Belated Pictures of Sand

I got pictures of my winter trip to glorious Nippon a while back, but I haven't gotten around to posting them yet, obviously, since it's one of those big projects, at least as blog posts go. So, I'll try to get them up with some sort of commentary about what we were doing, but it won't end up in chronological or logical or morphological or any other kind of -logical order because I've no doubt forgotten details in the time since and organizing stuff isn't really my forte.

Here we are celebrating our ascent to the top of the Tottori Sand Dunes. When I heard about the sand dunes, I figured it was just going to be like a long beach, but it turns out that the dunes are quite sizable and climbing up them is rather like hiking up a hillside except that the hillside is made of sand and thus more easily deformable under your feet. Forgive me for the topological terminology but I've been computing fundamental groups lately.

Perhaps this picture will give you an idea of how large the dunes really are. We hiked up to the top of the biggest dune we could see, which seemed to be the thing to do. It was cold and clear that day, so we were wearing winter clothing, which seems sort of odd against the backdrop of sand and sea.
My outfit, incidentally, was almost 100% Japanese made. The pants, jacket, and neckwarmer were all gifts from Mie, who apparently has a different idea than most westerners of what looks good on me. The shoes I bought last year in Japan, and the hat was a gift from Mie's niece, who should show up in a later post.


We weren't alone on the trip. Mie's friend accompanied us there. She lives in Tottori (the city, which is on the opposite end of the prefecture from Yonago, where we stayed), so she acted sort of as a tour guide. Her name escapes me at the moment because most of Mie's friends have names that end with -ko, which is very typical for Japanese girl names, but makes remembering them an exercise in frustration.

After tromping around on the dunes for a while, we decided to take a ride on a camel. But there was no real reason to do that, and it was cheaper just to sit on the camel and get our picture taken, so we opted for that. Also, I think we were sort of cold and tired at the time, so it was more practical. When we were sitting on the camel, it started making some weird noises, so the dude there had to calm it down, or at least we thought so. Mie's friend told us after that it was really just pooping and he was probably trying to get us not to notice.

Anyway, after that we headed back and I bought some pear-flavored soft serve because I had never had it before. Pears are a specialty of Tottori prefecture, so we never had it in Shimane. It was really good, even better than green tea ice cream, which is what I would normally get if I were eating ice cream in Japan.


Finally, here's another picture of me. I ran down to the ocean while Mie and her friend stayed up at the top. I suspect they didn't want to climb back up the hillside since it was rather a lot of work. Can you tell which one is me?

I was originally planning on posting more here, but there are too many pictures and I don't feel like spending the next two hours crafting a blog post, so it will have to wait. Until then, it's time for more category theory!