Today, after several weeks of thinking about it and choosing pictures, I finally got around to assembling a collection of pictures to enter into the Japan Times phot contest. The theme is "Impressions from my travels in Kanto" which happens to be the general region where we currently live. At the time of writing, I have not officially made my final decison to choose which photos I will submit, but since they are all fairly respectable, I will share them on this blog. They are here: http://www.zayith.com/blog/c_pix.html. In the unlikely event that I win anything, I will of course publish the results here. Nevertheless, I thought it would be a fun thing to do, and perhaps a nice way to expand my portfolio. I've also almost completed my commissioned photo shoot that I mentioned previously, and I recently completed another commissioned work, one which I hope to post here soon when I get the chance.

Today I've gotten around to adding some "nice" features to the Blog. I mirrored the old, defunct CanadianSushi website, which will still be updated and face-lifted at some point. Not today. I also obtained a nifty little program to help me create online photo galleries quickly and easily. I still have to edit the photos to make them appropriate size, etc for the web but at least I don't have to fool around with the HTML and whatnot. The first gallery is related to the last blog entry from last Sunday. You can find it here, or from the links on the left.

Bonnie and I had a great day on Sunday. It started by going out to see an artistic display made by one of our Japanese co-workers. She created a sizable display of flowers that she crafted from wire and standard plastic shopping bags. What made the trip to Yamanashi-shi more compelling, however, was that the exhibit was set up at a cafe/sake brewery and for 500 yen, a tour of the brewery could be had, complete with samples (mmmm!) and some snacks.

Following this, we were taken to an onsen (spa) by some Japanese friends -- the parents of two of Bonnie's students, in fact. We went to Isawa (which is a spa resort town) to a place called: "Spaland." Sure, the name doesn't sound like much, but it was quite the place to behold. Most onsens I've seen don't charge much more than 1000 yen to get in, and extras like towels usually get added on top of that. This place charges no less than 2000 yen per person, but includes spa-wear (funky t-shirt and shorts) as well as two towels -- one big one to dry yourself off with, and the other, a small wash towel to cover your naughty bits when walking around completely naked throughout the vast expanse of the spa. I should mention at this juncture that onsens are almost never co-ed, so it's impossible to "sneak a peak" as it were, as the men's' and women's' baths are sectioned off to opposite ends of the facility.

Having been only to one onsen prior, I was simply amazed at the amenities. Not only did the washrooms and showers offer every variety of convenience (shampoo, conditioner, hair tonic, skin tonic, toothbrush, toothpaste, razors, shaving cream, etc...) but the baths themselves were fantastic! There were no less than two saunas, plus one room which I dubbed the "iguana room" where you could prostrate yourself on a warm marble slab and take a nap -- as it wasn't nearly as hot as a sauna. It was comfortable, much like a sunny day at the beach. There were eight different pools if I recall correctly, two of which were outside, and one fairly large swimming pool containing cool water. The remaining pools were on average 38 degrees Celsius, and either had water jets, underwater beds and chairs to relax in, or something in the water to give it some color or smell. The sulfurous pool outside definitely reminded me of Yellowstone Park, but by far my favorite pool was the "wine" pool which was the dark red colour of red wine, and smelled like someone had just poured a cask of Cabernet into it. I was tempted to taste it but the only foreigner in the entire huge place was getting enough stares without having to resort to bizarre, unexplainable behaviour.

Bathtime was then followed by suppertime, where we enjoyed a very traditional meal consisting of fish, tempura, and rice. Having had traditional Japanese fare earlier in the day at the sake brewery, I figured we had the most culturally Japanese day in a long time. Next time I suggested to Bonnie we take along about 20,000 yen, and splurge on some of the other fine things available at Spaland, namely a massage, hot towel shave, and perhaps sampling some of the other food in the place, as there were no less than three restaurants in the complex. Maybe for an anniversary or birthday...

I've been finding that it's increasingly difficult to maintain a good recollection of events and organization of our activities, trips and other events here in Japan. I started a website: CanadianSushi but that's been on the back-burner now for so many months it's embarassing. I don't think it even exists at the moment, as I was hosting it with a rather shady company. I will rectify that but not now. :-) In the mean time, Bonnie and I haven't stopped shooting pictures, video and we certainly haven't stopped going to interesting places and meeting new people. So, I shall make an attempt at blogging.

Seeing that you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a blog these days, I would venture to say that this is primarily for my own sake, and perhaps those of our friends who want to learn what we've been up to, but don't get e-mailed or phoned nearly enough. The frequency of update to this blog will be sporadic at best, but at least I can make an effort to record those thoughts and memories (and hopefully photos too) before they get stuffed into some dark, dusty recess of my mind, never to be retrieved again. I hope the photo thing will happen, as we've recently purchased a tiny digital camera that fits right into my pocket, but takes some spledid photos. It stays in my jacket pocket at all times, and will get downloaded to the computer usually only when the memory card fills up -- about 60-ish pictures I think. In any event, if you're curious, I published a review for this camera here: http://www.zayith.com/reviews/RR211 My review has also been picked up by an online digital camera publication here: http://www.dcviews.com but they link to the same page mentioned above, so it doesn't matter which way you go in but DcViews is a solid website so you may wish to check it out.