Three for Three: New Year Caching

Hiroko and I headed out of Tokyo a little too late to make it back at a reasonable time so after we went up to Hossawa Falls and found the cache near the frozen waterfall we walked down the mountain and got the second cache near the village map of Hinohara. Good finds!

After that we did a bit of walking and I stuck out my thumb. A pastor passed us by, noticed the thumb, made a U-turn and came and picked us up. She took us all over the place to find a place to stay.

Finall we got a place but it was too late for dinner so we bought some stuff and a bottle of wine and enjoyed it in the room together. It was pretty darn cold in the room so luckily we could warm ourselves up in the bath next door.

We fell asleep quickly and suffered from cold drafts all night.

This morning we had a quick bath to take off the night chill, gathered for a new year breakfast, paid our bill and started walking.

We walked for a couple of hours and eventually found the third cache at Daihigan Temple. It's a temple first built in 1163 or so but no records remain to prove who the original builder was. Nice place, great cache.

We brewed ourselves some coffee, ate some cheese and a hard boiled egg and walked the half hour back to the station.

Now we are headed back to Tokyo to meet Hiroko's mom. I kept bugging her to introduce me so this is a good chance. Near her Kim's place are a few caches so maybe tomorrow we will go and look for them if the weather is fine.

It's a good holiday and the new year weather is always good in Tokyo (one of the reasons why Mayu always hated being in Fukui during the new year because it is cold, rainy, snowy and generally miserable).

I love you!



Hossawa Falls Cache



Hossawa Falls




Hinohara Area Map Cache




Daihigan Temple Cache



Daihigan Mini Temple

Cam

History Repeats Itself... Sort of.

Hiroko and I we trying our hardest to get out of the city to a
waterfall/geocache a couple of hours away but it its turning out to be
a real challenge!

Work keeps flowing in and replies are necessary.
Then finally on our way into Shinjuku as we were sitting in the train
I noticed some strange rubbery powdery things on the floor around us.
It turns out that Hiroko's hiking boots were disintegrating around us!

We made it to Shinjuku bu the soles completely melted off and we were
forced to go boot hunting. Finally we got a new pair but as you can
see in this photo continuing on our journey without getting a new pair
of boots simply was not an option.

And now I'm hungry so we are buying fake food at McDonalds....

And away we go. Again. I bet it's going to be dark by the time we get
there. Oh well, as I always say, it's the process...

I love you!

Happy New Year.

Cam

Ginza Cache Finally Achieved!!

I have been searching for this baby for a very long time. Finally
today I found it. When I did find it I thought to myself, "why the he
k couldn't I find it the other four times!?!"

As you can see, it's pretty tiny.
And as you can see the leaves in the park are still looking good.

I have to go to work today as I have been working since 9am this
morning on my non-holiday. Sigh. It's been a very long year...

But before I go to the office I need to recache this baby; however
there's a guy standing right at the cache location and he is
preventing me from .... Oh he just moved away.

Let's go!

Merry Christmas Chicken

I just uploaded our Christmas video to YouTube. It's a little bit
short, but it's full of many exciting things. Especially chicken!!!

You can view it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGlh_UInmUA

Merry Christmas
I love you!
Cam

Christmas Eve

It's a really great Christmas for me. I spent a great day with Hiroko
and we bought a lot of stuff at Diesel but it looks fantastic on our
bodies so is so worth the price. Boots, shoes, rings, watches,
bracelets, leather jackets, bags, dresses, shirts. Fantastic. I
haven't been this content in a very long time. It feels really great
to spend the day with the woman I love. Now we are finishing a
wonderful Christmas eve dinner with two bottles of wine.

Next we will go back to my apartment and get ready to visit the shrine
in my 'hood to ring in the new year and reflect on the old year. It's
the first time to ever share this tradition with another person
outside of Paula.

I now understand why Matt said he was able to decide to marry and be
with his woman after such a short time had passed. It has only ben
three short months but this is really different. And I'm loving it!

Merry Christmas!
I love you!

Cam

Cross Section of a Species

This poster represents a good cross section view of today's person
from Japan. They are either drunk (the Businessman), emailing or
tweeting on their smartphone (the Datajunkie), engrossed in their
music (the Obliviator) or gaming on their DS/Playstation (the Gamer).
The other species that is not indicated in this poster showing
dangerous activities is the Sleeper or the person who is so tired for
whatever reason that they fall so heavily asleep on the train and
drool into their neighbour's lap. But the sleeper is not a
particularly dangerous species therefore I imagine it was excluded
from the list.

Happy Holidays!

I love you.
Cam

Geocaching: 5-4-5, Part 2

This cache called Pray was in an absolutely amazing location and
totally camouflaged to the point that if I hadn't gotten the 54
previous caches I probably never would have found this one!

Take a look at the second photo and you will see what I mean.

It was a great day and now it's time for some hot bourbon (Woodford
Reserve, the best bourbon evar) and food and then a good night's
sleep. I need it after these past three weeks. And it looks like its
going to be much of the same until at least the end of February.

Geocaching: 5-4-5, Part 1

Hiroko and I went out for a good 20km bike ride today in order to get
some fresh air, exercise and adventure. We came home tonight with
entirely numb fingers and toes in spite of wearing gloves (and shoes)
but to get five of five geocaches was fantastic!

The first photo with the blue cache we got in Nichiren's temple
complex. As I wrote in the previous post it was in a totally different
place than we were searching the last time because we got the
coordinates wrong in the multicache search. I'll write more about that
another day.

It's a gorgeous place and we were so happy to be there in the daytime.

Max' Snow Ride

It's a gorgeous, clear and cool Tokyo winter day. Kanako and I are out on my bikes enjoying the outdoors after a long two weeks. We just got a geocaches that we couldn't get last time in the Nichiren temple district we visited a few weeks ago.
There are two more near here so we are going to go and look for them as soon as we finish lunch. We were both too hungry to keep going...

So as we were sipping our coffee these two photos of Max out in the great outdoors arrived. I'm envious! (but I'll bet he'd be envious of the woman I'm out geocaching with...)

I love you!
Cam
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Seeking Serenity, A Prologue: Rikugi-en

It's time to make another serenity video for you folks and tonight is the night because we are heading off to a park that has illumination for December, not for Christmas, but for December. The last night is tonight but it looks like it's going to be fantastic. So here's a little history for you about Rikugi-en:

 

Rikugi-en has been counted as one of two excellent gardens of the Edo period together with Koishikawa Koraku-en. 

 

The garden was built by Mr. Yoshiyasu Yanagisawa, a famous favorite of the fifth Shogun Tunayoshi Tokugawa , as his villa in 1702. 

 

This garden is a typical Daimyo garden called a Kaiyuu pond garden with hills and ponds. Because the land had been on a corner of the flat Musashino, he dug a pond and made hills. 

 

The name, Rikugi-en, came from "six elements of Waka poems" that had been derived from "six styles of poems" written in the old Chinese poetry book "Mao-shi". 

 

In this garden, a big pond with some islands is surrounded by trees and offering imitations of famous Japanese beautiful spots such as Wakanoura in Kishuu(Wakayama Prefecture). 

 

The garden became the property of Iwasaki family of Mitsubishi group and was contributed to Tokyo city and opened to the public in 1938. Rikugi-en was appointed as special beauty spot of Japan in 1953.    

I Love You!

Cam