Trips to Japan

Day 9 part 2 – Magome-juku

After the boat ride, the my brother’s family went home on the car, then we headed to Magome-juku, one of the highway towns built during the Edo period.  The place is easily accessible with train (2 stations over from Ena), and a bus (it runs almost every hour, connecting between Nakatsugawa station and Magome-juku).

By the time we arrived at Magome, it was almost 1PM.  It’s time for another round of delicious food.  The place we entered had a combination plate for a super bargain price of 650 yen, with udon, soba, and goheimochi served side by side.

After lunch, we strolled through the town.  There’s not much to do here.  It’s just one street full of shops in old houses… and couple different spots.  Evan had pretty good fun here though.  She didn’t have to watch out for her two young cousins, and there was plenty of place to run around.  The steep slope provided plenty of exercise challenge.  The streams running along the street provided nice sound scape, making it feel cooler than actual.  Some of the shops provided some entertainment as well.

Overall, the trip was really fun.  I highly recommend Magome-juku area to people interested in the historic view of the town.

Day 8-9 – Enakyo

We took a 2-day trip.  3 highlights were an amusement park, hot springs, and an old town.

Ena city is one of the smaller city in the mountains in Gifu prefecture.  The city was built near Kiso River.  It is a pretty place to visit.  And to make more people come to the place, city of Ena and its neighbor city, Nakatsugawa, built an amusement park in 1970.

This park once had a booming business.  The business started dwindling down in the 90s, and closed its door in 2000.  Another company bought the facility, and reopened it in 2002, but the business is not booming like before.  Added to that, we went on a weekday, and the Japanese schools have not started their summer break.  And Japan is feeling the recession as much as America…

All of that added up.  The place was practically empty.  Perhaps there were more people working there than us visitors.  Each ride attendants were operating several rides in turn.  At one point, one attendant was walking along with us, from ride to ride…  That’s personal service.

After having fun at the amusement park, we moved to the hotel.  That’s a trip by itself.  We packed a small car with 4 adults and 3 kids.  That was a tight fit.

The hotel has public bath style hot spring.  This particular hotel, Enakyo Grand Hotel, also has 2 private hot springs that a group of guests can reserve so many minutes at a time.  (If you evertravel to Ena and want to experience onsen, but feel uncomfortable with the public style bath, you can use this private bath.  Each room also have bath rooms, but they don’t use onsen water.)  The water tasted funky, but I suppose it’s good for the skin.  (No, I did not drink the water.)

Then comes the dinner.  What good is a trip without a huge dinner at one point?  See the pictures for more.  All was good, except giant eggplant was not to Evan’s liking.

All of us took the bath in the evening.  Some of us even took the bath in the morning as well.  Onsen feels so good, we can take as many baths as we want during the hotel stay.

To wrap up our stay at Ena, we took a boat tour.  It’s pretty, but without the English, Evan looked somewhat bored.

In response to…

In response to this post, Evan says…

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Days 5, 6, 7

Day 5 – we finally got to sit around, rest and relax.  Evan was very bored.

Day 6 – Sunday – we went to church.  Evan and her cousins went home early right after lunch.  The rest of the family stayed behind, and helped cleaning the church.  Evan… wasn’t bored.  She learned to play with her cousins.  Finally.

Day 7 – Last time I visited home, I fixed the screen doors for them.  We realized how easy it was (both for them to ask me, and for me to actually do it), we decided to do more fix-ups this time.  Soon after I arrived here, we made a list of things they want me to fix.

Item #1 – overhead lighting in the living room – the pull-chord was getting stuck.  They were even thinking about replacing the unit.  We took the unit apart, did stuff… fixed!  That saved us some money.

Item #2 – they want to put some bamboo roll-up curtain on the balcony.  We bought 3 curtains, I put up one.  That’s when it started raining.  It’s the first rain since we’ve arrived in Japan.  We’ve been lucky so far that it hasn’t rained more, since Japan still is in the middle of a rainy season.

Item #3 – install a screen door on the front door.  I did manage to finish this one.  It did take several hours.  We did realize that we could have chosen better item.  But it’s installed, looking halfway decent…  we’re happy.

Item #4 – install a wireless LAN.  Finally an item that’s pretty easy.  We bought the router, set up the router, set the password, and all is set.  I’m finally writing this entry via wireless connection.

There are more to do around the house, but we’ll save that for another day.

