Today, we took a road trip around Shimokita Peninsula. It is a bit of land that shoots out between the Pacific Ocean and Mutsu Bay. Beautiful and sparsely populated, its definitely a place I'll visit again.
Aomori prefecture is known for the high quality horses they bred during the Samurai days. Our first stop was Cape Shiriya where you can still spot the "wild" horses of Japan.
This little fella walked right over to us and clearly made Helen's day.
Another new and interesting treat...apple ice cream! I love Japanese apples, and this frozen treat wasn't too bad either.
One of the many sights on Shimokita is Hotokegaura. This is a coastal area with lots of tall rock formations.
"Hotoke" apparently means Buddha and the Japanese apparently think these rock formations remind them of praying Buddhas.
Can you see the Buddha resemblance?
An interesting thing about the sight, along with several buddhist alters, were these man-made mounds scattered around the beach. I'm not sure about the meaning behind them, but I couldn't help to remember finding these same phenomenons in my back yard in Italy. Of course, this was usually after a night of drinking and impressing my friends by showing them how my obese Labrador would actually eat rocks. Come to think of it, Lily kind of looked like a big Buddha...hmmm
One of the really nice things about Japan is that, despite thousands of years of humans living here, they have managed do a pretty good job of preserving the environment to include both grizzly bears and the black spectacled bear (not too shabby when you consider we almost killed off every one of our black bears in a couple of hundred years). While most tourists try to steer clear of the bears, many of them do take a trip up to Shimokita to see the snow monkeys. This is supposed to be the northern-most spot to see them. But, they often prove to be pretty elusive, so many tourists settle for a glimpse at some roadside monkey zoos. We had about given up on finding wild monkeys and I was having a hard time finding the roadside zoo when...
we happed upon this fella. He didn't run off and allowed us to take several pics. But, he refused to eat any of the bananas Rose threw at him. I still can't believe a monkey would refuse a banana, but it was still a neat experience. I've seen many animals in the wild during my lifetime, but wild monkeys are just so much more exotic.
About 5 minutes down the road, we saw about 15 of them to include some mothers carrying their babies hanging from their midsections. I wasn't quick enough on the camera to catch them all, but I did get to capture a shot of this little fella...
Today, we took a road trip around Shimokita Peninsula. It is a bit of land that shoots out between the Pacific Ocean and Mutsu Bay. Beautiful and sparsely populated, its definitely a place I'll visit again.
Aomori prefecture is known for the high quality horses they bred during the Samurai days. Our first stop was Cape Shiriya where you can still spot the "wild" horses of Japan.
This little fella walked right over to us and clearly made Helen's day.
Another new and interesting treat...apple ice cream! I love Japanese apples, and this frozen treat wasn't too bad either.
One of the many sights on Shimokita is Hotokegaura. This is a coastal area with lots of tall rock formations.
"Hotoke" apparently means Buddha and the Japanese apparently think these rock formations remind them of praying Buddhas.
Can you see the Buddha resemblance?
An interesting thing about the sight, along with several buddhist alters, were these man-made mounds scattered around the beach. I'm not sure about the meaning behind them, but I couldn't help to remember finding these same phenomenons in my back yard in Italy. Of course, this was usually after a night of drinking and impressing my friends by showing them how my obese Labrador would actually eat rocks. Come to think of it, Lily kind of looked like a big Buddha...hmmm
One of the really nice things about Japan is that, despite thousands of years of humans living here, they have managed do a pretty good job of preserving the environment to include both grizzly bears and the black spectacled bear (not too shabby when you consider we almost killed off every one of our black bears in a couple of hundred years). While most tourists try to steer clear of the bears, many of them do take a trip up to Shimokita to see the snow monkeys. This is supposed to be the northern-most spot to see them. But, they often prove to be pretty elusive, so many tourists settle for a glimpse at some roadside monkey zoos. We had about given up on finding wild monkeys and I was having a hard time finding the roadside zoo when...
we happed upon this fella. He didn't run off and allowed us to take several pics. But, he refused to eat any of the bananas Rose threw at him. I still can't believe a monkey would refuse a banana, but it was still a neat experience. I've seen many animals in the wild during my lifetime, but wild monkeys are just so much more exotic.
About 5 minutes down the road, we saw about 15 of them to include some mothers carrying their babies hanging from their midsections. I wasn't quick enough on the camera to catch them all, but I did get to capture a shot of this little fella...
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