Mia-tachi no tabi - Day 20 - Whimsical Fantasy

Today we only had one thing on our plate: the Ghibli museum. So we spent the morning lounging around reading. We finally pried ourselfs up around 12:30 to set off to make our 2 :00 entrance time. It was a 20 minute walk to Shinjuku station, then. 17 minute train ride, then a 20 minute walk to the museum. The walk was nice though, as most of it was along a big shady park.

We arrived a little early, but they still let us in. The building is really charming.

Most of the displays are interactive, so don't make much sense to photograph, so I didn't take too many pictures. But here are some shots of the buildings interior.

The first floor had a room with a bunch of cool stop motion types of displays and a little movie theater. The second floor had a study that I assume is supposed to be modeled after Hayao Miyazaki's and it was amazingly detailed. It also had a room with a bunch of little booths with different types of ways to view things. So one had a periscope you used to find little fuzz balls in the trees, another had a telescope used to look at a house, and the one that took us longest to figure out was the pinhole camera. You pointed the pinhole at something and viewed it from the top.

The third floor had the catbus (limited to children) and the gift shop, which was cute and insanely crowded. 

Finally, the roof had a kind of garden with this guy:

After viewing everything, we went back down for th movie. Our movie tickets are really cool, since they are made out of film strips from Ghibli films. I was thinking about refusing to see the movie if we didn't get to keep them, but they don't take the tickets, just stamp them, which is good, since the movie was probably my favorite part. It was all in Japanese, but I understood most of it, though I am sure the finer details escaped me. It was only 16 minutes long. It was called "Hoshi o Katta Hi" or "The Day I Bought a Star". 

What is funn is that while in line I was looking at a poster that showed three of the shorts they show (it changes every month) and I wanted to see this one, but didn't think the chances of it being shown were very high. So yay!

As the title says, this is about a boy who buys a star. He runs away from home and is taken in by a kind lady who let's him stay in a shed in her yard and work in the garden. One day when taking his harvest to market, he runs into two strange peddlers who offer to trade him a seed of a star for his load. He agrees and takes the seed home and plants it. The next morning a little planet has grown with three little moons. Another harvest allows him to buy a spray bottle to water it with, and it develops clouds and storms, and the next day, an ocean had been born. But soon his parents come for him and he leaves his star with Ninya as he returns home. But soon he is picked up by the peddlers who sold him the star and taken back to Ninya so he can harvest his star and set it afloat in the galaxy where it will need 60 years to finish growing before he can return to it. So until then he has to return home. (The end is the part I am fuzziest on).

After the museum we went is search of lunch/dinner. We found a scetchy looking restraunt that the internet told us had tempura, but they didn't. Sadly, we didn't learn this until after ordering drinks, so we had to finish those before leaving. And then they wanted to charge us 730 for the cabbag they had brought us and we hadn't touched. We refused and they backed down to 230. We refused and they backed down entirely. So the next restraunt we chose was the one I had found tonight before in Shinjuku on tripadvisor which had lots of reviews that proved it had tempura. It was really cute and tasty.

After dinner we went to the Takano Fruit Parlor Cafe for parfaits  the final item on my food list for Japan. It was a very ritzy feeling place. The parfaits were very pretty:

Mom got mango while Rich and I got chocolate. They were all tasty, though sadly there was a layer of shaved ice in the mango my mom didn't care for. But it had a really nice mango flavor and lots of fresh mango. The chocolate had chunks of truffles on the top and banana at the bottom. I have added parfaits to my list of things I need to try to make at home.

Then we returned to the hotel and played bridge until 11:30 when I put a stop to it so as to not mess up the next day's sleeping schedule.

And thus our glorious journey came to an end. Tomorrow we fly home, which isn't really worth recording, so I won't. Bye!

Mia-tachi no tabi - Day 19 - On With the Festivities!

My plan to wake up healthy was only partially realized. The pillows we got at Zenkoji were so thin they were almost invisible. I slept ok, but woke up stiff with pressure still humming in my ears. Other than that, all good.

