. We went and bought Cori and Len cameras, and then headed to the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art. We only paid the minimum fee to go, because there was only one exhibit we really wanted to see. Dont we look like we are underwater in all of these photos? But entirely dressed? Its all a big optical illusion, but one of the most fun I have seen. In the centre courtyard of the museum (which is shaped like a giant donut) there is, what appears to be a swimming pool. You have the ladders to get in, the edging, and from afar, it looks filled with water. Even if you look directly down, it looks filled with water. What it is, is about 2 feet down, there is plexiglass, and the pool is only filled with water for the top two feet. You can see people walking around inside the pool below you! We also went down underneath the pool, and it looks like you are inside the pool. The walls are the right colour, and its even a little curved. It was pretty darn awesome. We spent hours playing around, sitting on the floor and taking photos! Cori and I pretended to be sleeping, and Len tried to play dead, while cute Japanese kids laughed at us. It was the best fun!