Mt. Mitake -- still in Tokyo?

Few photos from yesterday's "hike from hell to Mt. Mitake". No, it wasn't that bad -- I am just in bad shape.
Less than two hours from Tokyo, and you can experience lot of natures.

Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum

We had long holidays in Japan, and I had a week off. I could ride around my bike in Tokyo, but it's nice to get out from the city. I took a train to suburbs of Tokyo to visit Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum where old buildings in Tokyo were relocated and displayed. I saw this old Miyata bike at the Museum.



These two pictures are toilet and bath tab in the old Japanese house.

Nice fireplace in the old farm house.

This is a public bath house and I just loved the Mt. Fuji picture on the wall.

Old street cars. I actually remember of riding the similar street car when I was kid.



Drying laundry outside of the old multiplex.

These two houses used to be occupied by wealthy Japanese people. You can see the difference from the above simple multiplex.

Beautiful garden with autumn flowers inside of the Museum.

These two pictures were taken at the shrine outside of the Museum.

Labor Day Trip to Echigo Tsumari Art Festival - Not on Bike

Over the Labor Day Holiday, I took a trip with Museum Meetup group in Tokyo. We went to Echigo Tsumari in Nigata Prefecture that is about 3 hours bus ride from Tokyo. I took over 100 pictures from the Echigo Tsumari art festival, but this is my favorite picture. A dry flower artist converted the typical old Japanese house into dry flower arrangement. The themes of Echigo Tsumari art festival this year are closed schools and abandoned houses. This abandoned house is currently occupied by a French literature professor for his summer home.

This is the other abandoned house that is converted into the art.

This is one of my Meetup friend who is posing as Mona Lisa. They have the Mona Lisa picture spot where you can pose as her and take a photo.

Many arts are built outside in the beautiful county side, and arts and landscape work together to create the picture like objects.

We hiked up 10 minutes to see eyes in woods. I wasn't too impressed to see bunch of eyes in the woods after the hike from hell. However, the picture came out pretty good. Some arts are better seen in photo than in live.

One of the themes in the art festival was to convert the closed schools into arts. People are aging in Japan, and many young families are moving to cities. Accordingly, schools in rural areas are closed because there no kids to attend schools. During this trip, I have visited one-half dozen of closed schools. Artists built the arts in class rooms and even in the school yards.

Echigo Tsumari area has heavy snow during winter, and many houses have the angled roofs so snow doesn't stay on the roof

Food in Echigo Tsumari area is very simple and mostly vegetarian dishes. I had lunch in the old Japanese house called Ubusuna House, and our server gave us the tour of house after lunch.

I had the similar vegetarian dish in the next day at the museum restaurant. Both lunches were almost the same with rice and local vegetables.

These two pictures are taken at the House of Light. The house has removable sky light, and you can stay overnight in the house to enjoy moon and stars. On the rainy day, the roof can be closed to keep you dry.

Just very beautiful county without arts. It was the season for harvesting rice, and rice fields were turned in yellow and contrasted with the surrounding greens.

The thousands of old pictures of Echigo Tsumari pasted on the wood sticks. I wanted to check every single pictures, but there were so many.

These pencils represent the countries in the world. There are more than 100 pencils

I loved blue and yellow farmers built in the rice fields. They looked real from the distance.