Day 4 – returning home

Traveling from my grandmother’s to home usually is an uneventful event.  Not this time.  This trip involved two stops along the way – Ueno and Hayakawa.

For this trip, we are using Japan Rail Pass, a 21-day version of it.  We had to purchase this before we left for Japan.  We only got an exchange order back then.  We had to bring the order to Japan, and get the ticket at one of the designated train stations in Japan.  Most obviously, the train station at the airport can handle this task, but we didn’t.  My uncle came to pick us up, so we didn’t need to use it.  And we know that our last train ride from Nagoya to the airport will be expensive – we better utilize this pass then.

We wanted to do this exchange the day before, since we took couple trains to go to the museum.  We learned the hard way that we had to go to a bigger station.  That’s where the need to stop at Ueno station came to be.

And it was not all bad thing.  Right next to the ticket counter, we found Tokyo-Ueno branch of Hard Rock Cafe.  I picked 3 T-shirts there for those people who asked me for them.  If anyone else wants HRC T-shirts from Japan, I’m planning to stop by at Nagoya and/or Osaka HRC.  Let me know via comments or something.

And one last comment on HRC – even though Michael Jackson really wasn’t a hard rocker, the place still was paying tribute to him a little, by having his music video on all day.  I think his news is one of the bigger news for many people, even in Japan.

Our next stop was Hayakawa station, right next to Odawara.  There’s not much to talk about it.  We just wanted to see the station with our name on it.  It was a small place, right next to a small port for fishing boats.  We snapped a few photos here, hopped back on the bullet train, and continued our travel home.

Day 3 – The Railway Musium

This is our first tourist-like activity, one of the highlights for me – a trip to the Railway Musium.  I always loved trains ever since I was a baby.  The very first word I ever read, according to my mom, was “Asakaze,” which is the name of a train.  The musium was really made to please the true train fans.  The people who designed and built it must have been fans themselves.  Talking about it is pretty boring – I will post the photos later.  (I packed away the SD card reader in the other suit case which I shipped from the airport to my mom’s home.)  Evan and her 5-year old cousin, Kasumi, did enjoy the visit.  It might have been a bit too difficult for Kasumi.

After that came another feast.  10 of us went to a Japanese restaurant together.  Mmm, yum!  Sashimi, chawanmushi, kanimeshi (crab & rice), negitoro (spicy tuna & scallions), miso soup, tempura, etc, etc…  I can’t even remember everything that were on the table.  Evan enjoyed another round of fresh, raw fish.  Yes, more photos coming later.

Day 2, part 2

I’m feeling so much better that I got some good night’s rest. I only slept for about 6 hours, but that shouldn’t matter.

Looking back, the flight experience yesterday was both good and bad.  The bad – my seat didn’t recline.  The good – I didn’t know wine was free with the meal on international flights.  More good – on the first flight, we got the row right behind the first class area – row 5 on this chart – that it was really comfortable.  More good – on the international flight, we sat 5 seats behind the main cabin exit – row 25 on this chart – that exiting out of the airplane was really easy, which helps a LOT after that.  By exiting early, we were one of the first ones in the immigration control area.  They opened the aircraft door at around 5:30PM, a bit behind the schedule, but we were legally in the country of Japan by 6:00PM.

The difficult part is actually getting these seats.  Since we fly Northwest, and Northwest reserves these front section of the economy seats to Elite members, they are normally inaccessible to us.  I only discovered that they open up these seats to everyone close to 24 hours before the departure, at which time I jumped on to these couple seats.  Another bonus for these seats – it’s so much quieter, being in front of the engines.  I highly recommend sitting in this area if you can manage it.

Once we left Narita Airport, (use the map’s zoom to see approximately where that is in Japan, since Google Map display everything in Japan in Japanese), with my uncle driving us, we stopped at a local sushi restaurant, a recommended place by my uncle.  It was a big hit with me, and as for Evan – I think she was too tired to enjoy it fully.  She still liked the fact that she got her first sushi (She wanted some at the Minneapolis airport too.  I had to convince her out of it, because we were so close to real sushi, and the packaged sushi at the airport looked dry and icky…).

Right now, we are in a city that was once called Omiya-shi.  Around FIFA World Cup in 2002, they merged several cities to form Saitama-shi, a new big prefectural center of Saitama prefecture. (Wikipedia link)  More fun will unfold today.  It’s 6:45AM.  People will start to get up soon, and we are off to some more fun.

