Jen's farewell camping trip

On Saturday night, I went with a number of other teachers to Hamakita Forest Park which is a hugh wildness area in the north part of my city. We went there for a farewell camping trip for a teacher who is leaving soon, Jen. Here's some pictures from that night:

Mizuyokan in bamboo

Today in my Ladies class (housewives who have traveled lots and have time on their hands for interesting hobbies and learning English), we were talking about summer recipes. One student brought in a special jelly (called mizuyokan) that she had made at home. Here's how it looked at first (jelly inside):
And then this is the jelly that was inside the bamboo:

The jelly is made from Japanese gelatin (from seaweed) and red bean paste with a little sugar and salt added. The mixture was then put in pieces of bamboo (that the woman has growing in her backyard). It's chilled and nicely wrapped in a leaf.

To get the jelly out after, we just punched a hole in the bottom of the bamboo with a sharp metal pick and the blew and the jelly came out. It was a fun and delicious snack.

Rainy weekend

I'm finding out that it's hard to predict the weather in Hamamatsu, even for the weather forecasters. Saturday was supposed to be cloudy until night time, but instead it started pouring rain in the afternoon. Unfortunately, Ayako and I were coming back from the stores on our bicycles then, so we got completely soaked.

On Sunday, it was supposed to rain throughout the day, but yet it stopped about 12 noon and turned out to be a beautiful day. We went to visit a previous co-worker and went for a walk along with her husband and her dog:
In the evening, we went to a flower park which had lots of fireflies to see at night. I took pictures but they only turned out to be a green dot against a black background, so I won't show them here. I will show you a fountain show that was amusing since it was set to romantic music:

Camping trip in Gifu

Last weekend, I went camping with Ayako and 3 other couples in Gifu prefecture. It was about a 5 hour drive from Hamamatsu. When we were getting close to the campsite, we were climbing hills on pretty narrow roads:

We got to the site and set up camp. Luckily Keisuke and Masaki go camping lots so they have lots of camping equipment. It definately felt like we were camping in style. Here are some pictures from our site and some of the activities we did:

In the late afternoon, we went fishing in a pond full of rainbow trout. I was able to catch 3 fish once I improved my technique. Total we caught 12 fish:

So then we took the fish back to our site and got them ready to have for dinner ie. scaled them, gutted them and put them on a stick:

At night, we had a campfire and I showed everyone how to cook bannock on the campfire:

The next morning, we had a delicious breakfast (much fancier than I'm use to when camping):

In the afternoon, we stopped in a nearby town called Takayama for an hour to look around their traditional area. They had lots of stores selling nice souvenirs:
And then there was the 5 hour drive back, of which I slept for most of it, so no pictures. ^^

New toy - webcam

Last weekend, I went out and bought a webcam for my computer. I saw my friend using Skype to talk with a friend online for free, and if there is a webcam, you can see the person as well.
Anyways, here's my new webcam:

I know the second picture is a little dark, but it's me looking into my webcam.

Anyways, I talked with 2 friends on Skype today, and it almost feels like I'm in the same room as them. A very good new service. If you are interested in talking with me online for free, go to www.skype.com and download the free program. After you get an ID, tell me your ID name or I can email you mine and soon we can talk and see each other in real time. It's very cool, trust me.

how to make octopus balls (takoyaki)

Last night, I went to a potluck dinner. One of the fun things that was made was octopus balls (takoyaki). This is bits of octopus tentacles that are cooked in a batter in the shape of a ball. So just in case you want to try this at home, here's how it's made. First actually, you need a takoyaki pan which has many depressions to cook the balls in. After the pan has heated up, a crepe-like batter is poured in the depressions. Then bits of octopus are put in with bits of cabbage and cooked ginger. Here's what it's like at the beginning:As the bottom side cooks, the balls are turned over with small sticks so that the batter surrounds the octopus and is shaped into a ball:
Near the end, oil is put on the balls so that the outside can become brown and crispy:
When they are finished, bonito flakes (light flakes of fish) are put on the balls:
And then they are eaten (sometimes with mayo...but not for me^^):
Yummy!

Hamamatsu matsuri

On Wednesday, Ayako and I arrived back in Hamamatsu from our camping trip. This is also the first day of the Hamamatsu matsuri (festival). It's a big 3 day event and which kite flying is the special aspect of this city's festival. There are more than 150 areas in our city. There were thousands of people on a huge field helping fly their area's kite. Amazingly though, there was no garbage to be seen. There were volunteers giving out a glove and garbage to people who wanted to help keep the area clean. After, people could bring back their garbage and receive different types of prizes accordin to how much garbage they collected. There were lots of kids trying to find garbage, but there was hardly any to be found.

Each area has it's our large kite which they fly down near the beach:The kites are often about 3 metres by 3 metres and have huge lengths of rope so they can get very high in the sky. It's takes many people to fly one. Each kite has a special design for that area:
We were lucky to join the festival for one day. We joined a friend's area (not where I live) and so we wore their 'happi' (special jacket for that area). He's me looking like karate kid in the happi:
The back of the happi also has the design for the area. Our's is the kanji (Chinese character) for dragon:
This is Melissa and her dad and his wife. Melissa was the one who could get us onto the area's team for one day. It can cost a bit to buy everything you need to join a team, so we borrowed everything for the day.
Here's Christine and Ayako in their happis:
Here's the kite for the area we joined. The name in yellow at the bottom is the name of a baby from a family who gave the money for the kite. This festival is special for 1-year-old babies. The family will give lots of money for the kite, and their baby's name is on the kite.
Here is the kite up close:
You can see it takes lots of people to help fly it. On the last day of the festival, the areas try to see whose kite can stay up longest by trying to cut the other kite's rope with their own. Just like 'dog fights' when I was young, but instead with thousands of people participating.
Here's the huge spool of rope used for the kite:
At night, each area helps pull their yatai (float) around the downtown area. There were over a hundred of these floats:
Each float wants to have a beautiful float, so they can cost upto a million dollars for one.
Inside, girls and women play instruments:
The floats were very beautiful to see at night:
And the woodwork is really intricate when you see it up close:
Here you can see a few of them coming down the street:

After this, each area takes their float back to their area's shrine where it is kept in a garage. The people then go around their area with lanterns playing bugle and chanting. They visit families which have had a baby that year and wish it good luck. The family then supplies lots of food and drink to everyone who has come. We visited 2 families the night that we joined the area. Since the streets are very narrow here, it was amazing to see 300 people show up to somebody's home and dance around and then for the family to give everyone lots of food and drink. Basically the matsuri was organised chaos. People are allowed to go crazy, but then they all stop when they are told. Each night, I could hear lots of chanting outside my apartment, but then at 12 midnight, all was quiet. This is due to there being strict rules, and if an area doesn't follow the rules, they may not be allowed to participate in next year's festival.

Camping trip

The first week of May in Japan is Golden Week, when there are a number of holidays together, and so many people get the week off work. For the beginning of the week, from Sunday to Wednesday, Ayako and I went camping. We drove about 2 1/2 hours north-east of my city into the mountains. I thought the streets in my city were narrow, but up there, there were many times when the road would become a single lane, and so you had to check if it was safe to pass. Luckily up there, there wasn't much oncoming traffic. Anyways, here's our campsite:On Monday, we went to a hotspring village. We went there mainly for a hike and to cross one of the many suspension bridges. The water up there was very clean and if the areas of the river were deep, then the colour of the water was teal or emerald green:
Here's Ayako crossing a long suspension bridge: Here's us at the end:

At nights, we had campfires and made smores and baked bannock:

On Tuesday, we went on a long train ride up the river. There is actually a steam train that finishes at the town where we were staying:

So we didn't get to ride on that train. We rode on smaller red trains. The ride was 2 hours each way. The line was made to build a huge dam at the end of the line. Nowadays, the line is just used for tourists:

After about an hour, we had to stop for awhile to attach a ABT train (ABT rack system) to the end. This is to help push the train up a steeper incline (like they have in Switzerland). This is the only one in Japan:

There was quite nice scenery along the way and at the small stations that we stopped at:

We finished at this last station. The small 'tanuki' (raccoon) statues are quite a common sight in Japan. We actually saw a real tanoki on our drive that day. We also saw a flying squirrel at night while we were having a campfire.

You have to drive for a bit to get the each 'Gus' station up here^^:

We were also lucky to see more cherry blossom trees. I've actually seen four types of cherry blossom trees this year now. Where we live, all of the regular types are finished, but we got to see mountain cherry blossom trees as well as ground cherry blossoms as seen below:

The area where we were is famous for green tea, so any amount of land people had is used for growing tea plants (which makes for beautiful scenery):

We also got a chance to see how shitake mushrooms are grown: During the week, we also saw lots of these flying fish streamers. This is for May 5, which is Children's Day. These are flown for good luck and health of boys. There was already a special day for girls last month (Doll Festival).