Camping trip

The first week of May in Japan is Golden Week, when there are a number of holidays together, and so many people get the week off work. For the beginning of the week, from Sunday to Wednesday, Ayako and I went camping. We drove about 2 1/2 hours north-east of my city into the mountains. I thought the streets in my city were narrow, but up there, there were many times when the road would become a single lane, and so you had to check if it was safe to pass. Luckily up there, there wasn't much oncoming traffic. Anyways, here's our campsite:On Monday, we went to a hotspring village. We went there mainly for a hike and to cross one of the many suspension bridges. The water up there was very clean and if the areas of the river were deep, then the colour of the water was teal or emerald green:
Here's Ayako crossing a long suspension bridge: Here's us at the end:

At nights, we had campfires and made smores and baked bannock:

On Tuesday, we went on a long train ride up the river. There is actually a steam train that finishes at the town where we were staying:

So we didn't get to ride on that train. We rode on smaller red trains. The ride was 2 hours each way. The line was made to build a huge dam at the end of the line. Nowadays, the line is just used for tourists:

After about an hour, we had to stop for awhile to attach a ABT train (ABT rack system) to the end. This is to help push the train up a steeper incline (like they have in Switzerland). This is the only one in Japan:

There was quite nice scenery along the way and at the small stations that we stopped at:

We finished at this last station. The small 'tanuki' (raccoon) statues are quite a common sight in Japan. We actually saw a real tanoki on our drive that day. We also saw a flying squirrel at night while we were having a campfire.

You have to drive for a bit to get the each 'Gus' station up here^^:

We were also lucky to see more cherry blossom trees. I've actually seen four types of cherry blossom trees this year now. Where we live, all of the regular types are finished, but we got to see mountain cherry blossom trees as well as ground cherry blossoms as seen below:

The area where we were is famous for green tea, so any amount of land people had is used for growing tea plants (which makes for beautiful scenery):

We also got a chance to see how shitake mushrooms are grown: During the week, we also saw lots of these flying fish streamers. This is for May 5, which is Children's Day. These are flown for good luck and health of boys. There was already a special day for girls last month (Doll Festival).