Photos | Mama Lisa's World Blog

Archive for the 'Photos' Category

Posts

Cherry Blossom Viewing in Japan

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

When the Cherry Blossoms bloom in Japan it’s traditional to go to the park to view the blossoms and have a picnic. Cherry Blossom viewing is called called Hanami. Ayako Egawa generously shared her photos of this years cherry blossom viewing.

Ayako wrote, "We walked under the flow of cherry blossoms in the park. It was beautiful!"

Close up of the cherry blossoms.

Ayako continued, "Lots of people enjoy sitting and eating ‘bento’ (their lunch)."

Ayako wrote, "We hiked along the road hearing the twitter of Japanese Bush Warbler.
I like the feel of spring!"

I asked Ayako what the Japanese Bush Warbler sounds like and she wrote, "Hearing the twitter of the Japanese Bush Warbler is a sign of Spring in Japan. They sing like ‘Whoo Who ket kyo’! It’s a unique twitter." Later Ayako sent me this YouTube video below she found to hear the bird’s tweet.

Ayako wrote, "Small purple flowers in the park. They are pretty."

Ayako wrote, "Cherry blossoms in this school playground are really beautiful! It’s common that there are lots of cherry blossoms in school playgrounds in Japan."

Thanks so much for sharing these great photos with us Ayako!

Check out these posts for more about Cherry Blossom Viewing and Festivals.

•Cherry Blossom Parties in Japan and a Japanese Folk Song called "Hana" ("Sakura")

•"Sakura, Sakura" another Japanese Cherry Blossom Song

•Cherry Blossom Festivals Around the World

•Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival

•Cherry Blossom Viewing in Japan

You can also hear 2 well known Cherry Blossom Songs on Mama Lisa’s World:

Sakura – Cherry Blossoms

Sakura Sakura – Cherry Blossoms (Song #2)

Enjoy the season and try to see Cherry Blossoms blooming near you if possible. It’s worth the effort.

Mama Lisa

Share on Facebook and other services:

Posted in Countries & Cultures, Folk Songs, Hanami - Cherry Blossom Viewing, Hanami - Cherry Blossom or Sakura Songs, Holiday Songs, Holidays Around the World, Japan, Japan, Japanese, Japanese Folk Songs, Japanese Kids Songs, Languages, Photos, Photos, Photos of People, Photos of Places, Sakura, Sakura - Cherry Blossoms, Seasonal, Spring, Traveling, YouTube | 1 Comment »

Photos from Kamakura, Japan

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Kamakura is 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of Tokyo. Ayako Egawa wrote to me from Japan about her trip there, “I went to Kamakura where there are many famous historic Japanese sites. This is “Daibutsu” which means Great Buddha. It was cast in 1252 and its height is approximately 13.4 meters (44 feet). ‘The figure sits in dignified repose with a most placid expression of countenance.’ That’s a quote about it from Dr. C. Dresser’s Japan – Its Architecture.

It was fine day. Daibutsu made a beautiful contrast with the blue sky.”

This is the Hasedera Temple that houses a statue of Kannon the goddess of mercy.

Below is the Japanese garden at Hasedera Temple. Ayako wrote, “This is a typical Japanese garden. Typical Japanese gardens have a pond with a small bridge, a garden lantern, garden stones and old trees that show the four seasons.”

Ayako wrote, “Garden lanterns are stone lanterns for decoration in the Japanese garden, not real lanterns for practical purposes. Here’s a photo showing some Japanese stone lanterns…”

“This is ’smile Jizo’. Jizo is a stone statue of Buddha. The height is about the same as kids.”

Here’s the gate of Hasedera Temple with an old pine tree.

Ayako wrote, “This is "Kintsuba" which is a Japanese sweet I bought at Kamakura.
It is made by simmering pumpkin and sugar with small beans. The beans are Azuki, a small red bean. It is used as sweets like “Kintsuba”.”

Thanks so much for sharing your photos with us Ayako and for telling us about them! It’s all really neat to see and learn about.

