On Tuesday we travelled to the station called Nagano, because there is a cheap photo shop there. I was eyeing the really impressive collection longly, but then I won the fight (apparently against myself) and bought only one single lens for half of its Hungarian price. This picture was taken next to a high office center in Nagano. It illustrates very well how seamlessly can old and new live together in Japan.

As I promised, I started taking pictures on aikido topics. This is Komine sensei who is a professional cook and seems to be a quite harmless lady - until she starts practicing;-) She holds one practice a week, which is mandatory to us.

Usa-san. She is not a teacher but a very enthusiastic aikidoka. A very kind person.

Kanda sensei unexpectedly invited us for a lunch. We were happy to go, of course. This is the center room of his house (it must have a special name, but I don't know it). It is simple in Japanese manner, and sensei's wife presented a small tea ceremony for us here.

She is Shige Kanda, the wife of the sensei. She teaches English in a school, and her hobby is healing herbs. Unfortunately, we had not much time to talk. The lunch was delicious, of course, and we ate every bit of it...

The most important, long awaited happening of this week was cherry blossom. There is a huge cherry tree next to Kobayashi sensei's house, which was planted by the sensei himself some 30 years ago. He is very proud of it, especially at blossom time. Now we really have things to sweep up, as many times as we want to...

As everybody recommended us to visit the nearby park which is wonderful during cherry blossom, we did so on Saturday. Cherry blossom is a very respected event here, everybody goes out for a party under the trees. We observed some titubant people, they must have lost his consciousness because of the great beauty - at least this was the idea of ours (mine and Björn's:-)

I send this picture to András. There are several old aeroplanes here in the park, this is the strangest-looking one. If he writes me its name, I will insert it here. Interactivity rules!

There was a cherry blossom party at Kodaira dojo, as well. Under the cherry tree, of course. We all were in good mood, we ate a lot, and we still drink the rest of the beer. Several pictures as illustration...

The food was great, but not for us: meat with meat, unfortunately. I omitted the usual second party. Björn did not, but he vomited nicely next day. These Swede... :-))

A new uchideshi arrived. He is Mike and he has a dojo in Houston, Texas. This is his 3rd time here, so he is not a newbie. We became a rather manifold company by now, and it is sometimes hard to accomodate to each other, but we are doing our best. When I am very tired, I speak to Björn in Hungarian: he seems to be a compatriot among many Japanese. He is nodding at these occasions, I think he thougt in the first time that he was listening to the original, legendary Hungarian pronunciation (called: Hunglish) or such like. Later he figured things out. We will see what Mike says, he is a very funny guy, I won't get off so cheaply...

On Monday we made a trip to the mountains. This a big and newly built buddha-statue next to a graveyard.

Those with weak nervous system and who don't like hiking so much: stop reading! It happened that we couldn't stop ourselves and had the feeling that we did not have physical problems any more ... and decided to have a walk in the mountains at least.

Those mountains were too attractive, and, although it was about raining, we started our trip. We could not go to far, as we had not enough time, but: this had been the first occasion for two months that we did not meet any other people. We were alone. Everything was calm and silent. Unbelievable.

A typical picture from the local mountains. Basically it is similar to Hungarian mountains, but with slightly different atmosphere and colours. We would like to go back for a day in April.

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