Return from a Road Trip! (Picture Previews)

I spent this weekend on a road trip with Mike, myself and Mona. The 3 of us decided to rent a car for this weekend and headed out into the country side. After much discussion we randomly decided to head west into Yamagata prefecture for the weekend. The red lines lines on the left map wsa the route we took.

None of us knew what to expect for this trip, but suffice to say, I have pictures to show and stories to tell. I won't be able to post the whole spiel today as I'm at the lab at the moment, but I'll post up a short preview of our adventures.

So I lied, there was a particular reason why we wanted to head West this time around. For the past few months, I've been hearing on the news of the immense amount of snow fall in the western region of Japan.

Our first stop, I made a return to Yamadera, the mountain temple which I went to back in November of last year. For comparison's sake, I took a picture in November beside a post box the first time I went to Yamadera which looked like this:

I came back to the same post box this month to find this.
See the difference?

It's really funny, all Japanese people I talk make the suggestion that I'm really used to the cold, that it snows like crazy where I come from. Sometimes, I'd tell them that all Canadians live in Igloos and we go by dog sled everywhere. Well, no I don't, but the thoughts have crossed my mind.

We climbed to the top of Yamadera to be greeted with scenery in white.

To the right, that's Mona. In the background, that's the view from the top of the mountain. It was breath taking to be there again in the winter. The next picture below is a shot of the icicles we caught on the way up the mountain.


After climbing down the mountain. We caught lunch at the local restaurant that specializes in hand-made soba. I had duck soba that evening.

After about a 2~3 hour drive further North-West through a mountain pass, we were greeted with snow banks that were...taller than me! Incredible.

I will a more indepth review of our trip later on (so I hope). I took about 100 pictures during trip. I'll need to sort them get them together and post them as an album when I get some spare time. Enjoy the previews... and also people that live in the country side rock.

Happy Valentine's day everyone.