Yamanashi-ken Tour

Hello again everybody! Final exams are thankfully over now. And I am pleased to say that I'm reasonably sure I did well on all of them. I will be returning to America on the 31st of this month, but I will continue to update while I'm home. I will be home for three weeks before I return to Japan and hopefully travel while school is out.

But anyways, in December I went with nine other people on a tour of parts of Yamanashi-ken, which is the prefecture where Mt. Fuji is located I believe. The group included my host-parents, my host-mom's parents, my host-parent's son and his wife, my host-parent's daughter, Haru-chan, myself, and my boyfriend. We all met up outside of the Hachiouji station because that was where the bus was going to be.

Our first stop was a brewery. What a way to start the day, eh? They took us into a room where I think they were doing something with the rice. Unfortunately the whole tour was in Japanese, so I was unable to understand most of it. My host-parent's son and his wife did their best to help us out though, since their English is very good. After we left the room they took us to the liquoer store right next door where we were given samples of different alcohols. It was very interesting. They also had these large balls of what appeared to be evergreen hanging around with little wooden roofs over them. My host-parent's son (Yukihiro) and his wife (Kyoko) told us that they are used as a natural timer. When the entire ball is wilted and brown, then the sake is ready to drink. Also outside of the brewery was the largest Taiko drum in the world. Apparently it was in the Guiness Book of World Records.

Our second stop was a bathroom. The rest stops here are totally different from the ones in America. Here there are food stalls set up everywhere and the bathrooms are really high-tech.

Our third stop was a cafeteria. I think the tour company owned the place because it was HUGE! Before we ate though, we took a picture in front of a statue of this really famous samurai whose name I have now forgotten. He was from the area of Yamanashi-ken that we were touring. Then we had lunch and then we went around looking at the temples in the area.

After that we went to this place called Herb Garden. Basically they grow herbs and really weird flowers and sell natural products. We took a tour of the greenhouses, but once again the tour was in Japanese, so I just kind of went off and did my own thing. After that they took us into the store where they sold stuff like wine, bath salts, lotions, etc. Most of the stuff was pretty expensive, of course.

Then we went to this Kimchi place. Kimchi is a really popular spicy Korean dish here. Another tour in Japanese that I could not understand. Didn't really get a whole lot out of it. And another place to buy stuff.

Our sixth stop was a jewelry place. Once again, there was a tour in Japanese that I did not understand. So I just went around looking at all of the stones. And they took us to another store. I think these types of tours are just so people can buy stuff. It was amazing how much cash flowed out of those people's pockets!

And our last stop was at this onsen-type place. It was up in the mountains which was really cool. There was this man-made stream that had the onsen-hot water in it and everybody stuck their legs in. Unfortunately it started to rain while we were there, but everybody just got out their umbrellas and enjoyed the onsen. After that we had udon, which is a favorite winter dish in Japan. I really don't care for it that much, but maybe that's just because I get it for dinner a lot. And, of course, after that there was a gift shop to go to.

By that time it was dark, and we went back to Hachioji station. And after the tour everybody got a box with a huge salmon and a huge crab in it. So, for the past month or so we've been having salmon. And it was really salty, too. But it was a fun experience.