We had a leaisurly morning before checking out, leaving our luggage, and heading to the Takayama festival. It was only 10:30 in the morning, but the festival was in full swing. 

There were tons of food stalls and souvenir stalls, and on the street in front of the shrine were the yatai (festival floats I think) all lined up. There are 11, though I didn't count to see if they were all present, and they are all considered national treasures or something. They were pretty cool, but as normal, I was swallowed up by the desire to take pictures and spent more time doing that then looking at the yatai. One reason why I am sometimes loath to carry a camera. 

The one festival performance I had wanted to see was the Karakuri performance, which is a puppet show. This particular performance features three puppets, a priest or god of some sort, and two acrobatic children, a girl and a boy. They were supposed to dance to the music, which was traditional Japanese and cool sounding, but as far as I could see (which was never very clearly), dancing considered of the main puppet bobbing his head in time to the music and moving back and forward. The boy acrobat did chin ups and pull overs. The girl just ran around the main puppet. It is possible that they eventually did something else, but we wouldn't know, since we left. We did see at least two TV cameras set up to record the performance, so maybe we can find it later online. 

See that little red thing off in the distance? That is the puppet stage.

We went in search of food, where daunted by the choices, and then got some stuff and left the festival in search of drinks. We were planing to go back, but the search for drinks took longer than expected, so in the end we returned for our luggage and said farewell to Takayama. 

We enjoyed a lovely train ride back to Tokyo and may have seen the bottom half of Mt Fuji on our way. We arrived shortly after five and set about finding our hotel. This time we are I. The Shinjuku area. Our room is actually a service appartment, which is nice.

Once we had relaxed a bit we were out the door again in search of food. We found a cute little yakiniku place and enjoyed.

We wandered around a bit, looking at the lights and all the people.

Eventually we retired for a good nights sleep in real beds.

Mia-tachi no tabi - Day 18 - Up into the mountains (again)

I slept for almost 10 hours and woke up feeling almost healthy. My plan for tomorrow is to wake up cured.

We left Kanazawa bright and early on the 8:45 bus. We arrived in Shirokawago about an hour later. We wandered the village a bit, 

climbed to the viewpoint, 

And then went into one of the gassho-zukuri houses. It is called the Wada House after the name of the family that lived (lives?) there. Yaemon Wada was made the first mayor of Shirokawago over 100 years ago,and his house is considered one of the most important in the village. There wasn't a whole lot in it though. 

This is not the Wada house, since I forgot to get a picture, but it looks a lot like it. Below is the inside of the Wada house.

After that we wandered outside of the tourist part of town in search of a post office for cash (which were almost out of and needed for our next hotel). After finding one and regaining the peace of mind money brings, we returned to Shirakawago proper and got lunch at a little restraunt.

Then we wandered towards Hachiman shrine, which had a little museum next to it dedicated to the Doburoku Festival, which is a sake festival. I paid the 300 yen entry fee while the others waited outside. The museum consisted of a little 12 minute movie explaining the festival (in Japanese, no subtitles) and then some wax figures of the festival performers or whatever they were. 

On the second floor there was a little museum with some old sake stuff, the dragon masks, and a festival shrine. When I went to leave, the lady at the desk offered me a sample of the unrefined sake. After one little sip, I called Mom and Rich over to try some so I wouldn't have to drink it all myself. The lady then informed us it was a little over 15% alcohol. None of us liked it, but we managed to finish the cup smiling and then hurry off.

We just barely returned to the bus station in time to catch the bus to Takayama. The ride included a stretch through quite possibly the longest tunnel I have ever been through. I had totally forgotten how many tunnels were involved in the ride and was very dissapointed. 

Again the bus ride was about a hour long. After which it was a 7 minute walk to our hotel, which is actually a temple that runs a youth hostel. There was only employee available, a lady named Yukina, and she was busy with another guest when we arrived. She had us wait in a little lounge while she gave the other guy a really long tour. Then it came our turn for the really long tour, which included the baggae storage, the kitchen, the computers, the showers, then our rooms and another shower. We are on the top floor, which only has one bedroom (seems like it is really two, so Rich gets his own room again), and a bathroom and shower.

