Xmas in Japan

I had a quiet Christmas with Ayako today. We got to open a few presents that were under my make-believe Xmas tree:
For dinner, instead of turkey, we had chicken with lots of roasted veg:
For dessert, instead of plum pudding, we had rice pudding (what else if you are in Japan):

All in all, a nice, warm Xmas here.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Year-end parties

During December in Japan, many companies or groups have parties at the end of the year. I had 3 different class parties this year. This first one was with my community class:
The second was with my class at Yamaha music:
We enjoyed copying part of the following video that shows incorrect cultural tips for eating sushi in Japan. We always said "Maa maa maa maa" & "Oh toh toh toh" when pouring and receiving drinks. (^-^)

The last group I went out with was my Roland class:

The Fast Lane

Ayako and I went shopping at a department store near our school tonight, and found that the supermarket in the basement has a new do-it-yourself check-out called The Fast Lane. Here's a picture of it:
There's step-by-step instructions, but since we've seen a cashier do it a million times, it was pretty easy to figure out. Any of these in Canada yet?

Tangerine picking

On Saturday, Ayako and I met up with our friend, Dave, and went to a Japanese couple's house where they had many tangerine trees. It was great that we could pick tangerines for free, and we were also able to help the couple pick tangerines for them. In the end, Ayako and I came back with 2 boxes of tangerines each. Here's us working hard:
Here's us having lunch with the couple afterwards:

Kiwi Xmas

On Friday night, there was a Kiwi Xmas party at Steph's (a kiwi) apartment. We all dressed up in beach clothes (as well as an unexplained cow costume). Here's some photos from that night:

Oguni shrine 2006

On Sunday, Ayako and I joined some friends and took an hour drive to the town of Mori which has a famous shrine, which is especially popular at this time of year since the have some beautiful Japanese maple trees along a river that look lovely at this time of year. If you actually look back to December 2005, you'll see when I went there last year. It was the peak weekend to see the leaves changing colour, so there was a huge line of traffic when we got close to the shrine. We decided to park at a nearby tea house and walk the rest of the way. But first, we got some good pictures of the giant tea pot pouring water:
I think the shrine is very scenic and peaceful and quiet usually, although it was definitely busy when we were there. Still, I tried to get some good peaceful pictures when I was there:
While we were at the shrine:we saw a numer of children who were dressed up to celebrate a special Shinto holiday, shichi-go-san. When a boy turns 3 & 5 and when a girl turns 3 & 7, they visit the shrine for a special ceremony to wish them a long life:We then had fun walking along the river with beautiful trees: and took a nice group hot together:

Labor Thanksgiving Day

Today is a holiday in Japan for Labor Thansgiving Day. Ayako and I just got back from a thanksgiving dinner at another teacher's house with a number of other teachers and friends. For the event, I made pumpkin (squash) soup (which turned out well) and tried to make pumpernickel bread (which didn't turn out well and so wasn't brought). Here's a photo of the soup I made and the people who came for dinner:

In other local news, I heard firetruck sirens going off at 4:30am this morning, but was too tired to get up to see what was happening. It turned out that there were 2 fires in my neighbourhood, which happened about 10 minutes apart from each other. One was at a Brazilian store near some apartments which got charred. The other was at an abandoned house, but unfortunately, the house next to it also caught fire. Luckily nobody was hurt in either one. The police came by in the afternoon asking questions if anybody knew anything since they suspect they might be due to arson.

Looking for red leaves

On Saturday, Ayako and I went with our friends Eiki and Ryoko about an hour and a half north of Hamamatsu to an area called Shirakura valley. We were hoping to find some fall leaves changing colour even though we knew this year was a bit later than usual. Here's us walking down to the valley: It was a nice wooded area and river we walked along in the valley. There were some nice bridges and waterfalls as well: Finally, we were able to find some red leaves:

And Ayako found a nice house she wants to live in:
On the way back home, we stopped at a campground that made fresh buckwheat noodles (soba) in a little restaurant. We got to watch the process and then get to eat some:
Outside the restaurant, we met a friendly cat who loved being pet (and also drinking from the river):

Anniversary in tofu restaurant

Last night, Ayako and I celebrated our first year anniversary by going out to a fancy tofu restaurant in town. It was very elegant and even had our own room with a window looking out to a nice scene in a courtyard (sorry about bad photos):
The food was all based around tofu and had very subtle yet different tastes. It was a very enjoyable meal and the calm setting was also very nice.

One-day walking trip

Ayako and I bought a book for doing one-day walking trips in the prefectures near ours. We did one on Sunday, about 40 minutes outside Hamamatsu.
We were mainly walking along an old narrow road with many old houses and stores similar to the ones we say one week ago. We also saw a few shrines and temples:
I took a picture of the manhole cover in this town since it had a nice design on it. Actually, every town in Japan has a special design on their manhole covers, but this town's was extra nice:
Part of the road was a natural treasure since it was lined with pine trees on either side:
There were even some nice signs explaining the cultural value of some of the areas including small pictures done by a famous Edo period Japanese artist, Hiroshige:
We also stopped at a traditional tea house where we had matcha tea and nice sweets:
Overall, a very nice but windy walk.

Camping near historic post towns

Friday was Culture Day in Japan and so it was a good three-day weekend to camping up in Nagano prefecture. It took us about 5 hours to drive up there since there's lots of mountains and so lots of winding roads to get there. Here's a picture of the campground and our campsite:
We were using our new tarp and camping table, which both worked very well for us:
Since we were up in the mountains, there was crystal clear water in the river beside our campsite that you could drink:
Here's some photos of us by the river. The leaves are just starting to change up there. They don't start changing in Hamamtsu until the end of November:

The reason we went to this area was to visit two historic towns called Magome and Tsumago. They are called 'post towns' which is meant to mean that they were towns that people would stop at years ago when they would travel by foot between Tokyo (then Edo) and Kyoto (then Kyo). The towns have been kept in their traditional style:


There are about 11 post towns that still keep their traditional style but these two are very popular since the are less than 8 km apart and so you can walk the original path between the towns, which we did:
This is at a shop along the way that sells special 'dango' which is a ball made from black sesame paste covered in a vegetable/rice ball covered with buckwheat powder as you can see in the second photo (yum yum):

Here's another spot along the way between the towns:
We stopped at two small waterfalls near each other. It seems that in this area, if 2 waterfalls are near each other, they call them the 'male waterfall' and the 'female waterfall'. Near our campground, there were 2 other waterfalls that used the same names. Can you guess which waterfalls is male and which is female?

By the time we reached Tsumago at 5 o'clock, it was already getting dark. So we got to have a quiet walk around the town at night time:
Here's a straw horse that was in the town:
It was definitely much colder in Nagano. It was nice during the day, but about 8 C at night or even colder since we were beside a river since we could easily see our breath at night. Still it was a fun camping trip (probably our last for the year).