Frida, our cute domestic and fluffy frog (which always follow us for travels) came out of the luggages in Lausanne to whisper me that she also wanted to show some of her pictures on the blog. Sooooo:
Here is Frida in great discussion with the horse of my Morin Khuur:
Frida was as cold as us at home. But she had a muffler, hopefully.
In Mongolia, Frida met her first boyfriend, Roméo:
She also met a lot of sheeps and goat, but riding them was more difficult than she thought.
So, she tried to make friend with the lovely reindeers:
Of course, Frida followed us in our journeys and didn't vomit after so many hours of car, bravo !
And there were also a lot of pleasures in our trips !
Frida enjoyed as much as us the huge space and landscapes of Mongolia ! She even got stuck in a bush after jumping on it !
Now it's time for her to take a real bath and leave all the dust of Mongolia. Welcome back to civilisation, Frida !
samedi 16 août 2008
the journey of Frida
new-old fashion
I was very surprised to find many young women wearing yugata (summer kimono) in the the streets of Tokyo, specially on sunday. Is it a new fashion to wear traditional clothes ? Well, yugata are much easier to put than traditional kimono.
Anyway, they are really lovely in their flowerish dress !
let's have a drink !
Japan in summer is hell : 33-36 degrees in south, plus 70-80% of humidity. You basically feel to be non-stop in a sauna and need a drink every hour. And it is not specially better in Tokyo !
Hopefully, japanese people are great and in such conditions, if you are thirsty, even in the middle of the countryside, you will find a drink distributor at least in the next km, and every 500 meters in Tokyo.
They are everywhere, with a wide range of choice and illuminate the streets in the night like our christmas trees.
And of course, during the cold winter, you can get hot drinks from those fantastic machines !
In a buddhist temple
In Tokyo, we have visited two buddhist temples, famous for their sculptures, especially many buddhas in stones.
Some of the small temples are quite cute...
But don't mistaken, those small temples are devoted to the unborn children...One of those giant tokyo crow decided to be part of my foto. Then, he tried to eat the hat of the statue !
Some of the 500 small buddhas, who stay in the temple.
Another nice statues were the seven lucky gods. A little more joyful than our suferring christ, don't you think ?
tea plantation
It's always strange to see the real plant of food that you eat everyday, packed in a plastic box. For example, i stupidly thought that rice was growing in the earth until I saw the rice fields, ready to be harvested in Kaseda. Well, it looks like wheat !
Then, have you ever seen a broccoli plant ? There was some in Kozy's parents garden.
Otherwise, I was especially interested into tea trees, as I love japanese green tea. It was another surprise ! 
A tea plantation in Kirishima region. The ventilators help to avoid frost in winter.
goya, but not the painter
I always enjoy the vegetable area of supermarkets of a foreigner country and try to find a fruit of a vegetable that I don't know.
Well...the shops in Khovd didn't propose a wide range of choice (carot, onions, potatoes and cabbage). But in Japan, I was constantly discovering something new and sometime pretty strange. Here is a goya, a kind of cucumber, very bitter, found in the fantastic garden of Kozy's parents.
itadakimasu !
When you go in a japanese restaurant, no need to read japanese to understand what you will eat, most of the time, all the dishes are shown in the window.
...Don't worry about freshness of the food, it's only wax or plastic !
Bon appétit !
a crab
Found on the beach near Kaseda, this crab was somehow not so shy. Actually, the father of Kozy told me that this species (which has a claw bigger than the other one) is very rare in this region.
background sound
Summer means often cricket and cicada (cigales) sounds everywhere. But in Japan, it's not sound, it's almost noise ! The cicada are really loud in Kagoshima area, wake you up at 7 a.m....and when you see the local cicada, well, you understand. It's really huge !
When the cicada grows, he changes his "skin" like a snake. We could see many cast of skin on trees or walls. You can almost believe that it's a real animal.
Back to Japan and Switzerland
We came back to Japan on 28th of July and Switzerland on 12th of August.
It was really weird to come back to the "civilization", especially when it's (first) the super high-tech Japan. But you can't imagine how we welcomed japanese food and confort !!!
We spent most of the time to relax and Carole could continue to discover some funny details of this country. So, the title of this blog has again changed !
dimanche 20 juillet 2008
Trip to taiga : the Tsaatan people
The Tsaatan people are ethnically tuvan and have been stuck in Mongolia during the second world war. They are quite few, about 300, still living nomadically in the taiga in winter or on higher places in summer. The summer camp we visited had about 25 families, spread sometime far from each other.
The summer tipi that our host family used is bigger than the winter one but some people still use the winter one in summer. The height of the winter's one is just enough to stand up in the middle.
The oven is always in the center. As the temperature was like winter in Switzerland or Japan, there was always a fire to heat the tipi.
Dried reindeer meat. In opposition to most of the reindeers herders in the world, the Tsaatan rarely eat their reindeers. They will sometime slaughter an old reindeer and dry its meat to keep it as long as possible.
The reindeer milk is very precious to make cheese (which tastes almost like Emmenthal !) or butter. We both liked it very much. 
The boy of the host family was specially shy but very friendly with his reindeers. 
Trip to taiga : the reindeers
The Tsaatan people are the only reindeers herders of Mongolian. They have about 50 reindeers for each family, which is actually a few to survive only from them. The families must move regularly to find new pasture fields for their animals, who eat mostly lichens.
The reindeers often stay around the tipies (the houses of Tsaatan people).
Even sometime, they want to enter the house !
Some of them had huge antlers ! 
This baby still has to wait a little bit for antlers.
Domestic deers are pretty familiar with humans, more than other domestic animals that we saw in Mongolia. For example, they love to lick your hands because they are a little bit salty. The Tsaatan also give them regularly salt this way.
Look at their strange feet ! The nails make a funny "clicking" sound when the reindeer walks. The voice of the reindeer is also strange. It sounds maybe like a depressive wild pig.
Trip to taiga : on the way
To reach the west camp of Tsaatan people, you must be really brave: after about 35 hours of car on bumpy roads, there's still 8 hours of horse, in a muddy and stony forest, mountains and cliffs. For second time on horse for us, it was a little bit intense !
But Kozy enjoyed it very much !
Tea break
Trip to taiga : Tsaagan Nuur (white lake)
Tsaagan Nuur is the last village before the taiga. It's the central village of lots of tsaatan people. 
When we came back from the taiga, it was the last day of Nadam, the national sport festival. In every village and city, this is the occasion to make a huge party. Many people from countryside also come for this occasion, of course mostly by horse. So, we could see some horse-parking:
The wrestling "stadium" :
And lots of people selling anything to all those visitors. Looks like a drive-in system for horses.
Trip to taiga : Ulaan Uul (red mountain)
Ulan Uul is a small village in a protected area. It was also our last stop before Tsaaga Nuur and the Tsaatan people.The region is increadibly beautiful : pine forests, endless green steppes and many lakes. And far, huge mountains.
The region gets pretty a lot of rain. We have never seen so intense rainbow. It looked like more than seven colours !
Houses of the village are closer from Siberian type than Mongolian. Pretty colorful.
This house was specially interesting ! It was the working place of an old man.
And always, lots of kids who love to be on your fotos.
..and yaks. We knew later why lots of them were attached in tandem : it's easier to gather them quickly. 
