Day trip to Aichi prefecture

Since many of my students are from Aichi prefecture and since I don't know about many of the cities in Aichi, I decided to do a day trip there to find out more about some of the places there. The first place I went to was Kiyosu and to Kiyosu castle specifically: It is not a large castle but it can be seen from quite far away. It was built in the 15th century and saw a number of battles:

Luckily there was beautiful weather for the whole day and so it was easy to get some nice photos of the castle:
Inside, I was able to dress up as a samuri. It took three men about 5 minutes to put everything on me:
There were 9 separate parts to this uniform. I was then able to have my photo taken carrying a sword, a rifle and then a spear:
Afterwards I climbed up to the top of the castle to get a good view of the city. The photo below is of the beautiful rock garden at the entrance of the castle:
After visiting the castle, I got back on the train to go to the city of Handa. It has a very famous vinegar factory there called Mizkan that has been in Handa since 1804. Its vinegar is especially good for making sushi rice. Here are some of the factory buildings that run along both sides of this river:
After an hour tour of the vinegar factory, I walked a short ways to a sake museum. There, I had a tour of the museum. Since I had gone on another factory tour of a sake factory last year with my family, it was interesting this time to see some of the historical equipment that this museum had:
You will notice that both the vinegar buildings and the sake museum are made with black-painted wood. There were a number of these old style buildings throughout the city of Handa.

After going for a short walk around Handa, I got back on the train to go to the city of the Okazaki. This was the city that my Aunt Elizabeth had done a homestay. The first place I visited there was a miso factory. Miso is a paste made from fermented soy. Miso soup is of course made from this miso paste. From the black buildings in the picture below, you can tell this is also an older company (over 300 years old):
To make miso, soybeans are soaked, steamed, and then sprinkled with 'koji' fungus that helps the soy ferment. After three days, sea salt and water are added and the mixture is put into 7-foot-tall cedar vats. These vats can hold 12,000 pounds of miso. The vats are covered with a cotton cloth, a heavy wood pressing lid, and 6,000 pounds of stones. The pressure helps reduce the salt content of the miso and it is allowed to age for two years. It was very impressive to see these large vats of miso:
There must have been about 100 vats in the one building I walked around in. This naturally fermenting method brings out much more flavour in the miso than miso which is pressed with machines. I found a good website here explaining in greater detail how the miso is made at the Hatcho miso factory.
After buying some miso products, I went for a walk to Okazaki castle. While crossing the bridge to the castle, I could watch a swan battling with some turtles and 'koi' carp for bread thrown by some other visitors:
Compared to Kiyosu castle, Okazaki castle was quite hidden by large trees:
This castle is famous for being the birth place of Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was the first shogun of the Edo period (Tokugawa period) of Japan, which was from 1603 to 1868:
There was a nice park around the castle with very fancy telephone booths:
Here is a museum for Tokugawa Ieyasu:
I was just about to leave the park when I could here some music coming from behind me. I turned around to see a doll doing a dance (perhaps a Noh dance) to music:
I realized that I had past by it and had not noticed it since it wasn't playing music:
Only after the performance did I understand why I had not seen it. Everything neatly folded away into a regular-looking clock:
As I walked back to the station to get the train back home, the sun was setting and I felt good that I had made the most of my trip to Aichi.

Trip to Ise shrine

Ayako has started her week-long Obon holiday and so our first trip of the holiday was to Ise shrine in Mie prefecture. It was about a 3-hour train ride from Hamamatsu. The weather was cloudy, but at least it made it comfortable for walking around all day.

There are actually two sets of shrines in different locations in the town of Ise. We went to the first one (the outer shrines) first. There is one main shrine there and other smaller versions of the large one as well. Unfortunately, only the imperial family is allowed to enter the shrine and since it's surrounded by a large wooden fence, you can only see the top of it. Luckily it is free to visit these shrines. Here's a picture of me outside the main shrine:
Below is Ayako standing outside one of the smaller versions of the shrine. The tradition here is for each shrine to be rebuilt every twenty year. The area to the right of the shrine is where it will be built next time. After the new one is built, the old one will be taken down and the wood will be sent around Japan to build other shrines. Since this is one of the most famous shrines in Japan, other shrines will be glad to receive wood from the shrines here. This process happens every twenty years and so the location of the shrine swaps between the two plots:
We then went to visit the other main set of shrines (the inner shrines). The main shrine here is the biggest one and only the imperial family can enter it. Supposedly, there is also a famous mirror that was built in the third century and can only be viewed by a member of the imperial family. Unfortunately, no member of the imperial family has even requested to see it. It is kept under a cloth bag, and another cloth bag is placed over it when the previous one starts getting thin. Since nobody has seen the mirror for over 1700 years, there are many bags over the mirror and quite a good history of weaving from different eras.

Anyway, here are some photos when we walked around looking at the inner shrines:



Outside of the inner shrines, there is a street with many traditional houses and stores that sell lots of souvenirs and yummy treats:
These are are some shots from inside a traditional marketpalce area with lots of things for sale:

Ayako was very happy to find a famous store that serves "akafukugori" which is kakigoori (green tea syrup on shaved ice) with red bean paste and mochi rice balls inside. It was a very popular store and a yummy dessert to have, even though it wasn't that hot outside.
She then went to buy a famous sweet called akafuku, which is a mochi rice ball covered in red bean paste:

We enjoyed eating it on the train ride home. We've decided this holiday to just do day trips rather than one longer trip. Our next trip is to Hakone, a famous hot springs area.

Toyokawa Inari Shrine

On Sunday, Ayako and I went for a day trip to Aichi prefecture. On the way, Ayako was happy to stop off at a library that she has never visited before. We spent a couple of hours there. After that, we headed to Toyokawa to visit the Inari shrine there. This was Ayako's first time there, but you can see photos from my previous visit on my blog (October 2006). Here's the entrance to the shrine:
There are a number of buildings within the shrine grounds. Here's one of the pagodas there:
My favourite area of the shrine is a back area where there are many carvings of foxes; foxes being the symbol of Inari shrines.

Here's a shot of me with the foxes:
We had lunch while we were there, and Ayako was happy to eat some inari-zushi (sushi rice inside a pouch of fried tofu), her favourite meal when near an Inari shrine.

Visiting the local temple / family grave

Today Ayako's parents came to visit. For the three days on either side of the vernal equinox (first day of spring), families often go and visit the family grave. They will clean it up and put some fresh flowers by it and pray. The grave below is the Odo family grave. One grave is for the whole family (grandparents and great- grandparents included). In the back of the grave there is a small door and behind this is all the bones from these ancestors.
Here is me posing with Fujio-san and Hideko-san.
This is the local temple where the family grave is. The name of the temple is Jurakuji.
Inside this temple is one of the boxes that will be used to carry the princess at our town's festival coming up. In 2 weeks, we will be going to the local festival (during cherry blossom season), which has a 'princess parade'. The princess will be carried in this box during the parade.
Here were some other shots I took while at the temple and graveyard:

We then came back home and had lunch together. We ate inari-zushi (rice in fried tofu) that Ayako had made.

Visiting Hokoji temple

It's the start of a week-long holiday here, Golden Week. On Sunday, Ayako and I had her sister and 2 sons over to play at my apartment in the morning. It was my first time meeting her sister, Sumiko, and her her sons, Neo and Rio.
In the afternoon, we went for a drive north of Hamamatsu to Hokoji temple. I went there once before in my first month in Japan, but it was nice to visit again. Here are some photos from our trip there:
The final one is of some flags blowing in the breeze: