A day in the golden field

After only three hours sleep due to Mikas wedding yesterday, I am surprised I didn't fall asleep amongst the ricestacks near Yabuki, an hours drive from Koriyama. But no, today was all about harvesting rice, so no time for idyllic napping, despite the inviting laid-back atmosphere that always greet you on the countryside. I love the countryside.
The trip was organized by a threesome, - a local NGO for mentally challenged people, Kalmia which is an international organization in Koriyama and the owners of the field, the local sake brewery whom I assume will use the harvested rice for making at least cooking sake.

Equipped with a small scythe for cutting and softened weed for bundling the work came around pretty easily. Here it is my Malaysian friend Shy, who almost disappeared in the ricefield.


Bundling with Ayako-san.
Confused frogs jumped around our feet, wondering why we cut down their golden rice-forest.
We were around 50 people cutting down, bundling and stacking the rice.


Here is the field well halfway through:
Afterwards a celebration lunch was arranged with mochi in tons of variations, the local community performed a traditional danceshow and the day was rounded up with a quiz in Japanese about farming in Japan. I have no idea how I ended up with a price. (I think I owe that one to Shy of Robyn).
Here we are, the whole group from Kalmia:



This fellow is my favorite resident in Yabuki. I absolutely adore him.

Fall and Fukushima Video

Its Autumn now. Despite 28 degrees Celcius, shops agree that Autumn is over us or at least around the corner and thus decorate to celebrate the second most beautiful season in Japan (First one being Spring with the Cherry-trees in blossom of cause). Red maple leaves in plastic decorate the hallways of the malls, and national produce like beer has leaves printed on the cans. The restaurants and delis have as well taken the Autumn spirit to them as seen on this lunchbox (o bento) with carrots in the shape of leaves delicately scattered over the mushroom seasoned rice, a piece of salmon, a bit of sweet potato, a shitake musroom, a fish ball and Tamago yaki - a yummy kind of sweet egg omelette. Included is also a sweet bun made of rice and adzuki beans.
Price? 598 jpy or 27,50 d.kr.

The other day we found the official tourist video for Fukushima, the state we currently live in. It gives a pretty good idea of 'our' region. It can be seen here: Fukushima Prefecture video
(Warning: don't let the music get to you).

Aizuwakamatsu in bloom

Aizuwakamatsu used to house a great Samurai klan which is hard not to notice wandering around the historical sights. We went there to admire the castle and the many blooming cherry trees:


The original castle dates back to 1384, but it has been redesigned and rebuilt various times and the current version is from 1965 - an replica of the castle tower as it looked before it was demolished by the Meji gouvernment in 1874.

Aizuwakamatsu is also known for the tragic tale of 20 young samurai warriors whom during a battle against the Meji gouvernment, had fled to a hill top. From the hill top the young samurais thought they saw the castle on fire and feared everything was lost to the enemy, so they decided to commit ritiual suicide. One boy survied though, and could tell the story.
Eventhough our Japanese is not that good, watching this theater play, we had no doubt about the story:


In reality it was the forest that was in fire and not the castle, which made the suicide even more tragic. The graves of the 19 boys can still be found on the top of the hill.

Another pic from the play:



Hongo
Sunday we went to Hongo, which is a small village just outside Aizuwakamatsu. The place is famous for its pottery that dates back to the epoca of samurais and feudal lords. Hongo first became a pottery williage 400 years ago, when tiles to build the castle was demanded made there.

It is possible to visit the many pottery workshops today, there is only one though, Munakata, that handles the entire potterymaking process in a strictly traditional manner. When we arrived at his workshop we were greeted by a nice woman who invited us in and after a few minutes asked us to take a seat on a cusion. Here she served salted cucumbers and fresh made tea. Afterwards we took another look in the shop and ended buying a set of teacups. When we paid, she invited us to take a seat again, so that she could serve us coffee while she packed the goods for us.
Buying things tend to be a very slow, but thorough and respectful matter here in Japan.

Kawashigashi town - Aizumura

Saturday morning on our way to Aizuwakamatsu, we noticed a huge statue reminding us of Virgin Mary. We decided to stop and take a look.
Soon we found ourselves inside the most beautiful Japanese park, with full blooming cherry trees, various types of plants, bushes and trees, children feeding carps, a small shrine, a 14 meter reclining statue of Buddha and many great picnic spots. The park was busteling with families, school classes and elderly couple trying to find a place for o hanami in the shadow of the cherry trees. We felt the same energy we used to sense in some of the parks in Copenhagen. Nice!


The 57 meter tall statue, pictures 'Jibo Kannon'. 'Jibo' means 'Loving Mother' and 'Kannon' is the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy.
The reason why she resemble Virgin Mary could be found in the fact that Christianity was banned during the Edo era, so Christian people disquised Virgin Mary in many Jibo Kannon.

The name of the park was Aizu-mura, which means the Aizu village. We will soon return to this place for a whole day picnic/reading in the sun. Here are some more shots:

The Japanese children were well represented in the park, looking cute in their uniforms, or feeding carps.
Jibo Kannon smelling the Cherry blossoms:
Sleeping Beauty. This statue is a replica of one on Sri Lanka from the mid 12th century:

A trip to the coast

Henrik had arranged a water rich Saturday for us. We packed the car and drove for 1½ hours until we reached the Pacific Ocean on the east coast of Japan.
Here we were in the densest populated city in Fukushima, in a place called Iwaki. The place is famous for its spas, its reasonably priced sashimi restaurants, its beach and an aquarium with numerous kinds of fish found in the Japanese waters.


