hello december

Saturday it rained...pretty much the whole day.

But Sunday the weather was perfect...hot even!

We decided to check out the fall leaves and headed to the Minoo waterfall.

Most of the leaves had fallen off the trees are were kinda dry and "crunchy" underfoot!

Though, there were several trees that hadn't lost their leaves yet...like this one.

We were feeling a bit hungry and bought a bag of Momiji Tempura.

We tried this when we first moved here and weren't too impressed with them.

Recently, my friend and his mother came to visit and she wanted to try this so we bought her a bag and she loved it.

So, we decided to give it another go...

Warm and crunchy, these were the perfect snack!

The outside coating reminded me of Chinese Pretzels that we have in Hawaii.

In Minoo, they use edible maple leaves and salt them for a year to preserve them. Then they dip the leaves in the batter and fry them up.

For 70 grams they cost between 300 and 400 yen depending on what shop you buy them from. The lines for these were long and krazy!

I'm glad we tried these again!

While walking towards the waterfalls, we heard several "oohs and aahs" we turned around and saw...a shower of maple leaves, cascading down, so beautiful!

I took a video of it if you're interested...here....I gotta remember to take videos in landscape view...always forget, sorry!

We made it to the falls, the leaves nearby were really dry already, not too vibrant.

Here's a shot of the crowd...gads!

Since it is back to rainy today, I decided to take out some of our Christmas decorations...how is your first day of December going?!