Hi, this is my turn to write steemit this time. My name is Sacky and I'm wife of Marcy. This time, I will write about our hometown Niigata.

夫に誘われてSteemitを書くことになりましたSackyです。今回は私たちの住んでいる新潟のことについて書きたいと思います。

Niigata Prefecture is located 2 hours away by Shinkansen from Tokyo. Its area is 5th largest in Japan and has population of 2.35million. Niigata city, where we live, has 800,000 population and located at Northern Niigata. Niigata city is prefecture capital so you imagine this is a quite big city but the area we live in is actually surrounded by rice fields, where you hear frogs croak and you see a lot of birds including pheasants and egrets. You know, Niigata produces the most number of rice in Japan. You can see the beautiful green rice fields in this time of the year.

新潟県は東京から新幹線で約2時間という意外とアクセスのいい場所にあります。面積では日本で5番目、人口は235万人。私たちの住む新潟市は人口約80万人の都市で、県の北部に位置します。割と都会と思われるかもしれませんが、実際は合併で大きくなった町で、特に私たちの住む地域は市内と言えど田んぼだらけ。毎日カエルが大合唱して、アパートの窓からは雉やサギが見えたりとさすがコメ大国新潟です。綺麗でしょ♪

In winter, it is cloudy, snowy, rainy or hailing everyday. You rarely see the sun for many days. Coming from Shikoku island located by pacific coast, I don't get used to this kind of whether, which sometimes depresses me, but we can enjoy skiing, snowboarding, snow shoeing or onsen (hot spring) in winter, and climbing, camping etc in summer. so people who like nature and outdoor, you definitely like it here. The famous camping goods producers such as Snow Peak, Captain stag, UNIFLAME are all from Niigata.

冬季は毎日曇り、雪、雨やあられで太陽をほぼ見ることのできない恐ろしい天気で、四国出身者としては冬のこの天気だけはうつ病になりそうになっていますが、冬はスキー、スノーボード、スノーシューや温泉、夏は登山、キャンプなどアウトドア好きには満喫できるところです。スノーピーク、キャプテンスタッグ、ユニフレームなど日本の有名なキャンプメーカーも新潟にあるのもうなずけます。

Recently, we wanted to do something new and started bird watching. Niigata is actually famous place to enjoy natural bird watching where there are many "gata." I checked up the dictionary and it says gata means lagoon but I think it is more like a big pond or lake. You can see many natural birds in these gata and even in the parks nearby. There are also famous areas where there are many swans fly every winter.

そんな私たちが最近、新しいことをしたいと始めたのがバードウォッチング。新潟は知る人ぞ知る野鳥天国です。「潟」と呼ばれる湖のようなところがたくさんあったり、近くの公園でもたくさんの野鳥が見える冬には白鳥も飛来します。

We are still beginners but we would like to see kingfisher and ruddy kingfisher. What we want to see the most is babies of long-tailed tits. These birds tends to get together and it looks like rice dumplings. fluffy and so cute!

まだまだ初心者なのですが、来シーズンはカワセミとアカショウビンが見たいです。あと、どうしても見たいのがエナガの子供のエナガ団子。と呼ばれていてめちゃめちゃかわいいです。

出所：野鳥図鑑ナツメ社

Anyway, we enjoy life here in Niigata and hope we can share part of our daily lives to you :) Thank you!

こんな感じで新潟生活を楽しんでいる私たちの些細な日常を時々ですが書いていければと思います。