Day 1 – Day 2

These are our longest yet shortest days.  We left Minneapolis at around 3:00 PM.  Of course, with everyone shuffling their carry-on bags like crazy, we never get to take off sn time.  Then we stay in the air for 12 long hours. By the time we land, the clock has advanced 26 hours.  We landed at around 5:00 PM the next day.  This trip is now getting harder and harder.  Aging sucks.

Our first destination is my grandmother’s.  I’m writing this entry in a bit of a rush, not feeling completely comfortable operating someone else’s PC.  I’m going to have some major catch-up writing to do soon.

Back to Japan, 2009 – Day 0

I wanted to write something today.  At the very least, I want to welcome all new and returning readers.  Other than that…  My mind just went blank.  It’s midnight, I had a 3+ hour drive to Kansas City today, and I’m semi exhausted.  I’m sure glad I’m not making that drive in the morning, as my flight takes off at 9AM.  Start driving at 3AM?  No thanks.

Some notes to myself: what to write tomorrow – seating selection made easy with…

Day 14 – back to school

Evan went back to the local elementary school today for one last time. The kids couldn’t wait to see us, and they didn’t want us to leave. Evan couldn’t wait to get out of there toward the end of the day. Talk about the contrast. It’s a good thing those kids couldn’t understand Evan when she was asking me when we’re going home.

While we were there, they held special curriculum for Evan and the class. They started out by the whole class making origami for Evan. Some kids handed her individual origami pieces. Other kids put their works on a piece of poster board, and made large pictures with those. I’m sorry kids, we can only take home with us the works that you put on the poster boards.

By the time they got done, it was the end of 2nd period. They have a 20-minute recess between 2nd and 3rd period – the kids took advantage of that and took Evan to their library. Of course, there’re no books that Evan can read, so it wasn’t too fun for Evan…

During the 3rd period, they played a game called Fruits Basket. ((Rules – you put chairs in the circle, one for every players, minus one. Everyone are assigned name of a fruit, using 4, 5, or 6 kinds of fruits total. Today, we used cherry, strawberry, grape, orange, and peach. So everyone are either one of those five fruits. One person is “it” at all time, standing at the center of the circle. The person calls out a name of the fruit. All players of that fruit must stand up, find and find a new seat. The person who called the name of fruit also finds a seat. Whoever couldn’t find the seat (since there’s once less seat than players) becomes the next person to call the name of a fruit again. The person in the center can also call “Fruits Basket”, which prompts everyone playing to find a new seat. It’s not fair to just take the next seat, so that should not be allowed, but there was no such rule today. There’s no end to this game. You just play until you had enough fun.)) Before they started the game, the kids listed 5 fruits in Japanese. The teacher asked Evan to pronounce the English words of those fruits for the class. It’s their version of simple English class. Once they finished practicing saying those words, they played the game. They had to call out all fruits in English. Good lord, these kids can make some NOISE.

During the 4th period, they had to take a quiz. Evan took a bit different quiz than the rest of the class, but the teacher gave her something to do. After the quiz, we came home after eating lunch with the kids. See the photos to see more of the craziness that these kids made for us.

In the afternoon, my dad, Shuhei, made a surprise visit to Kasugai. Evan got to see her other grandfather for the first time ever in her life. I hadn’t seen him in at least 12-13 years. It felt like he has changed quite a bit. He’s quite thinner than I remembered. (That makes me the chubbiest member of the family…. Ayiiiieee) We couldn’t stay home, so we talked at a local McDonald’s. We didn’t talk about our lives or anything… we ended up talking music, mostly about classical music. That’s my dad.

We thought Manaho (the girl who came along with us to 2005 Expo Memorial Park) might come visit us before we went out to the dinner, but that didn’t work out. That made our hectic day less chaotic. That was a brief period of peace.

At 5PM, we went out for dinner. At 6:30, we headed to the family’s old church, which was not being used tonight. We finally had our family concert. Manaho joined us toward the end (after I finished all of my playing) with her mother. We visited each other one last time.

Looking back, it really felt like I had no time to rest. I never stayed home all day. Every days were special. Two weeks flew by extremely fast. And I think Evan had a lot to gain during this trip. I swear that I will come back as soon as I can manage again. Evan really needs more of these trips.