The Karamatsu and Goryu photo gallery is up:
I think there are some very beautiful shots in here.

Karamatsu and Goryu

My friend Tatsuya and I went on our yearly mountain backpacking trip. The mountains we climbed this time were Mt. Karamatsu(2696m) and Mt. Goryu(2814m) in the northern Japanese alps. Overall, we had really nice weather on our three day trip except for some snow on our first night. We first climbed Karamatsu and made our way across the ridge to Goryu, one of the top 100 mountains in Japan. Both of the sunrises were spectacular and the night sky amazing.

The three of us at the start. Tatsuya, his wife, and me.

Looking out at Mt. Shirouma

Keeping warm in our sleeping bags. It was snowing outside, which was extremely rare for this time of year still.

The morning sunrise.

Atop Mt. Karamatsu

Pointing to Mt. Yarigatake. My goal for next year.

Atop Mt. Goryu

Another morning, another sunrise.

Heading down.

My friend said, "Let’s go to Inamuragasaki Onsen, but before that why don’t we go body boarding?”
I said "Ok, lets go.”

For the Labor day weekend I was off to Okinawa, again. This trip was a bit more relaxing but still very interesting. There was still lots of wind and waves from the typhoon that passed up north and hit southern Japan, so we could not go snorkeling or do any marine activities. Still, we had some good food, I visited Shikinaen again, and my friend took me to Katsuren castle and an Eisa festival. There were fireworks after the festival and we went searching for the perfect spot, which we found as we were directly under them! No pictures of the fireworks because I was to busy enjoying them.

Traditional Okinawan food

At Shikinaen..

Of course we had Okinawa Soba.

(more…)