goodbye japan 

cherry blossom viewing picnic (hanami)

This was on one of the many days that I went to meet Motonari at Hokkaido University. Taken on May 12th, just when the sakura or cherry trees were blooming. In Japan when the cherry trees are blooming everyone goes out to have picnics and barbecues and look at them. One thing of note is that Hokkaido is renowned in Japan for it's incredibly late bloom times.

miko and natalia

Yeah. It looks blurry because it is blurry. This is a picture of one of the miko of Hokkaido Jingu, the main Shinto shrine of Hokkaido. For those of you who don't know, the mikos work as shrine maidens and supposedly have to be virgins to qualify for the job. The girl on the right is one of the exchange students from my school, visiting from Chile.

view from the house

Just to give you an idea of exactly how close the mountains were (from my second host family). I really, really do miss them. It's some kind of weird psychological thing.

shinrin koen
I really did love that forest. It was completely silent, and while I was there snow was always falling in a thick, secret kind of way, like feathers falling from the sky. But it was the kind of emptiness that felt so full. The air was strangely charged. Very alive.