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.
The kids were especially busy gathering shellfish from the lake:
It was good that they could stay to watch the sunset, although some of us passed up watching the sunset to watch the final day of sumo. Everyone left full and with smiles on their faces so I think it was a success.
We were pretty high up in the bleachers but still had a good view of the field:
And we could always see a replay on the big screen. It was also fun cheering along with the fans who had chants for each player on the home team:
Since the home team is called the Chunichi Dragons, they had a cute pink dragon as a mascot (although the official mascot is a koala bear...not sure why). They also had cheerleaders who came out 4 times during the game:
Although the home team had good chances to win the game, they only scored runs in one inning and thus lost the game 4-3. For us though, we were mainly there for the atmosphere and to watch some good baseball, so we weren't dissappointed:
On Saturday night, I met up with the current teachers at Four Seasons school for a farewell party for Rachel (second from the left). Luckily she'll still be in Japan so I'm sure we'll still see her around:
Here's another table at the farewell party:
At the river, we had lunch and enjoyed playing games in the river like skipping stones:
and playing frisbee:
as well as just relaxing by the river:
I'm glad that the super hot weather has finished and so hopefully the weather will stay pleasant like it was on this day.
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.
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.
We had fun at some exercise stations along the path:
We then came to the very high suspension bridge in the park:
Ayako didn't seem quite as scared to cross it this time:
Here are a couple of the creatures sighted during the weekend:
Eric and Tomoe headed home after having some dinner while Ayako and I stayed to camp for the night. It was a nice and cool so we both slept well. In the morning we had breakfast, relaxed in the chairs while reading books, and then packed up just before lunch:
Amazingly, this was our first camping trip of the year. Hopefully we'll go a few more times before the year is out.
