Blue Tamago

We bought a property consisting of 5 acres, pretty much on top of the highest hill above Adelaide. A bit of a change from being at the foothills to the top of the hill. The 5 acres was so we could expand our chicken numbers and fortunately the new place had an existing chicken coop. We can see the coop from our bedroom window, similar to our old place. There are a few problems with this new place, firstly, fencing is quite poor and being next to a main road, we didn't want the chickens walking willy nilly into oncoming traffic, plus, this area is known for foxes. Secondly, the previous owners left the coop as it was, with all the dry litter. All this litter had to be removed. We didn't want our chickens catching any diseases from the previous chickens.  Unfortunately, the litter depth was about a foot deep! That was a lot of digging! Not to mention dusty, I had to put on a face mask to stop breathing in all the dust.  See that rust mark on the wall? ...

We left Kanazawa and headed off to the mountains for Takayama. It was a rather long train ride of about 3 hours and a train changeover before we arrived. The train went through the Japanese countryside which was amazingly beautiful. As Japan is a rice country, it seems that most flat land is given to rice paddies. The art of making terraced rice paddies seem to be dying out, with machinery these days, it is cheaper and easier to make and maintain a field on level ground. Thus the abundance of rice fields. It was interesting to see people's backyards as paddy fields. We were booked for the Futarishizuka ryokan, which is located straight up the hill from the train station. Google maps showed roughly where it was, but not the exact location, but with lots of pointing and confused faces, we finally got shown in the right direction. At the entrance, it's off with your shoes and on with the house slippers. There was also a display board welcoming all the r...

For our last day in Kanazawa, our plan was to visit Kenrokuen gardens, one of the top 3 gardens in Japan to see and to visit Higashi Chaya, the geisha district. Firstly, at Omicho market, some breakfast loaches :P    Then it was off to the gardens. I think we got a bit lost but the gardens have multiple entrances. Not sure where we ended up, but it cost us only 300 yen to enter and you get an English map/brochure with it. The gardens are very large and you can spend quite a bit of time going all the way around. What was important to us was that there was shade and seats. Again I'm complaining that it was hot, I think Japan was having an unseasonable heat wave on the few weeks that we were there. The most famous sight in Kenrokuen gardens is the 2 legged lantern, with one foot in the water. There is also Japan's oldest fountain within the gardens. This fountain does not use any pumps, but relies upon the differential pressure from a higher pond to feed it. To te...