Shimada Hotel

... into ones that we brew for drinking tea, which involved reducing the water content to 3%. The total amount of time from when they're picked to when they're ready takes a day. They also have a storage area that holds 337 tons of processed tea for customers until they're ready for delivery. After that we donned our traditional tea picking jackets and headed out to the fields to pick tea. Chrystal & I both picked a fair amount but haven't decided how we want to ...

... off. I went to Hamamatsu where there was a kite fighting festival. The festival is on in May and runs for 3 days. There were 10-20 groups of people flying their kite, and lots of community spirit. It was also a great opportunity to do some people watching. The hairstyles, and footwear were quite interesting! Hamamatsu also has the 2nd largest sand dunes in Japan. They weren't very exciting though because ...

Went yesterday with Corey and Hitomi to watch a Major League Baseball game! I'd never been to a baseball stadium before so this was an extra bonus! The mascot prior to the game's start was doing flips for the crowd and was going well until he did a backflip and landed on his face. Stumbled up and fell over the barrier trying to leave the stadium with everyone clapping. The stadium was divided into two ...

... and a great experience. Then, three days ago i get a knock on my door:  Zach : "Hey man i'm just about to head to work, i got a question though..."Sol : "Yeah man shoot what's up?"Zach : "Do you wanna live here?" And so now i am living with these three guys, and a **** situation accommodation and organization wise has just turned out better than i could've imagined! Corey and Zach both teach English and can speak pretty ...

... she was a volunteer. Then I took a 15 min walk to Horai Bridge. It was a beautiful day and there were a lot of people around the bridge. I paid 100 JPY (approx. 1 USD) for a return ticket at the box office. Actually, it looked possible to get into the bridge without passing the office, but they must need the toll to keep its good condition and we must pay to enjoy a stroll on the bridge. I enjoyed the good view of Oi River and the sound of my own footsteps ...

... fácil, maldita globalización. En Hamamatsu lo saco a comer por ahí y paramos en un sitio bastante bueno. Después, nos encontramos a Erk en el Hotel y nos vamos a echar un Whisky para ir a dormir. Parece que la chica de USA viene con Jet lag y está durmiendo, auque ninguno la ha visto nunca, la conoceremos mañana a las ocho y veinte de la mañana, que es cuando hemos quedado para que un taxi nos lleve por primera vez a la Divisíón de Sistemas de Hamamatsu Photonics.

... must have played a big role as well. Their non-stop organized chants were powerful and hypnotic, if somewhat similar to the opposing team's chants. Speaking of which, Sebastian accidently wore the opposing team's colours, and stuck out pretty bad on the home side. whoops!

Nothing like getting drunk and flying a kite. That's what our second matsuri was all about, on the way back to Fuji. We stopped off in Hamamatsu city (our first ever visit there) to check out the big kite festival! Many international events are also going on as the city has many different communities, including a large Brazilian community. Despite the rain, thousands of people gathered near the beach to fly giant kites that are ...

We take a short day trip to nearby Shizuoka to visit a small temple (reached by climbing 1159 stairs...or a convenient ropeway)...and then for some strawberry picking! We actually arrived too late, but some of the strawberry workers took pity on us and let us do it! 1000yen for 30mins of all you can eat strawberries! Combined we must have had over 200! It was a feat we cared less and less about with each strawberry we stuffed down our throats. Not very Japanese...

... a tea ceremony house where we learned everything about the ceremony and that particular place, it was great having Mochan with us!! To end up the day in Japanese style we went food shopping and Mochan cooked for us a vegi stew with udon and after dinner, before falling asleep in our warm futon we watched Laputa :)