Here’s a video of me walking up a Japanese Hill from the ground level by a river right up to the top to get a view over Kanazawa city.

It’s for a weight loss site that I run, that is why I am pushing myself so hard to get to the top as quickly as I can. The path is very steep in places which may not be so obvious from the video. But you can tell by how high above the city I get in such a short time.

This area has a lot of vegetation including bamboo since it is hot and humid in Summer and there is plenty of rain in some seasons. These hills are steep since the land is formed from ancient volcanic activity where the flat land is very close to steeply rising hills and mountains.

So people tend to live near the sea where the land is still flat but those at the edges of the city living on the hill sides can suffer from land slides which can wipe out their fragile homes. But you can buy cheap property or rent cheaply in these areas.

Here are some photos from a Japanese Fireworks Display that I attended in August. It was based in the city of Kanazawa and was free to watch. There was something like 5,000 fireworks that were paid for by local companies and the city council.

They also provide free buses to the event. It’s very noisy, bright and colorful as you can maybe imagine.

It helps to have some wind to blow away the smoke and debris otherwise it showers down on the crowd and some of the fireworks are obscured by a veil of lingering smoke. On this day though, the weather conditions were pretty good.

I know many people loved my blog posts about Japan but I no longer have time to post about it in a diary style. But, I am going to build another site about my area featuring the Geisha district and later another site may be built about the Samurai district.

I have registered the domain name of Geisha Walk dot com for the purpose of building a business about walking tours of my local former Geisha district and more.

Also I am planning to use my own website development software to make this site as a showcase example. So you have the link and with time you can see the new site. Thankyou for your interest. p.s. I have some great photos of the modern-day Geiko’s as they now like to be called to feature on the site. Look forward to it!

I am planning to write some software that helps you learn the Japanese language. It will be based on a flash-card approach where you choose a topic and view flash cards that show sentences or words in English and you have to remember how to say them in Japanese.

At first you may not know anything so you would start with basic symbols (Hiragana and Katakana). There are about 46 of these to learn. Hopefully I can include audio too so you get to hear the pronounciation too.

Next there would be simple sentences shown in English where you learn how to say them in Japanese.

So you would learn by repetition. Using software it should hopefully be quicker to learn than with a phrase book and tapes. One reason it would be quicker is that the software would learn which things you have mastered and cut them out.

This software would not be a substitute for formal lessons but it could be a great way to get your knowledge of vocabulary and basic phrases up to speed.

Update:

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time but there is already very good yet cheap software already in the market so I decided not to persue this idea. Some software I downloaded to try out was from Declan Software and it was very impressive and at a low cost.

Every year in August a group of restaurant workers meet up at the beach to play in the water and have some grilled food and drink. We can drive on the beach with 4-wheel drive vehicles so it’s easy to set up and unload right next to the sea shore.

Most people got there very early around 6am but I set of later with my wife. She was supposed to know where they were but unfortunately didn’t have a clue. I am getting used to this. Even with a map we usually go 10km out of our way trying to find places. So the obvious thing to do is phone people but the one contact we had had their phone off which is understandable.

So we turned onto the beach and randomly chose a direction to head in. After a few Km’s I decided we were headed in the wrong direction since all I could see far ahead were fishing boats. So we did a u-turn and headed the other way. Now it was becoming like a jeep safari, but without the jeep!

I was starting to think about all the fun we were missing out on and started to speed up to find them faster. I always fancied rally driving so this was the next best thing. Up over crest, desent into stream. Up soft, muddy bank. Dodge the debris on the beach. Keep the momentum incase we get stuck.

Finally we saw some jet skiis in the sea ahead and found them. This was Monday morning, so very different from the old commute to work LOL. Especially as a beaker of chilled draught beer was thrust into my hand once we said hello. This was a beach barbeque, Japanese style. In the UK we would probably have a bag of chips and a can of warm beer with the sun roasting our hides.

They had a canopy to shield people from the scorching sun, a grill with fresh slices of meat, people were harvesting shell fish from the sea and did I mention there were barrels of beer being piped through a box of ice to deliver it ice cold by the gallon. Oh it was free too!

After quenching my thirst I was urged to try the jet skiis out and compare them. What a hoot. I hired one once in Spain but got bored with it, I guess it was de-tuned. But these were full power with engines up to 800cc. I’m a sports motorcyle enthusiast so I am used to high performance. Well these jet skiis accelerate fast and are fast enough to start feeling dangerous so they were great fun. The most fun seemed to be going flat out and jumping your own wake after a turn.

The first time I tried a quick turn, I got thrown off so had to struggle to climb back on. But after this it was plain sailing so to speak. I just needed to lean into the turns more like on a motorbike. btw you need a licence to pilot these and it’s best if you are sober

Girls seem to like being thrilled on Jet Skiis:

“Come on somebody” :

About to do a beach landing:

Grilling the oysters found under the sand:

The dreaded jelly-fish. There were several around that day.

Chef knows how to handle it, thinks “yummy”:

Kids enjoying the Banana boat: