Today we drove up to some view point areas in the surronding hills. Unfortunately the sky was a bit misty so the camera couldn’t pick out the sea and distant mountains in any great detail but here are a few snaps:

This snap shows the view across the city towards the sea of Japan. There is a shipping port in the far distance but it can’t be seen here.

City view from hill

Here is a view of the distant mountains from the other side of the hill:

Mountain range view

A nice view of the forest vegetation (there should be a colorful display of flowers below but we were there at the wrong time for this):

Around this area we spotted some ants building a nest. Once I homed in with the camera they were a bit nervous and stayed in the hole, but one brave one came out with a bit of gravel to add to the pile outside:

ant

Afterwards we had lunch at a popular buck wheat noodle restaurant, the meal only cost 500 yen each (~MacDonalds price but with 99% less fat :-). These Noodles are hand made by the owners. You dip them into the soy sauce to eat after you mixed some of the green wasabe into the soy sauce to give it some spice. The other items are pickles, soy bean curd, leaf veg and onion.

Filed under: Life in Japan by blogmaster