Most of Friday was my typical experience: English lesson, English lesson, bingo game, English lesson, etc. but after school was a special treat. Well, two special treats to be specific. I finally got to time to go over to the gym and play ping pong with the table tennis club here. It's always a pleasure to see these students set all the tables and barriers up with the badminton club and the judo club doing the same thing all in the same space! I was the only adult in the room. They required no direction at all. Just wonderful.
I played about five or six games and actually won three!! They're playing on a completely different level here and it was wonderful to behold. As has been the case around here for over a week now, the gym was an oven. I was pouring sweat and ready to pass out. My new Japanese teacher friends wanted to take me out to an oden dinner so I had to run home and shower and change quickly. Of course this bought me only about 3 minutes of being cool and sweat free but it was wonderful to enjoy it while I could.
I had never heard of oden but everything has been delicious so how could it be anything else? It was a small one room restaurant that sat maybe 14 people all very closely together. We all sat around the central fixture of this whole restaurant: a gently simmering tray of broth with vegetables and meat. This tray was resting on a wooden cart. The owner of the restaurant used to just wheel the cart around and serve people in the street but now he is getting older and decided to move it inside but has kept the cart the same to remind him of his roots. I probably don't need to keep saying this at this point, but the food was remarkable! I tried to have just about one of everything but I ran out of room and couldn't quite make it. Nothing was short of mind blowing.
Saturday I woke up early and boarded a bus for Nikko with Ira, Carrie, a few adult Ed English students, and about 9 other students from Lyman Moore middle school. The bus ride was about 3 hours and we first went to Tōshō-gū which is an ancient temple. My book says that it took 15,000 artists two years to build it and it shows. The place is gorgeous. It is the original home of the three "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkeys. I learned that they are actually a section of larger mural depicting a mother monkey teaching her children about Buddhism and a more accurate translation would be "hear nothing, see nothing, speak nothing." Speaking of monkeys, on the way up to the temple I saw 4 monkeys climbing on the roof of a house!! They ran away too fast and we were driving on so I was unable to take a picture.
Also in this place is the burial site of Tokugawa, a shogun. On the way up to the burial shrine you pass under a very famous carving of a sleeping cat. It is surrounded by bird sculptures so it represents peace because the cat is sleeping and not eating birds. Frankly, it's rather small and unimpressive but the Japanese love it. I actually walked past it once without noticing it and only took a picture with the camera so you'll have to google it or wait until I get back to see it.
In Japan you have to work for the privilege to see monuments, so even though it was a hike just to get to the temple we had to climb another hundred or so steps to get to the very top.
Apparently our group took too much time and we had to rush to make it to lunch.
It was actually pretty good and came complete with a hotdog, french fries, noodles with a glob of mayonnaise, and vegetables with a glob of mayonnaise. :)
Our next stop was about another 1000 or so meters basically straight up the mountain side in a bus which made me a little bit nervous. 27 switchbacks total on the way up but it was worth it because of the waterfall.
And finally it was cool!!
Just outside of the entrance to the waterfall was this enticing looking BBQ. I was rather intrigued and wanted to try one but I upset our tour guide just by stopping long enough to take this picture.
Aaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!
Our next stop was our hotel for the evening. I must say that it was one of the strangest places I have ever stayed. The exterior was very stark, grey, and intimidating. It was also surrounded by tents. Inside was just the bleak grey of concrete as far as you can see. Every once in a while it was broken up by natural maple. The rooms could not have seemed more out of place.
Very old looking and beautiful. The room that is. Not Dave, the man in the picture. :) I'm ashamed to admit it, but it was not at all comfortable. 3 of us shared a room and slept on the tatami mats you see in the picture. We had a thin cushion, a blanket, and a small pillow that I believe was filled with rocks. I think I slept 2 hours total. We had buttered steaks that night for dinner so that helped to ease the pain.
And one last picture from the hotel:
This is our guide and a constant sight: Inekko taking pictures of us.
Sunday we woke up (well, you have to be asleep to wake up but I'm not sure what else to call it) and made our way to this wood carving school.
Now Edo Wonderland was billed as a ninja amusement park!! Wow! As Americans we pictured roller coasters and various rides. It was more of an old school education park filled with aging animatronics. It wasn't without its charms however.
I stumbled upon "Samurai Cat Episode 1: Darth Crow attacking Edo."
Well friends, I don't know how the oscars missed this one. It was an epic tale of love and loss filled ageless themes and a twist at the end that puts "6th Sense" to shame.
There was a bridge from which you could feed fish. These fish have now come to understand how this works and they crowd around the bridge and churn the waters into a feeding frenzy!!
Here's a small child who bested a samurai legend right in front of me!!
Up a hill on the side of this area was a lovely little garden and village with nobody in it. And by no one I mean no one. I was almost worried that I wasn't supposed to be there because it was so eerily quiet. It was nice to get away from the crowds for a while though.
I saw a young girl come running out of a building back in the main area with a blood chilling scream and decided to investigate. It was a historical walk through various diorama type displays which have a much darker tone than their American counterparts as you can see here:
We called it an early night because we needed to get rested for our 9am Kirin brewery tour! We met up with our good friend Paul and about 8 other English students and headed to the Willy Wonka's chocolate factory for adults. I don't particularly care for Kirin beer. It resembles Budweiser or an equally watery and tasteless beer but I've never been on a beer tour and there was free beer at the end so why not?
Pictures are easier than writing and I can cover more information in a shorter amount of time so here you are:
All of our Japanese friends and a 957 liter (I think) beer bottle.
Yoshi likes beer :)
A beer mobile!! Also another remarkable Japanese creation: a beer tap that pours beer and foam separately!!
Will the wonders ever cease?
After our beers and a quick stop at the gift shop we found ourselves being shepherded to the "sea bass." I thought for sure they were saying "sea bus" as in water-taxi, but I was wrong. The name on the stern confirmed it. We took this beautiful vessel to Yokohama: Paul's home. We toured the seaside area to see some gardens and some more wedding photography before we got to Chinatown.
I'm sad to say that I didn't take any pictures of Chinatown on my phone because I was too busy thinking about my imminent death as I later found out it was 104 degrees with humidity in the 80% range. We made it to the Chinese food buffet and it was spectacular!! I keep trying new foods whenever I can and it was here that I tried something that I probably wouldn't have actually put in my mouth if I had known what it was. I've developed the wonderful habit of asking what something is after I finish chewing and swallowing a mouthful or two. My latest culinary journey took me to jellyfish! Yes Mom, I ate jellyfish. :) It wasn't that bad actually. It kind of popped like Mae-fun noodles. I would get it again.
We had planned on going to a baseball game but it was scorching hot, we had all been moving non-stop for 72 hours, and it was supposed to rain so we decided to visit a garden while we could and call it a day after that.
These houses are over 500 years old and were originally from somewhere else. Hokkaido maybe but I don't remember now. They were donated by a wealthy business man who had them all disassembled, shipped to this park, and reassembled.
While we were there we were able to participate in a tea ceremony. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of me doing it because I was performing the ceremony at the time but here are Ira and Tara:
Oh and this wonderful woman from our group that just could not stop giggling the whole time. Her laughter was infectious and soon the whole place was cracking up. I'm really not sure what was so funny, but her laughter was amazing.
Oh, and there were farm animal butt magnets.
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