Friday, September 10, 2010

Guest Post by Alek

Alek is going to dictate this blog to Mommy. Starting now.

Yesterday, I liked when we went to Arashiyama.
That's a picture of the bus stop.


Here's another picture of the bus stop. It's showing that our bus is coming soon. We are taking Bus 93.
This is me looking up at something, I don't know what it is. The bus was crowded.


It's not crowded here because everybody got off.


That's the mountans and the lake that they went cormorant fishing. The boats are the boats that we watched in.


That is us waiting for something.


That's me drinking the Pocari Sweat near the boat dock. It tastes like Gatorade with no flavor at all.

That's Max and Hugo getting into the boat. The lanterns have cormorants on them, and there's a candle inside them and not a lightbulb. Some of the boats are decorated on the roofs. But some are not.

There's me drinking a Pocari Sweat on the BOAT. Max got a big bottle of Match Match by accident instead of the little Match Match. The Match Match tastes like sweet tart juice.

We sat with our shoes off and the floor of the boat was tatami. That's us waiting for the cormorant fishers in their boats. When we heard the "bang, bang,bang" sound, it was coming from the cormorant fishing boats, from the rowing that they were hitting the boats.

There is a road near the mountains and it leads to a temple tower.

That is the rower pushing us off into the water, and he gets in and he talks to people. He starts rowing, and then, when the boats all get in a line, he just talks to people in the front.
That's the steerer rowing. He is rowing with a bamboo pole. How he moved the boat was put the bamboo pole into the water, onto a rock, and pushed us into a line.

That is a picture of the cormorant fire paper sphere.

That is me, leaning over the boat looking at the fire on the fisher boat. Some of the paper balls with the cormorants on them have fire in them, and some have light bulbs.

That is the fisher's boat with the fire. And when the cormorants aren't fishing, they rest on the back of the boat.

That is when the boat is really really crowded, and the paper balls turned white in the picture. But they're really orange/ red.
That is three cormorants diving into the water, looking for the fish. When a cormorant catches a fish, the fisher yells something in Japanese and then he pulls him up, and he grabs the cormorant by the neck so he spits the fish out so he could take it home and cook it and eat it.

That's the picture of the fire that they put wood in a fire resistant hanging cage then they set it on fire for light.
And they put the fire over water so if it dropped, it wouldn't burn the boat, and it would go out. The fish in the water are attracted to the light from the fire.


That is the rainbow from the lights in the water. When a car with his lights on goes through, the lights move through the rainbow.

That's a fisher, pulling up a cormorant by the neck so he could spit the fish out.

That's the bamboo pole that was holding up the lights that were helping make the rainbow.
That is the bug zapper, and the light attracts the bugs to go up to the light, and when they touch the metal in the cage, the electricity zaps them and then it kills the bugs.
That is a point of light that has electricity bulbs inside it but it isn't a bug zapper, it is just for decoration and it has a red basket material around it, so nobody would get killed by the electricity.

That is me eating popcorn waiting for the bus. Hugo is in the background eating popcorn waiting for the bus, too. And the bus didn't come because I think it was going back to the station, and we got in a cab and we tried to find a restaurant to eat dinner in, but we couldn't find any restaurant so we took a cab home and ate dinner at home.

This is me sitting on a pole. This is almost the last picture. And the pole isn't near traffic, so that is why I got a picture there so I wouldn't get run over.

That is the 7-11 where I got a tofu set in it for dinner. With fish flakes and soy sauce.

That's a picture of the tofu set with fish flakes and soy sauce.

That's a picture of Daddy's meal that he got.

That is Hugo's. He got two "I don't know" sandwiches.

That is Max's dinner. It has little birdy eggs in it.

That is the pizza that we got at the 7-11. That had corn, and ham, instead of pepperoni, and it was on bread.

That's Hugo eating his dessert. It is a maple syrup pie. They were very very very good. There's also caramel pie. They don't really look like pie though.


That is the blog about Arashiyama.

3 comments:

  1. Dear Alek,

    I LOVE your post! I have seen this kind of fishing a TV show. I can't believe you got to see it in person. How lucky! By the way, I kept thinking that your mom was spelling "sweet" wrong when talking about Pocari Sweat. And I see that it really IS Pocari Sweat. That doesn't make any sense to me. Is it "sweat" because it's a sports drink?

    The pizza you bought at 7-11 didn't look so good... Do they have cheese and pepperoni pizza in Japan? If not, do you miss it?

    Among the dinner choices, I think I would have liked what you dad picked. Shrimp! Yummm!!!

    I hope you get to post other stories, Alek!

    We miss you!

    Cathy, Kurt, and Mira

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  2. johnpochan@hotmail.comSeptember 11, 2010 at 4:01 PM

    Hey everyone,
    thanks for the pictures....looks like fun and educational...
    miss you,
    love,
    Grandpops

    ReplyDelete
  3. Okay Alek!

    I really liked your blog! I've never seen bus-stop signs like that ..... they look like some sort of computer. How does it tell you how far away the bus you're waiting for is? Are there lots of signs in Japan that are both in English and Japanese?

    I'd only heard about cormorant fishing, and it was really interesting to see the pictures and read your explanations. Once when I flew from Tokyo to Sapporo I saw a really big group of boats that were fishing for squid. They use really bright lights to attract the squid, and it was beautiful to see them from high in the sky. Your cormorant blog reminded me of that.

    Finally, your blog made me hungry! I think what your dad got looks best, but the tofu and fish flakes looks pretty good too.

    Thanks a lot for the blog Alek!

    Mike

    ReplyDelete