vacation all i ever wanted
Zombie jokes aside. Hello. Yeah I'm still writing blog entries. Sorry it's taken me so long to get to this one. I guess I was just feeling overwhelmed or something? This is a definitive answer, you can tell because of the question mark I added. Anyway I'm sure the first question on a lot of you guys' minds' is. DID I SURVIVE THE TYPHOON. The answer is yes. I managed to survive it raining a lot with flying colors. It would be awfully hard to type this message if I was dead!
But yeah the Typhoon, while being kind of a big deal like in that all the people in Nagoya had to evacuate and the subways in tokyo getting flooded, didn't actually have any effect other than that it rained a whole lot. And it never rained to bad anywhere I was so it was actually fine? Personally I kind of like the rain. I like the sound and the smell and I like seeing the sky all gray, its so relaxing. Like you could just lay in bed looking out the window all day or something. Of course I didn't get to do that, but still I was appreciative of the rain while it was happening.
Pretty much all of last week (since last last saturday) I was on vacation with my host family. It was fun, a little tiring but fun. Originally we were just going to be on vacation until wednesday but then we kept going until saturday? By the end of it I was totally exhausted, but I saw lots of cool stuff. I saw the sea, I saw mt. fuji, I went to a hot spring, I stayed at ryoukan (japanese style inn), I saw a huge waterfall and rapids, I saw a castle in nagoya and a old japanese battlefield! It was great, and all the food was great too.
Lets see, the first thing we did was to visit Mrs. K's family in a suburb of Nagoya, which is the third largest city in Japan. We saw the castle before we went to see her family. It was so cool looking you guys I can't even explain! The whole thing was made of stone and wood, the inside was a museum. I can't even imagine what it must have looked like when it was first made. Totally amazing, the greenery surrounding it was none to bad to look at either.
Then we got to Mrs. K's families house. I guess we were visiting because it was her fathers birthday. The meal was great, Mrs. K is a great cool, and so is her mom! Afterwards we had cake, and I got to say, japanese cake is pretty okay you guys. It tasted more like strawberry shortcake than anything else. When I first got to their houses Mrs. K's mom, who for the purposes of this blog will be called d-san, gave everyone ice cream when we first got to her house too, it was totally awesome! It was like. Chocolate icecream with a sweet creamy coffee coating? It was an ice cream bar, man was it delicious.
Japanese ice cream rocks you guys.
You should all know how much of a sucker I have for ice cream, it's like, aside from brownies, one of the only sweet things I could eat all the time. If I could eat ice cream for every meal I probably would. I am not lying when I say every time I have seen a store selling ice cream in japan that I have bought some. So far I have had green tea, run raisen, soba, chocolate, sesame, roasted tea, grape, and strawberry cheese cake flavors. And they all tasted freaking amazing. Except rum raisin, it tasted way to much like actual rum, it kind of freaked me out. So far Soba has been my favorite, but sesame flavor was really good. That might have been because we were in a region of japan that specializes in dairy products. I'll have to try the same flavor somewhere else to see if it still has the same appeal.
Even Japanese soft serve tastes so good. My food goal while in Japan is to try as many different flavors as I can. Wish me luck everyone.
Anyway the day after we went to Samigahara which is a japanese battlefield where Tokugawa Ieyasu fought. I realize that's all a bunch of nonsense words to most of you but I guess if I had to compare it to a famous american military battle it would be like....... Washington at the crossing of Delaware! Tokugawa Ieyasu was one of the three men that helped to unite all of Japan. The period in Japanese history that brought Japan into "modernity" so to speak and made it the first asian nation to be able to compete with western powers is called the Tokugawa period. This guy is basically a huge deal.
The battle field is all just grass and shit now but they had some cool stuff explaining the battle and everything. It was pretty neat. After that we were going to go fishing at this river in the mountains. We drove all the way there on mountain roads. The view was totally amazing, we were driving right along the edge of the road and could see a huge river down below. The forest was thick and the trees were like giants. The river was at some points flowing smoothly and at other a tumultuous rapid! I even saw a waterfall. It was totally beautiful. What added to the appeal for me was that it started raining while we were driving, hearing the raindrops hit against the window and run down stream to join the river was a really great sight. It was totally awesome.
There's a japanese phrase, momokigaaru. It describes a state of mind after you see something simple and beautiful, a feeling of well being and slight amazement. That phrase was so appropriate that day, everything I saw was totally beautiful and amazing. Because of the rain it was too dangerous to go fishing so we stopped at this old fashioned Japanese restaurant instead, there aren't a lot of people living in the mountains and not a lot of travelers come by either, so this restaurant had an amazing homey feel. When you walked into the eating area (after taking off your shoes of course) there were two huge windows to your right and left that went along the entire length of the wall. Outside of the right window you could see a beautiful Japanese rock garden, looking even better than usual because of the rain. Out the left window the river's rapids raged on. Take a breath and the cool mountain air fills your lungs.
Totally amazing.
