Toba Lake

Hi world!

This time we meet again quite soon, eh? haha.. Yup, thx to my mood for editing these old photos, I can get the spirit to update this blog again. This time I wont tell you about Japan. I will tell you about Toba Lake in Sumatra island. For you guys who don't know or never been there. I'll explain a bit about it to you.

Toba Lake is the biggest lake in Indonesia (cmiiw). It is located in northern part of Sumatra island. You can see the location of the lake in the map below.

As you can see in the map below, the uniqueness of this lake is there is an island in the center of the lake. The island's name is Samosir island. The lake is located in the central of North Sumatra province, besides the city of Parapat. It takes about 4-5 hours to get to Parapat city from Medan (the capital of North Sumatra province) by car.
Pictures below are pictures of Parapat city, Toba Lake, and Samosir Island. Since these pics are very old ones and I took them from my cell's camera, so the quality may not be that good. But, anyway, just enjoy the beauty of Toba Lake! ;D

These are the pictures of Parapat city.

These are the pics of the lake.

There is one hill on the side of the lake that is called "batu gantung" (hanging stone in English). If you can see in the pic above (may be not. Sorry), there is a stone that is hanged naturally. The locals have their own story about this stone. If I'm not mistaken, the story is about a woman who was betrayed by her boyfriend, and decided to kill herself by jump into the lake from the hill. Suddenly, she turned into stone.

Anyway, these are the pics of Samosir Island.

In the island, there is a very old, famous wooden puppet that is called Sigale-gale. This puppet, controlled by human, can dance the tranditional dance of Batak tribe (the tribe that originally from North Sumatra), Tor-tor dance.

See, you can even dance with the puppet with traditional music of Batak tribe called "Gondang".

That's all for this time. If you have chance, just visit Toba Lake and enjoy the beauty of Toba Lake and Samosir Island yourself. ;D

See ya.

Tottori (鳥取 )

Hello world..

This Semester is just like hell!!! So many assignments, papers and presentation to do. And this week, for the first time since I arrived in Japan, my sinusitis relapse again. Nice timing, don't you think? Also, you have to know that medicine in Japan is weak but expensive. So, even I've been taking medicine for about a week, I still have this damn sinusitis.

Ok, stop complaining. This time I want to tell you about my trip to Tottori. Tottori is located between Okayama and Kyoto. It took about 4 hours to get to Tottori from Higashi Hiroshima by bus. I went there on June 19, but thanks to this busy semester and this laziness of mine, I can only post it now.

Tottori is not the biggest cities in Japan. Even though Tottori city is the capital of Tottori prefecture, but it is definitely much smaller than Hiroshima city. Here are some pictures of my trip:

Yes, another Shrine in Japan. This shrine actually sells some kind of charm that could bring you wealth. (it is what the staff told us).

Then I went to some kind of lake (sorry, I dont know the name of the lake) where there are many unique, big corals. They are pretty, though.

Then, look at the food I ate in the restaurant there! The food was superb! That meal set had some kind of sashimi (fish, oyster, and shrimp) that you can grill, crab rice, and soup. You can even take more shrimp as much as you can! It was all-you-can-eat-type. Wooooww.. I cant resist the temptation of uploading this picture. Hahahaha..

Here we go to the best part of my trip ;D ...

The best part of Tottori is its mini desert. Yes, desert in Japan. Amazing, no? But, I think the desert is artificial one, since there are many artificial things here. Haha. At least it is beautiful.

And, next to the desert, there is a sand museum. Sand museum? Yes, every statue or sculpture here is made by sand. Because when I went there was the time of World Cup 2010 in South Africa, so the theme of this museum was 'Africa'.

As you can see, the theme was Africa. Haha. Great, no?

Ok, that's the report of my Tottori trip. See you in my next post.

And, please wish me luck on my next math exam. T_T