Kanazawa, Japan - 5th April 2007
By: yumi
I was on my way to Kenrokuen where is a very famous Japanese garden in Kanazawa.
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Posted Apr 9, 2007, 10:12 am Last edited Apr 29, 2007, 12:47 am by yumi
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Kanazawa, Japan - 5th April 2007
By: yumi
I arrived at Kenrokuen!!
It is a very famous Japanese garden in Japan.
First, I saw a lantern named Kotojitoro.
Toro means lantern in Japanese.
This lantern has gotten its name from the fact that is shaped like the bridges that support the strings of a koto (Japanese harp)
Next, I saw a bridge named Gankoubashi. It is also called Kikkoubashi. Kikkou means turtle's shell(my back!) Do you think the bridge is similar to my back?
Then, I saw a fountain. According to the leaflet for Kenrokuen, it is the oldest one in Japan and operates by natural water pressure resulting from a difference in elevation that creates the approximately 3-5 meter fountain.
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Posted Apr 9, 2007, 10:48 am Last edited Apr 29, 2007, 12:48 am by yumi
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Kanazawa, Japan - 5th April 2007
By: yumi
My purpose of the visit at Kenrokuen was watching cherry blossoms!!
It was a little early to come. The cherry blossoms aren't in full bloom yet. They bloom and fall within about a week.
Many Japanese people love cherry blossoms.
I found that some people drink alcohol and eat something
near cherry blossoms.
I enjoyed watching beautiful trees and flowers.
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Posted Apr 12, 2007, 6:29 pm Last edited Apr 29, 2007, 12:48 am by yumi
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Ishikawa, Japan - 12th April 2007
By: yumi
It was a very beautiful day today.
I went walking around yumi, my current host's house and
found some kinds of flowers.
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Posted Apr 16, 2007, 6:19 pm Last edited Apr 29, 2007, 12:49 am by yumi
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Gokayama, Japan - 15th April 2007
By: yumi
Today I visited Gokayama where is preserved some old houses.
It must be my last trip in Japan.
Both Gokayama and Shirakawago are registered as UNESCO world heritage sites
It seemed as if the time went back.
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Posted Apr 21, 2007, 6:29 am Last edited Apr 29, 2007, 3:51 pm by yumi
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Gokayama, Japan - 15th April 2007
By: yumi
I visited the House of Iwase in Gokayama that is the biggest of the houses preserved.
It had bulit over 8 years about 300 years ago.
The house isn't used any nails and is used ropes instead.
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Posted Apr 21, 2007, 6:59 am Last edited Apr 29, 2007, 1:09 am by yumi
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Gokayama, Japan - 15th April 2007
By: yumi
I found a big carp streamer (Koinobori in Japanese)
We display it from April to 5th May which is a special day
for children, especially boys.
We play for them to live their lives strongly like carps because carps have the strength to swim even up waterfalls.
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Posted Apr 21, 2007, 7:09 am Last edited Apr 29, 2007, 1:09 am by yumi
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Ishikawa, Japan - 23rd April 2007
By: yumi
I will leave yumi's house for Australia tomorrow.
So the last day in Japan is today.
The last night,Yumi wrote my name in Japanese.
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Posted Apr 24, 2007, 4:57 pm Last edited Apr 29, 2007, 12:53 am by yumi
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Travelling to, Australia - 24th April 2007
By: yumi
I said good-bye to Yumi and friends who I made in Japan today.
I left her house in the evening and will arrive at the next host in Australia in about one week. I can't wait!!
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Posted Apr 24, 2007, 5:09 pm Last edited Apr 29, 2007, 12:54 am by yumi
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Sydney, Australia - 30th April 2007
By: becka_kate
Just a short note to let you know that I've arrived safely in Sydney Australia and that I have started to settle in.
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Posted May 1, 2007, 1:29 pm Last edited May 5, 2007, 2:33 pm by becka_kate
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Sydney, Australia - 1st May 2007
By: becka_kate
I'm getting acquainted with my host and the ToyVoyagers who are currently living here and they were very interested in finding out about my home town and my travels in Japan!
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Posted May 1, 2007, 1:58 pm
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Sydney, Australia - 4th May 2007
By: becka_kate
I went to visit Bec's school today. It is a very interesting place to go. The kids at the school speak lots of different languages . In Bec's class the kids speak Arabic, Armenian, Bangla, Burmese, French, Hindi, Maori, Urdu and English! Some of them speak 3 languages! (But no one speaks German!) I helped some of the kids with their maths work. They're pretty clever. They've only been at school for 12 weeks and already the work they had today with counting to 10 was too easy for most of them.
Also - all the photos on today's logs were taken by some of the kindergarten kids (without Bec helping them!)
Kalli and I had a bit of a talk about what the kids were doing.
Later, we helped Bec decide who had packed up quickly and quietly ready to go to lunch. All the kids had done a great job so it was hard to decide who should have a tick put on their behaviour chart.
