Travelog for: Mocha

Today we visited a Buddhist nunnery with Tarepanda and her mom.  Her mom was worried that the nunnery may be closed for the holiday but Tarepanda said that she can't imagine a Buddhist temple closing for a Christian holiday.  Indeed it was not. 

While the Chilan Nunnery is a relatively new building, it used architectural technique from the Tang Dynasty, around the 7th century.  It is an all wooden structure built without using one nail.  As Tang Dynasty is the period with heavy cultural exchange between China and Japan, this style of architecture is commonly found in Japanese Zen Buddhism temples.



A watermill useful for grinding flour, though they are not really using it now.




This is a really beautiful lake with a lot of koi fishes in it.





It feels like a sneak preview for my visit to Japan.  I will be leaving with Mara-Joy in a few days.  Yumi san, yoroshiku onengaishimasu!

Mara-Joy and I arrived at Yumi's home safely today.

We stayed at the local post office for a few days as she wasn't at home when the box was delivered.

I could get flesh air finally! I thought it was much colder here than Hong Kong. When we arrived at Yumi's home, it was snowing outside.
However, Morado,Florence and Tokiowarmly welcomed us. We became good friends right now!

I decided to stay with other toyvoyagers at Yumi's house today as the weather wasn't good

We watched Sumo on TV.
Sumo is Japanese traditional wrestling (the national sport).
In a sumo match, two wrestlers who wear a sumo wrestler's loincloth enter the rung fight until on either leaves the ring or touch the ground with any part of his body other than the bottom of his feet.
I was very excited to watch!!

Sorry but the photos are dark...can you see me?

Yumi told me that we're going somewhere today.

I waited for her with Morado, Florence, Mara-Joy and Pussy Galore in her bag.

We visited Kanazawa 21st museum where was opened in 2004.

The museum has some kinds of chairs and benchs to sit and relax.

When we were walking at the museum, we found a swimming pool.

Why is a swimming pool here? We thought...
The next moment, we all were very surprised that some people were standing in the swimming pool.

WHY???

Yahoooo!!
I'm under the swimming pool!!

I felt very strange...but it was fun!

I read a leaflet on the museum.
Swimming Pool designed by Leandro Erlich (so we call it Leandro's pool)

A layer of water above thick glass forms a border, through which people above encounter people below (inside the pool)

After we enjoyed the museum, we visited another one named Kanazawa Folklore museum.

The building of the museum built in 1899 was once used as a school. At present a junior high school is built next to the museum.

Unfortunately the museum wasn't allowed photography...
(Yumi told me she could take photos when she visited here last year)
We were only taken in front of the museum.

The last photo is the leaflet for the museum.

I visited Higashi Chaya District where some old Japanese houses which Geisha girls had worked at were conserved.

The two houses named 'Shima' and 'Kaika-ro' were opened generally (People still live in the rest of the houses), but unluckly we didn't have enough time to watch.

It was St. Valentine's day today.
In Japan girls/women give chocolates to boys/men.

Yumi gave us some small chocolates. It was sweet.

We got some snow, so we decided to play with it!

We climbed a snow mountain and went into a snow hole.
We enjoyed playing with snow!

After that, we relaxed in front of an oil-heater.

I have arrived! Munich - here I come, phew it's good to be out in the day light again. 

As it was a nice spring day we all went out for a walk to Türkenfeld. It's about 45 minutes with the train outside of Munich. The colours of the tree leaves are beautiful, you only find this colour in spring time.

Our host is very interested in herbs so we helped her to search for them. We found lots of blooming wild violets and helped our host to pick them because she wanted to make sirup of them. If we would not have helped her she surely would have needed a long time to fill the small container.
Later we also found woodruff which will be dried and used for tea and food flavouring.

We went out for another walk to pick herbs at Türkenfeld. We found chickweed, deadnettle, chervil and lots of other herbs.