The reason we came to Takayama was for the Takayama Festival, which is held twice a year and is considered one three most beautiful festivals in Japan. Sadly it was canceled today due to rain. We hope it is better tomorrow. Since there was no festival, we first found this foot onsen:

The we wandered through the old part of town:

And then went for dinner. This area is famous for its Hida beef, which apparently beat Kobe beef one time in the Japanese beef rankings. So we decided to try that. We used tripadvisor to find a restaurant and made our way there. We actually had to wait for a table, as it was very crowded and not very big:

When we were seated, it was at a large table where we were joined by a Japnese lady and a British couple. It ended up being very interesting. Soon after we got our food the Japanese lady started to ask questions. Her English was decent enough to converse and we soon found out that she actually was from Fukui (the city near Sabae) and she was friends with the daughter of the owner of UFO (the company Myra works at). Once the British couple heard us talking with her, eventually they chimed in and we started an interesting conversation with them. Japan is their last stop in a three month Asian tour for their honeymoon. It was a very enjoyable conversation. The food wasn't very interesting (though Rich really enjoyed his dish). 

After that we headed back towards our hotel and found that while the ceremonies may have been canceled, the festival lived in the form of little food stalls all along the river. Sadly, we were all quite full at that point, but I did get a chocolate covered banana with sprinkles. It tasted like a banana with sprinkles.

It still didn't occur to me until we were back at our hotel that the shrine would probably be worth visiting anyway. At that point no one was interested in going back out. So we didn't.

Mia-tachi no tabi - Day 17 - A hazy day of congestion

I knew it was bound to happen, but I prayed that it would not. But it did. Mom and I both came down with Rich's cold last night.

Today was the day we were to sit in on Myra's classes and watch her teach. So at least we didn't have to do much walking around. We probably have started an epidemic though. First Myra will catch is and then pass it on to all of the teachers, who will spread it to their students, who will take it home to their parents, who will go out and infect anyone left. Good thing Rich didn't suffer from Zombieness.

The classes were lots of fun, even through the pounding headache and pressurized ears. There were three of the same class in a row (though different students of course). I think we we observing a 6th grade class at Yoshikawa Shogaku. They were learning "Where do you want to go?" and "I want to go to _". So I got to say "I want to go to Australia" like ten times before I got bored and started wanting to go other places. It was really funny when I would say a place not in their textbook. Russia, England, and Mexico all caused much yelling and confusion. Mexico was especially funny. One boy clutched his head in confusion. Also, Rich wanting to go to Italy really amused them for some reason. Italy wasn't in their book proper, but it was in the chapter heading. And despite the fact that their word for Italy, Itallia, is really similar to our word, they couldn't make the connection. Rich finally changed his desired destination when he got tired of being laughed at.

After class we went to revolving sushi. I didn't object to this in the slightest, since at that point the mere thought of food made me feel like hurling. So I got some French fries at my family's urging and was able to eat them as I worked hard not to think about the sushi all around me. It was an interesting restaurant and I actually had fun, while Mom and Rich stated that they had found paradise. It was super cheap. The way it works is like this: there is a conveyer belt going by your table with a bunch of different types of sushi. You do not eat thesse (Myra says they sit there for a while and may not be safe). Every table has a little touch interface where you place orders for individual plates. Your order is delivered to you on the conveyer belt, but on a little red booster seat so you can differentiate between it and the free range stuff. They have tons of different types of sushi, regular nigiri, maki, vegetable sushi, and other types of meat besides seafood.

After lunch Myra drove us to the station and we departed to Kanazawa. The train ride was short, mostly because I slept though it all. Upon arriving, we secured our tickets to and from Shirakawago, then caught a bus to near our hotel. Then we eventually found the hotel (it was a little hidden) and checked into our Japanese style rooms. We had two rooms, which was really nice since Rich is mostly recovered now, so he doesn't have to put up with sleeping in a sick room.

