Friends from Brisbane

Ian and Pam arrived on 2nd November to spend a few weeks visiting with us and seeing our corner of Japan.

There are plenty of wonderful sights at the moment with the Autumn leaves in full show. We spent a very nice day in Nara Park. We saw shinto shrines, a buddhist temple, beautiful forests and plenty of deer.

Ian had his fare share of pottery places to visit. At this particular shop, Pam found an iron treasure which she took back to Australia.

We spent three days visiting the Takayama area. It was about 2 1/2 hours north west by train. It is actually further north than Tokyo. The Autumn leaves were at their peak.

We thoroughtly enjoyed this village of very old Japanese houses.

Back at Yokkaichi, we visited more pottery places and a local museum.

These beautiful old wood kilns were being loaded for a firing. Our pots turned out to have great character!!!

This pottery place is quite close to out house - but out in the middle of rice paddies and off the road so that you would not know that it is there.


Now we settle back to life with just ourselves and the cold weather. We had some beautiful snow at the top of our local mountains.

First Snow of Autumn 19th November

On Sunday evening there was a very dramatic change in the weather. The temperture dropped and there were gale force winds. The sky over the mountains was very dramatic with clouds and a huge rainbow. When we woke up on Monday morning we saw our first view of the mountains covered in snow. It was a beautiful sight. Warren donned his warmest clothes to go out and take these pictures from our yard.



Before too long we were ready to go and explore the mountains. There were many beautiful Autumn leaves and snow-covered pine trees. It had been quite a heavy fall as you can see from these pictures. This one is looking back down to Yokkaichi.

We drove up as far as we could and it was magic.