Saturday, January 28, 2012

Bill Comes to Visit

I realized I havent updated this in a long time so these next few posts are backlog.
Bill came to Japan, original plan was to go to Nagano to go skiing, but Bill decided he would rather dislocate his shoulder the week before so we made some last minute changes, but still went to the ski area just to check out the famous Japanese snow. First weekend in Tokyo, went to the Hamarikyu gardens and a maid cafe. No pics from the maid cafe, but here is one in the garden of us taking tea.

The maid cafe is somewhat strange place. The cafe staff are all younger girls 18-22 ish who dress as maids, basically you are paying for their company in kind of an innocent shy guy fantasy, but it cost per hour and you must pay for 2 hours and buy 1 item per hour so it came out to be like 3500 yen for each of us. The clientele is quite varied from single men, groups of middle age women, groups of teenage boys, and some parents and kids. It all seems like innocent fun, but kinda sad some people are so shy that they go to this type of place for social (albeit fantasy) interaction. There are all kinds of things like cute pictures or cute little bunny/kitty food designs.

During the week we went back to Utsunomiya and I showed Bill some of my favorite restaurants. One place is a small grouping of hut type places where each hut serves different food. We picked the yakitori (chicken skewer) place. Had a great time, one guy was even very impressed by Bill was so happy he was there told us all about his hobby of low-rider cars, very amusing, stayed there for about 5hrs and were completely drunk, but not worse than the guys we met. One guy left the bar after giving his wallet to the bar tender for the bar tender to take the correct amount of cash, luckily people in Japan are honest and the bartender only took out what the guy owed, the other guy barely stumbled away.

The next day Bill and I were supposed to leave early for Nagano to check out the ski areas, but Bill had such a bad hang over he slept til about noon. Eventually we got out, had some famous Utsunomiya gyouza and headed out. Ended up going to Matsumoto where there is a beautiful castle.

Then headed to a shrine where we were attacked by pigeons.

Headed over to a ramen shop, called sakura something ramen, it was awesome for anyone planning to go to matsumoto or happen to be in the area.
Went back to the castle for some night viewing.

The next day we headed to a wasabi farm, which was kinda fun, but not really worth the separate trip, we were killing time before heading to nozawa onsen although not to ski.

Interesting thing about the wasabi is that it is farmed it what looks like rock beds, a diverted stream runs between the rockbeds and it is all very intricately laid out so the water runs from one side of the wasabi rockbed to the next.
Above you can see how the wasabi is flooded and the water runs through from outside towards the inside along the angled rows.

Finally made it to Nozawa onsen and checked out the ski hill, and the 12 free onsen. One onsen was so incredibly hot we could only stand it a few seconds seriously hot!!!

The picture above is the typical look of the onsen there, pretty small places, this one is the most famous and super hot. Bill and I found the most bearable to be the one with "Bear" in the name. It snowed and snowed and snowed, so by the time we left the next morning the train couldnt make it back up to the station. Luckily the train company was able to get us a bus that took us all down to the next train station, but since this was a tourist town try telling a bunch of americans/aussies and chinese that the train is cancelled with little explanation, people were getting fired up, luckily I could understand his announcement enough to know the bus was coming and Bill and I werent in a big hurry anyway so we were just going with the flow. Wish more people could just relax, nothing you can do about a shit ton of snow falling, not the train companies fault. Thats about it. Here is Bill and I drinking some wasabi beer at the wasabi farm.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

New Years and Christmas

Christmas isnt so big in Japan, but new years is basically very similar where families get together and visit the local shrine or just spend time together at home. We went up to Akita to see some snow, visit a hot spring and check out the legend of the Namahage. Namahage are demons that visit the local peoples houses on new years and threaten to take naughty children away to the forest unless they promise to behave, then the parents give the Namahage sake and mochi. Namahage are played by the local single people. Literally scaring little kids into behaving, Love it.

We then hiked up the 999 steps to a shrine, not sure if the shrine is evil or not something about the namahage, but 999 steps is a bad number and supposedly created by the devil.

Almost to the top of the shrine there was a well where you check your reflection, if your reflection appears you wont die soon. Well is near the middle with the Tori Gate to the shrine on the left.

The shrine was really nice 5 small wooden shrines, on top of the small hike with a snowy background, we had the place to ourselves and were only 2 of a few people who had made the trek that day.

We were also able to check out the famous nyutou onsen, which was very beautiful and my first coed onsen. I think its coed because the water is super milky so everyone is pretty covered up.