More photos from camping

Here are some other miscellaneous photos from our camping trip.

Defrosting a tea towel over the fire so we could wash-up breakfast on our first morning. Do notice the boy in the background. This guy regularly wears shorts to school in winter, it is notable that he has a hat and gloves on!

Second morning: frozen washer (face cloth).

We needed snow chains just to get into the campsite and out again. These things are tricky to get on and very noisy if you get off the snow onto bitumen as we did on Friday going out to get a couple of extra ingredients for lunch.

We were amused to find this toilet-paper origami chart next to the pedestals. I guess it would be useful if you were planning on spending a lot of time sitting there. 32 steps!

A large icicle found by our youngest. Notice his bare arms! He'd been digging in the snow and got quite warm.

The ubiquitous pickup truck that all campsites in Japan own, as do most farmers. They all look the same as this!

Not the best of photos, but this is snow piled up on a fence. Any slightly horizontal surface catches snow and it piles up: even on power lines and washing lines!

I looked in envy on these on-site accommodations as we set up camp on Thursday. They are still "tents" and you have to bring most of your own bedding but have heaters inside and a covered area with a table and BBQ outside. But we paid a lot less for our little piece of snow-covered gravel, and had the satisfaction of doing a reasonably good job of it too. No one has come home sick or any the worse for wear (except for a bit of weariness).

I can't finish without putting up this amazing view. This David and I both saw on walking back from the toilet block to our tent on the first morning and I snapped it on my iPhone that happened to be in my jacket pocket. I put the photo up on Facebook and to my boys' amazement it garnered more than 130 likes, loves, and wows plus many comments. A friend said: that could be anywhere in the world, but I wouldn't have picked Japan!