The food was good too. :)
That would have been a great place to take a nap... I think that actually the rain was a really lucky thing, because if it hadn't rained we wouldn't have gone to that great restaurant. Everything about it was awesome..... except. The bathroom. When I went to use the toliet and when I walked inside. O___O ! JAPANESE STYLE SEATLESS TOILET. (insert alarm signals here) SINCE MOST OF YOU GUYS PROBABLY DON'T KNOW THIS.... before western style toliets came to Japan the Japanese had this funny kind of toliet that is like a small tub in the floor. It still has a flusher and everything, there's just no seat. You have to squat over it to... Do your business. Oh my god its super freaking uncomfortable. I was so glad I only had to take a leak. I was also glad that for some reason my first year japanese teacher at depauw felt it necessary to educate us on the workings of japanese style toliets. Thank you for you very important lessons Yoshinaga-sensei. I totally owe you one.
After that we went to a Japanese Inn (a ryoukan). There was an onsen (hot spring) there! Ryoukans are pretty neat and usually very expensive, finding a ryoukan that only cost 9000 yen a person was pretty amazing!! And it was right by the sea, it was a great view but the ocean was brown because of all the sand floating around thanks to the typhoon, still it was pretty cool to see. The rooms in Ryoukans are like one big living room, the futan's are kept in the closets behind sliding doors. The room was pretty big, I'd say like... 12 Tatami mats. When we walked in the first thing you noticed was this huge table in the middle of the room, sitting down in front of it we started watching tv. There was this special about an armless piano player on TV. After a while a woman walked in bringing all kinds of delicious food. And she kept bringing food. We had baked fish, udon, nabe, a huge boat filled with REALLY FREAKING DELICIOUS OH MY GOD THE BEST I'VE EVER TASTED sashimi and all kinds of other delicious stuff. The food alone was worth the 9000 yen price, but afterwards we got to go into the hot springs.
Your supposed to go into the onsen totally naked in case you guys didn't know. I was actually pretty nervous about this. Originally when I came to Japan I had every intention of never going to an onsen for this reason. I don't think of myself as a prude. I don't really think negatively of my own body either, but still. There was something super scary about. Being naked around a bunch of people. I walked to the onsen wearing one of the provided yukata with Masumi-san, totally freaking out internal. but actually. It wasn't to bad. I just had to do a gut check or something I guess? At onsen's and actually Japanese style baths your supposed to wash off your body before you get in the hot spring/tub. The tub/hot spring part is the relaxing fun part. Your not supposed to go in without washing yourself because you'll get the water in the hot spring/tub "dirty."
All in all it was actually a really nice experience. The hot water was really nice (and also way hotter than I first expected, yeowch) and made my skin feel silky smooth. It also made me kind of dizzy. And super sleepy. It was all I could manage to lug myself up to the to the room get into my futon. I feel asleep almost instantaneously. In the morning I repeated the process, but instead of falling asleep in my futon I had to do it in the car because we were on our way back to d-san's.
But yeah the Typhoon, while being kind of a big deal like in that all the people in Nagoya had to evacuate and the subways in tokyo getting flooded, didn't actually have any effect other than that it rained a whole lot. And it never rained to bad anywhere I was so it was actually fine? Personally I kind of like the rain. I like the sound and the smell and I like seeing the sky all gray, its so relaxing. Like you could just lay in bed looking out the window all day or something. Of course I didn't get to do that, but still I was appreciative of the rain while it was happening.
Pretty much all of last week (since last last saturday) I was on vacation with my host family. It was fun, a little tiring but fun. Originally we were just going to be on vacation until wednesday but then we kept going until saturday? By the end of it I was totally exhausted, but I saw lots of cool stuff. I saw the sea, I saw mt. fuji, I went to a hot spring, I stayed at ryoukan (japanese style inn), I saw a huge waterfall and rapids, I saw a castle in nagoya and a old japanese battlefield! It was great, and all the food was great too.
Lets see, the first thing we did was to visit Mrs. K's family in a suburb of Nagoya, which is the third largest city in Japan. We saw the castle before we went to see her family. It was so cool looking you guys I can't even explain! The whole thing was made of stone and wood, the inside was a museum. I can't even imagine what it must have looked like when it was first made. Totally amazing, the greenery surrounding it was none to bad to look at either.
Then we got to Mrs. K's families house. I guess we were visiting because it was her fathers birthday. The meal was great, Mrs. K is a great cool, and so is her mom! Afterwards we had cake, and I got to say, japanese cake is pretty okay you guys. It tasted more like strawberry shortcake than anything else. When I first got to their houses Mrs. K's mom, who for the purposes of this blog will be called d-san, gave everyone ice cream when we first got to her house too, it was totally awesome! It was like. Chocolate icecream with a sweet creamy coffee coating? It was an ice cream bar, man was it delicious.
Japanese ice cream rocks you guys.
You should all know how much of a sucker I have for ice cream, it's like, aside from brownies, one of the only sweet things I could eat all the time. If I could eat ice cream for every meal I probably would. I am not lying when I say every time I have seen a store selling ice cream in japan that I have bought some. So far I have had green tea, run raisen, soba, chocolate, sesame, roasted tea, grape, and strawberry cheese cake flavors. And they all tasted freaking amazing. Except rum raisin, it tasted way to much like actual rum, it kind of freaked me out. So far Soba has been my favorite, but sesame flavor was really good. That might have been because we were in a region of japan that specializes in dairy products. I'll have to try the same flavor somewhere else to see if it still has the same appeal.