After dumping our luggage, we immediently set off for Kenrokuen garden. To get there we went through the Kanazawa castle park. We were too late to enter the castle (they close and 4:30 and last entry is 4), but we were able to wonder the grounds a bit and see the buildings from the outside.  

We found the gardens and paid our 300 yen admission. I was almost immediently done at that point, being totally drained of energy with a choruses of little bells singing pounding at my head. But we managed to wander the gardens for about a half hour. The were pretty, but I get the feeling that they are only really worth seeing when either the blossoms are blooming or the autumn colors have arrived. We did enjoy hunting down the garden's fountain, which is the oldest fountain in Japan and works through natural pressure. Then we were ready to call it a day.

We were told by my family that we should buy food in Sabae and take it with us, since Kanazawa didn't have any food. This was a lie. Sadly, we didn't feel up to going to any if the 20 restaurants we passed to and from the garden. So we hunted down a combini, which was further than we thought, bought dinner and breakfast, and then returned to the hotel for a nice relaxing bath and dinner. I then tiredly wrote this post and then went to bed at 8:30. Good night.

Mia-tachi no tabi - Day 16 - The Long, Long Tunnel

We began the day with a trip to Eiheiji. About 10 minutes from the temple, we encountered construction. Annoying, but shouldn't be too bad, we thought. Then, about 10 meters from the end of the tunnel, we stopped for some reason. We quickly learned the reason. There had been an accident. And this was a single lane tunnel. Since they were doing construction. So there was no way out. We excitedly watched an ambulance go by. Then a police car. Then the ambulance left. Then the police car pulled forward. Eventually a tow truck showed up. Much later it left. Finally, after being stopped for an hour, we were released from our prison.

We arrived at Eiheiji soon after that. We met Miwa-san, a monk whose son Myra teaches. He guided us through the temple and told us cool things at various places.  

This room had over 100 paintings on the ceiling. Amount them are two koi, two lions, and a squirrel. It is said if you can find all five you will have good fortune. We found them all, but I couldn't photograph the entire ceiling, so if you want to look you have to go yourself. 

The temple was founded in the 1200s, but none of the original buildings remain. This gate is the oldest building in the temple.

Eiheiji also boasts the oldest elevator in Japan. We got to ride it down because of Mom's knees.

After the temple, we returned to Sabae and went to Stamina Taro for an all you can eat lunch. It was kind of like a buffet which included yakiniku. It was quite tasty and we left very full. Ice cream and meat are good.

After stuffing ourselves to the gills, we went to karaoke. Since we were before 6 it was only 200 yen a person per hour, so we opted for 2 hours of joyful song. Except poor Rich was sick and therefor unable to honor us with his singing. The rest of us had fun though.

Once our time was up, we returned to Myra's appartment and played bridge until bedtime. Hugh and Mako dropped by to say goodbye and give Mom a gift, which was really nice.

Mia-tachi no tabi - Day 15 - Livin' Dangerously

This morning we woke up bright and early. And then spent like 2 hours preparing and eating breakfast with a break for laundry in between. Around 9:30 we finally departed and I got to drive to the hotel! It was like a five minute drive, but it was fun. It was actually really easy to adapt to.

We met up with the rest of our group and headed to the park. The park has a little free zoo with some monkeys, birds, and red pandas. It also has a view point at the top (the park is on what is called a mountain, but is really a hill) and a little tea house with a koi pond.

After the park we dropped by a supermarket and picked up stuff for lunch, returned to Myra's appartment to eat and call home to chat. Then we set off on a drive to the coast. The drive was really pretty and relaxing, though really cramped. 

Then we returned to Sabae. We went back to the zoo hoping to see baby red pandas, since the sign said they made there debut today, but we must have missed them. So we went back to Myra's again and played with the koto. Rich got to drive back.

Myra and I learned how to sort of play bridge (as in, we were taught, but still had no idea what was going on), then around 7 we walked to a yakitori restaurant where we met Myra's friends. Hugh is from South Africa and is here teaching English, his fiancé Mako, and Kaori, the Japanese lady who lived in America for 15 years and has very good English. The food was good, the company excellent, and the night was lots of fun. A great end to a good day.