Pension Bunk Myoko
1455-3 Taguchi Myoko, Niigata Prefecture, Chubu, Japan
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Nothing new
Not much new to report today. Our work today consisted of cleaning Joe's shed up. It is tougher than I thought, cleaning someone else's space. It snowed a lot last night, so I kept busy with shoveling.
Just finished baking a batch of carrot, apple, ginger muffins. The oven seemed to play nice ...
Piece of Cake
... before the middle was cooked. We figured we could salvage the cake by cutting off the burnt top, but the bottom turned out to be burnt as well. Then we decided to make the same batter over again, but as cupcakes. The cupcakes rose, and again the tops burnt.
We ended up saving the edible pieces and Adam turned out a delicious layered cake with whipping cream and strawberries. Sorry we didn't get a picture of the cake.
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Zenko-ji and Snow Monkies
... with the monkeys was rather unnerving. We were on the 2 km trek to the monkey onsen when there in the middle of our path sit two monkeys, one grooming the other. As you will see in the video we weren't sure at first how close to get to them. We read not to look them in the eyes, but rather look at them through a camera. The monkeys seemed to not even notice us walk past them. On our way to the top, monkeys crossing the pathway became ...
Mochi Making
Today we took part in day 1 of the Japanese New Year tradition of Mochi Making. Rice is steamed over an open fire and then pounded with a mallet in a hollowed out tree trunk until it is a smooth paste. They then roll it is balls and serve it either with crushed diakon and soya sauce or crushed soy bean. Adam tried his hand at the mallet swinging (hopefully the video works below). The festivities were based ...
Japanese New Year celebration
Its 12:23, Jan 1st 2012 right now. We just visited the Japanese shrines where the first event of the japanese New Year celebrations take place. We walked by at 11:30 expecting some kind of party to be taking place, but the place was deserted. We went back at 12:05 and it seems the whole town has shown up.
There is a little park with about six to eight shrines. It looks kind of like a small side street. People line up and pay their respects at ...