-Mama Lisa

Share on Facebook and other services:

Posted in Countries & Cultures, Japan, Japan, Photos, Photos, Traveling | 1 Comment »

Photos of a Phillies Parade – A Sea of People All in Red

Saturday, November 1st, 2008

The Phillies won the American baseball World Series on Wednesday. Yesterday they had a parade in Philadelphia to celebrate it.

My friend Ray Lee sent me this photo below. He took it from his office building when the parade was passing by. I love the photo and wanted to post it here. After the original picture, you’ll see a couple of attempts I made to crop it and enhance the color. It’s interesting to see such a mass of people wearing red!

Photos of the Phillies World Series Parade 2008

Thanks to Ray for sharing his photo!

Mama Lisa

Share on Facebook and other services:

Posted in Countries & Cultures, Games, Mama Lisa, Philadelphia, Photos, Photos, Photos of People, Sports, Traveling, USA, USA | No Comments »

The Monastery of Ten Thousand Buddhas

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

A couple of weeks ago, Ray Lee sent me photos from his trip to Hong Kong. Here are some more, from when he visited the The Monastery of Ten Thousand Buddhas. You have to walk up over 400 steps to get there. On the way up you pass by many Buddha statues, each one is unique…

Here’s what the temple finally looks like when you get to the top of all those steps…

Ray wrote, “The name Temple of 10,000 Buddhas refers to the number of Buddhas inside that temple (so it is not counting the statues that line the steps that take you to the temple). According to the tour book, there are actually about 12,000 Buddhas inside that temple.

Out of respect, Ray didn’t want to take any photos while inside the temple, but he took one from the outside looking in…

Outside the temple their are more statues…

Many thanks to Ray for sharing these great photos with us!

-Mama Lisa

Share on Facebook and other services:

Posted in China, Countries & Cultures, Hong Kong, Mama Lisa, Photos, Traveling | No Comments »

24 Hours on a Dairy Farm

Friday, September 7th, 2007

This past summer we took a trip to Pennsylvania with our kids. Our first stop was at a dairy farm in a town called Paradise. The farm had about 40 cows and grew corn to feed them.

We each got to milk a cow – which was a weird experience. It’s something I’ve never done before. My son was particularly good at it – so I told him that maybe he should leave his video games behind and go and live on a farm! Just kidding of course!

The farmers normally use machines for milking. That way they get 4-5 gallons of milk out of each cow per day, as opposed to 1+ gallon per day if they milked the cows by hand into a bucket.

Most of the milk on the farm we visited is sent to Land O’ Lakes to make butter and to Hershey’s to make chocolate. That was interesting to find out, as later in our trip we were going to Hershey’s.

The farmer gave us a tour of the whole farm and talked about his crops. It was interesting to hear about how his whole life revolves around the weather – much more than for people living in the suburbs or a city. Yet he does use modern conveniences in that he uses high speed internet access to find out what the weather reports are. (He also uses artificial insemination to propagate his herd – rather than have a bull on site – which can be dangerous.)

On the tour, we all got to pick an ear of corn and to later feed it to the cows. The cows eat the whole thing: the corn, the corncob, the leaves and the silk. We learnt that cows have four stomachs for digesting – that’s why they can eat such tough food (that we can’t digest) like grass and corncobs.

Our kids got to feed two week old calves with very large bottles of milk. The calves are already pretty large at that age. So they need a lot of milk.

We slept in guest rooms in a special section of the farmer’s house. The next morning, all of the guests had breakfast together. We had raw, un-pasteurized milk – straight from the cows. I’ve never had milk that tasted so fresh and creamy! (It was recommended by the farmer that pregnant women and infants didn’t drink it.) They also served homemade yogurt, fresh sausage, scrambled eggs (the eggs came from the poultry farmer next door) and peach cobbler.

I think this was a great experience for the kids, while interesting and enjoyable for us adults. I’d recommend a trip like this for anyone. It gave the kids another perspective on the world, while being hands-on fun. It’s nice when vacations can be restful, yet open the mind to other possibilities in life!