Crow Shrine Festival & test flight for the VV Hokkaido trippers

Hello, Everyone! We are ready for a test run! This is not the Hokkaido trip,YET, we are just warming up! Check out the Crow Shrine (Shinto) Festival, just outside our home in Fujisawa! After you get to the main page of Rising Sun School, there is a fun page button. Click on it and see what you get! After you get to the V V page, there is "HERE" button. There are more than 100 people signed up so far!  We think many more are going to join us soon. We are going to have a great time! Hiromi built the whole thing herself, with massive interference from yours truly.http://zinchurch.com/

Love,John and Hiromi

Last Minute Preparations

Here's a volcano that "blew its top"! Pic From our last trip...at Kawayu, an onsen town

In the far north of Japan, thrust out into the north Pacific, is the remote island of Hokkaido. It's a land of towering volcanoes and steaming lakes, marshy valleys and fairy  tale forests. In this primitive paradise, where summers are brief and winters are fierce, lives an extraordinary spectrum of life. Grizzly bears plunge into icy streams for salmon, Japanese cranes perform balletic courtship dances to one another, the rare and enormous Blakistons fish owl swoops on flying squirrels, and white-tailed eagles scan the rugged ocean cliffs for unsuspecting seabirds. HIgh on the mountains Asiatic pikas, arctic hares and Siberian chipmunks gather food, ever-watchful for the predatory sable. Japan is a highly-populated, ultra modern society, and yet it remains a place where wildlife is treasured and carefully protected.

It is a tremendous contrast between the mundane day-to-day life in the American suburbs, and even the laid-back flavor of Fujisawa. We are excited about leaving behind the cares of daily existence and the prospects of adventure in this remote and mysterious island.  But even Hokkaido itself is fraught with contrasts: Sapporo, the largest city, was designed by an American, Dr. Clark, who laid the streets out systematically, so that they are easy to navigate. But, leaving modern Sapporo, we will head east into the wild regions of this land of volcanoes and exotic wildlife, and travel to the Shiretoko Peninsula, which juts out into the Sea of Okhotsk, and which is a place about as wild and isolated as you can find on this small planet. 

Each day, we plan to update the pictures on our web-site, as well as provide you with a running commentary of the day's events and sightings. It is our purpose to make you feel as though you were right there with us. For those gifted with even a small amount of imagination, it should be an event to remember for a lifetime. We believe that your children should be involved in this trip, also. My first experience with Hokkaido was in 1956, when my 6th grade teacher, Miss Lynn, required me to write a report about it. Of course, I don't remember the report, but I have carried the impression of Hokkaido as being a wild and exotic, remote and interesting place that would be interesting to visit some day. Since imagination will be required, this trip can be whatever you need in the way of entertainment, information, or refreshment. It may have been a long time since you needed to use your imagination, so start dreaming now! It will also help for you to get an atlas out of your bookshelf and begin to learn about Hokkaido.

It is Thursday morning at 7:30am in Fujisawa...starting out cool the first day after Pabuk the typhoon visited us, but supposed to get hotter this afternoon. We have a busy day planned, with Rising Sun School ready to open as usual at 9:30am. Hiromi will leave for a class reunion in her home-town of Kiryu, Gunma-ken, tomorrow after school. That will leave poor old John alone in Fujisawa, but never fear! The Pastor of Fujisawa Baptist church has invited me to go to dinner with him and some folks from the church at Gusto. Gusto is a theme restaurant without any apparent theme, but the food is good. Like most Japanese restaurants, smoking is a problem which they purport to solve by seating smokers on one side of the restaurant and non-smokers on the other. Of course, the smoke knows no such boundaries!

Hiromi is constantly updating the website, and the First-Class Passenger list has been posted, along with some of the profiles. We have left the picture of the Shrine Festival up, but if you want to save them, you need to do it soon, because new ones will be going up soon. Gotta go! See you soon! http://zingchurch.com/

Love, John and Hiromi