Out and About
Trip Start
Apr 20, 2004
1
8
13
Trip End
Aug 28, 2005
Nagoya,
Japan
Friday, July 15, 2005
One of the most memorable outings was to the Nagoya Sumo Tournement. What a crazy sport! These guys are bigger in life that I imagined aided by the huge quantities of Nabe! Giant well grommed men wearing lovely nappy like pants. The sport still seams a little odd to me even now I have watched more on the TV. It starts with the winner of the last rounds waiting on the ring, the new opponent walks out and cheered by the crowd, they wash their hands then psych themselves up, scatter salt, squat directly in front of each other and stomp their feet - this process is repeated many times and eventually you see some action which lasts on a minute if you are lucky. All in all an interesting experience.
Any trip to Japan would not be complete with out seeing at least 1 castle. Athough most of the castles were destroyed in the war, many have been restored and some even including lifts, marble floors and western toliets - not too authentic! We have been lucky enough to visit the Nagoya, Gifu, Inuyama, Osaka, Hiroshima castles. My fav is the Inuyama castle built to its current glory in 1895 and is now a National Tresure.
A few weeks back I had my go at Japanese pottery. Had a girls trip to Tajimi with Heather and Sarah. Ive always wanted to try pottery on a wheel. Its really relaxing and heaps of fun. Made a wee Japanese style dish - very proud!
Tagumi - This small town is not too far out of Gifu City, famous for the pilgram shrine.
Dan in the Onsen
Our Japanese Teacher Izumi was brave enough to take the Kiwis Grant, Tracy, Dan and I with her for the day. On the way we stopped and saw a mummy of a buddha - now preserved in a glass case - he survived 13 years on miso soup alone until he starved himself to become a buddha. Totally different to what I expected a real mummy to look like - no white bandaged neatly wrapped round this mummy - not the most attractive buddha I have seen but so interesting! The shrine area itself had many small shrines scattered on the hillside. The main shrine had a crazy underground maze in pitch black that we had to find and touch the big lock - if we achieved this, we had good luck! Luckly we did manage to touch the big lock before making it back into the daylight. This was a great day, Izumi has so much knowledge she loves to share and also a good day to try and brush up the Japanese talk. The day ended with a not so traditional Japanese feed of Chinese!Izumi sensei also took me on a trip to make Soba. Soba is a Japanese noodle made of buckwheat. Being summer when we went - we made zarusoba where the noodles are cooked then chilled and served cold with a dipping sauce, wasabi and nori flakes (seaweed). Id never made pasta noodles before and probably never will again - the process took us ages but the results were awesome! Unfortunatly no pics on this.
With Dan so keen for snowboarding, I was finally managed to twist Dans arm into teaching me to snowboard. It looks so easy, just stand up right? Definatly not as easy as it looks and once I was up, I was back down again with a primo wipe out that usually involved pain and a lot of cursing.
Im standing..........
By the end of the 1st day I could stand up although sometimes it took a lot of psyching, I could do both toe and heel edge and turn at times with absolutly no control all ending with primo wipe outs. Difficult to move the following 3 days! The 2nd day it was up to a different feild with a group of 12 mates. Luckly a few more snowboarding learners for me to hang with. It was a great day exctpt for the immense physical pain I was putting myself through. Still dont have the hang of it - maybe 3rd time lucky in Europe otherwise it will be back to the skis! Nagoya Port
The 2005 World Exposition is being held right here in Aichi. Started 25/3 and runs through till 25/9 2005. We thought going on a monday we would miss the crowds - ah ah! We managed to squeeze in 29 of the country pavillions and also the Toyota group pavillion rumored to be the top pavillion (definatly most popular)for its robot show. Our first stop for the day was the New Zealand pavillion which was very small and held in it a spectacular piece of Greenstone. We were lucky enough to get asked up to the VIP lounge for morning tea where we nibbled on a wee plate of NZ yummys all washed down with a good NZ wine! Oh I miss good wine! We timed our leaving right (difficult as it was to leave the comfort of kiwi people and good wine) for the start of the Maori Kapa Huka groups preformance. They preformed many of the well known Maori songs. The Japanese crowd just went crazy when the Huka was preformed which was great, warm fuzzies all over however made me crazy home sick and so proud to be a kiwi! My pick of the pavillions was the Singapore pavillion.
Inuyama Castle
We were handed clear umbrellas as we walked through the door, watched a clip on huge surrounding screens and all of a sudden you watched dark gray clouds come over the screen and then it just downpored! Hallarious! We had a great day and seeing all the countries gave us both itchy feet to see more of the world. Winter here is freezing! One of those freezing days we took a train ride with mates Tracy and Grant up to a wee town in Gifu area called Gero. Gero is famous for its Onsen or natural hot springs. Japanese are all crazy about visiting hot springs which are thought to be beneficial for health. The only catch for forigners is that you have to first wash yourself while sitting on a wee stool the bath completely starkers with your friends and in front of strangers. Very akward to begin with but stangly comfortable after a while. It was such a relaxing afternoon sitting in an open air hot spring overlooking a beautiful view while the snow was falling.
The last of my day trips was yesterday to Himeji, a small town west of Osaka and Kobe. I was lucky enough to be given a Japan Rail day pass from Tracy and Grant as a going away prezzie! The pass allowed me to travel anywhere on the JR trains, no shinks, just local or express trains for the day. I choose Himeji as it is the town of Japans most famous castle, Himeji-jo. During the war, most of Japans castles were destroyed however, Himeji-jo survived and is now apparently acclaimed Japans most splendid. Visiting it myself, I can see why, the main tower or donjon is 5 stories high and surrounding the main tower are another 3 smaller donjon all white plaster and stone. The whole complex surrounded by stone walls and a moat. It was well worth the 4 hour train ride. Quite unlike any of the other castles we have seen and took me just over 1.5 hours to tour around.