Tomorrow is Saturday and we might go to the local park if the weather stays nice. Bec says she's saw a turtle swimming in the creek there the last time she went with her friend's kids! Maybe I'll be lucky and see one too? I hope so.
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Posted May 4, 2007, 11:20 am Last edited May 5, 2007, 1:41 pm by becka_kate
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Sylvania, Australia - 5th May 2007
By: becka_kate
Today the weather was so nice Bec, her sister Stef & Kalli decided that instead of taking me to the local park they'd take me for a drive to the coast. (Bec'll take me to the park one afternoon after work!) The weather has been very warm this week. It's autumn here in Australia (did you know that the seasons are opposite to where I live in Germany??) but for the last week the temperatures have been more like summer than nearly winter.
Anyway, we got in the car and started driving.
Bec was experimenting with the GPS navigator she was just given, so we went on a very interesting drive to get to the beach. Bec showed me where she used to live before she moved back home to save money so she can see the world!
We also went across Tom Ugly's Bridge.
I enjoyed taking in the view from the bridge looking up the George's River towards the Captain Cook bridge at Taren Point. There were a lot of boats out on the river.
I thought that "Tom Ugly's Bridge" was a funny name for a bridge until Bec explained that there are two stories about how the bridge got its name. One is that an early resident was named Tom Huxley and the local Aborigines, unable to pronounce the "x", called him Tom Ugly. Another is that it is because the local Aboriginal word for "one" was "wogul", and apparently, locals referred to a white settler in the area who had only one arm and leg as Tom Wogully - his name in turn becoming Tom Ugly. The southern point that the bridge stands on is called Tom Ugly's point, and that is how the bridge got its name!
We crossed over on the new bridge thatt was built because there was too much traffic for one bridge, and to our right (on the driver's side of the car, so we couldn't get a photo) was the original bridge. The old bridge was built in 1929 and was the longest road bridge in all of Australia when it was built! Bec's mum grew up just around the corner from the bridge and before it was built, her father (Bec's grandfather) had to cross the river each day on a punt (a car ferry).
Finally we got to the beach. Unfortunately you can't see it in the last photo, but there was a beautiful sail boat crossing right in front of this road which runs almost right down to Cronulla beach.
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Posted May 5, 2007, 1:09 pm Last edited May 5, 2007, 2:31 pm by becka_kate
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Kurnell, Australia - 5th May 2007
By: becka_kate
When we got to Kurnell we had to stop and pay for a ticket to pay for taking the car into the National Park.
This is a very special place in Australian history as it was the landing place of Captain James Cook in 1770. He was
supposed to make astronomical observations, but Captain Cook also had secret orders from the British Admiralty to find the southern continent. Apparently European explorers had been looking for "Terra Australis Incognito" which means the "Unknown Southern Land" for over 200 years.
(We found lots of information about Kurnell and Captain Cook here.)
We were a little confused when we got there as to how to find Captain Cook's landing place, which was what we really wanted to see. Luckily Stef (Bec's sister) had thought to pick up one of their dad's guide books so we were able to work out where we were and which way to go.
The first thing we found was the Solander monument. Can you see us?
The monument is in honour of a Swedish botanist who travelled with Captain Cook on the Endevour as an assistant to Sir Joseph Banks (who the area where Bec lives in is named after - Bankstown!!) Just off shore from here is a concrete pile marking where the ship was anchored (but you can't see it in the photo!)
Right near this monument is another one - this one is for a man named Forby Sutherland. The council area that Kurnell is in is called Sutherland Shire and is thought to be named after him. It's funny, how if he hadn't been the first European to die in Australia he probably would never have had his name in the history books because he was just a seaman on the ship! He died of tuberculosis.
(If you'd like to see a map of where we went, you could go here.)
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Posted May 5, 2007, 1:48 pm Last edited May 5, 2007, 2:29 pm by becka_kate
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Kurnell, Australia - 5th May 2007
By: becka_kate
We kept walking and found more plaques to read.
We saw Cook’s Stream where Cook’s crew collected water for their ship. I wouldn’t want to drink water from there now, as it is probably very polluted, but we could hear a lot of frogs croaking.
We also saw a number of ships in Botany Bay as there is a major shipping terminal here, as well as an oil refinery and other industrial terminals. Sydney Airport is also just alongside the bay.
Eventually, we came to Sir Joseph Banks' monument. He was the head botanist on the ship and collected many plant specimens here. So many (over 800 never before seen specimens in fact!), that he thought it was such a great place for plants and he had Captain Cook change the name for the bay from Stingray Bay after the number of stingrays they’d caught there, to Botany Bay. When Banks rose to a position of power in England, he used his influence to send a settling fleet (of convicts and soldiers) to Botany Bay, ready to create a power base for Britain in the South Sea.
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Posted May 5, 2007, 2:03 pm Last edited May 5, 2007, 2:18 pm by becka_kate
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