Even Japanese soft serve tastes so good. My food goal while in Japan is to try as many different flavors as I can. Wish me luck everyone.
Anyway the day after we went to Samigahara which is a japanese battlefield where Tokugawa Ieyasu fought. I realize that's all a bunch of nonsense words to most of you but I guess if I had to compare it to a famous american military battle it would be like....... Washington at the crossing of Delaware! Tokugawa Ieyasu was one of the three men that helped to unite all of Japan. The period in Japanese history that brought Japan into "modernity" so to speak and made it the first asian nation to be able to compete with western powers is called the Tokugawa period. This guy is basically a huge deal.
The battle field is all just grass and shit now but they had some cool stuff explaining the battle and everything. It was pretty neat. After that we were going to go fishing at this river in the mountains. We drove all the way there on mountain roads. The view was totally amazing, we were driving right along the edge of the road and could see a huge river down below. The forest was thick and the trees were like giants. The river was at some points flowing smoothly and at other a tumultuous rapid! I even saw a waterfall. It was totally beautiful. What added to the appeal for me was that it started raining while we were driving, hearing the raindrops hit against the window and run down stream to join the river was a really great sight. It was totally awesome.
There's a japanese phrase, momokigaaru. It describes a state of mind after you see something simple and beautiful, a feeling of well being and slight amazement. That phrase was so appropriate that day, everything I saw was totally beautiful and amazing. Because of the rain it was too dangerous to go fishing so we stopped at this old fashioned Japanese restaurant instead, there aren't a lot of people living in the mountains and not a lot of travelers come by either, so this restaurant had an amazing homey feel. When you walked into the eating area (after taking off your shoes of course) there were two huge windows to your right and left that went along the entire length of the wall. Outside of the right window you could see a beautiful Japanese rock garden, looking even better than usual because of the rain. Out the left window the river's rapids raged on. Take a breath and the cool mountain air fills your lungs.
Totally amazing.
The food was good too. :)
That would have been a great place to take a nap... I think that actually the rain was a really lucky thing, because if it hadn't rained we wouldn't have gone to that great restaurant. Everything about it was awesome..... except. The bathroom. When I went to use the toliet and when I walked inside. O___O ! JAPANESE STYLE SEATLESS TOILET. (insert alarm signals here) SINCE MOST OF YOU GUYS PROBABLY DON'T KNOW THIS.... before western style toliets came to Japan the Japanese had this funny kind of toliet that is like a small tub in the floor. It still has a flusher and everything, there's just no seat. You have to squat over it to... Do your business. Oh my god its super freaking uncomfortable. I was so glad I only had to take a leak. I was also glad that for some reason my first year japanese teacher at depauw felt it necessary to educate us on the workings of japanese style toliets. Thank you for you very important lessons Yoshinaga-sensei. I totally owe you one.
After that we went to a Japanese Inn (a ryoukan). There was an onsen (hot spring) there! Ryoukans are pretty neat and usually very expensive, finding a ryoukan that only cost 9000 yen a person was pretty amazing!! And it was right by the sea, it was a great view but the ocean was brown because of all the sand floating around thanks to the typhoon, still it was pretty cool to see. The rooms in Ryoukans are like one big living room, the futan's are kept in the closets behind sliding doors. The room was pretty big, I'd say like... 12 Tatami mats. When we walked in the first thing you noticed was this huge table in the middle of the room, sitting down in front of it we started watching tv. There was this special about an armless piano player on TV. After a while a woman walked in bringing all kinds of delicious food. And she kept bringing food. We had baked fish, udon, nabe, a huge boat filled with REALLY FREAKING DELICIOUS OH MY GOD THE BEST I'VE EVER TASTED sashimi and all kinds of other delicious stuff. The food alone was worth the 9000 yen price, but afterwards we got to go into the hot springs.
Your supposed to go into the onsen totally naked in case you guys didn't know. I was actually pretty nervous about this. Originally when I came to Japan I had every intention of never going to an onsen for this reason. I don't think of myself as a prude. I don't really think negatively of my own body either, but still. There was something super scary about. Being naked around a bunch of people. I walked to the onsen wearing one of the provided yukata with Masumi-san, totally freaking out internal. but actually. It wasn't to bad. I just had to do a gut check or something I guess? At onsen's and actually Japanese style baths your supposed to wash off your body before you get in the hot spring/tub. The tub/hot spring part is the relaxing fun part. Your not supposed to go in without washing yourself because you'll get the water in the hot spring/tub "dirty."
All in all it was actually a really nice experience. The hot water was really nice (and also way hotter than I first expected, yeowch) and made my skin feel silky smooth. It also made me kind of dizzy. And super sleepy. It was all I could manage to lug myself up to the to the room get into my futon. I feel asleep almost instantaneously. In the morning I repeated the process, but instead of falling asleep in my futon I had to do it in the car because we were on our way back to d-san's.