We started off at the aquarium where a gigantic walrus, garden eels and jellyfish startled us the most. To see all these fish, we went hungry for… yes, fish, so we passed the local fish market where fresh squids hang everywhere and found our way to a seat in one of many sushi restaurants, where we had to leave an un emptied plate for the first time since we arrived in Japan behind, as the portions where huge.


The plan was next to head for the marine tower and then to take a walk along the beach. As we rolled into a parking lot, the weather got grumpy and it looked like it would start to drizzle any time soon. We found it better to stay in the car for…half an hour. We can say we in that way have become veeeery Japanese. Often we pass young couple chatting in cars, middle-aged woman eating their bento in the car, men emailing by phone in the car while the wife is shopping – or like we did, people who take a nice nap in the car.

Half an hour later we woke up only to find out it was still raining, so we decided to do another very Japanese thing. We went on a vending machine hunt, which lead us to 7-11 where we bought each a can (!) of nice hot coffee for us to enjoy in the car, before we headed home to Koriyama.

Our first encounter with a ski slope, ever

In Koriyama the inhabitants have two favourite sports; during summer (and many times winter) they play golf, and during winter they ski. We have never tried either, but when some of Henriks colleagues invited us to join them on their yearly ski trip, we didn’t hesitate to say yes.

It takes less than an hour to drive to the resort by car, so to go there and back in one day is pretty normal, but we were introduced to a way better way of ending the ski trip as we will tell you about later.

The trip up to the Gran Deco resort was a nice ride through the hills of sleeping rice fields, and passing a beautiful lake with many groups of Mute swans that probably had found their way to Japan from Denmark, just like us. The snow fell gently outside, but only until we arrived. Perfect; Fresh snow, still wind and a clear sky. It was the perfect day for a skiing-challenge, for both us, and the Japanese-only-speaking-instructor. "How do we close our boots?", "How do we click on the skies?" The rest of the group went to seek greater challenges on the ski slopes while we moved on learning simple manoeuvres like how to break, how to turn and how to do both in one time. For a newbie that can be really difficult!














Just before lunch, the group came to check our progress, hoping we would be ready to join them on the real slope. We looked at the instructor. He meant we were up for the challenge, so we just needed to go the 30 meters down the beginner’s slope once more and we would be by the lift. On the way down the beginner’s slope, Barbara completely lost control. She luckily succeeded to lift up a 5-year-old Japanese boy in her arms on the way, before her skies would have knocked him to the ground. He got a huge chock and wept for several minutes afterwards. Barbara felt like doing the same, having all Henriks colleagues watching her stunt. They pretty quickly agreed that it might be better we stayed on the beginners slope a little more, before we joined them on the lift to the top of the mountain, so we went on a long lunch break, for Barbara to find the courage to hit the beginners slope once more…

Practice does pay of, and in the afternoon, when we got a new invitation to join the rest of the group, we went for it. The trip up, on the lift, revealed a beautiful view of the slope and the surrounding mountains.

The slope we were about to ski was two kilometres long.


We were told it would be flat – but that was only half the truth. Barbara’s effective self-developed skill of throwing herself in the snow whenever speed had gone beyond her breaking abilities became handy whenever the slope got too steep.

Some how it did get better, and the last kilometre down the slope went quite well for both of us. Starting the day without even knowing how to click on the skies, to actually being able to control both speed and turns in the curves, make us pretty confident that during the next three years with easy accessible ski resorts open from late November to early May, we will master the sport to a degree where we actually relax while doing it.
We hope.

So, what is the best way of dealing with the weariness and pain in your body after a long day of skiing?
Our suggestion must without a doubt be to take a bath in a hot spring (onsen) and afterwards enjoy a wholesome meal accompanied with cold beer and sake in the company of friendly people.
After driving 45 minutes down the mountain towards Koriyama, we arrived at the onsen, Hakkeien, located only 13km. from Koriyama.
We were all really tired and could feel the pain in the knees and legs, so before going to dinner, we entered the revitalizing onsen: http://www.hakkeien.com/bath/index.html
In this case, the onsen was public, which means that we went to the lady’s and men’s onsen respectively and shared the onsen with Henriks colleagues. This was yet a challenge that day, since the Adam and Eve costume is not what we usually wear in public.
Actually, it really doesn’t matter; When you enter the bath and immediately start feeling the healing effects of the water on your tired body that is all that counts.
Within 15 minutes, you feel so revitalized that you almost are ready to return to the ski slopes. Almost.
After the bath, dinner was set in traditional Japanese surroundings. The dinner consisted of an uncountable number of plates and included delicacies such as miniature steaks, fried mackerel, whole marinated mini-octopus, sashimi of tuna and white fish, cubes of smoked salmon and cucumber, different types of unknown Japanese vegetables and pickles, fresh tofu, crab tales salad, miso soup, deep-fried shrimps and asparagus, boiled egg, rice, pudding, and several undefined things. A colleague supplemented the feast with his mothers home made Mochi.
Mochi is a kind of sticky rice balls, very popular to eat on New Years Eve. They can be quite difficult to chew and several people loose their life every year as they choke on the rice ball. (A 70-year-old man, was once saved by his daughter, who used a vacuum cleaner to remove the Mochi from his throat.)
Anyway, the dinner was great, and in the companionship of Henriks friendly colleagues, an ice-cold beer (one of the best in our lives) and warm sake, life seemed perfect. The only insignificant hassle was to sit on the floor, with sore legs after the day’s activity, but that's part of the deal.

That night we gladly slept on the futons on the tatami floor in the simple, yet aesthetic decorated Japanese room, and the next morning we gladly had another dip in the onsen before our fish-rich breakfast was served in the evocative atmosphere of the restaurant. The Japanese hotel (Ryokan) really oozed of a down-to-earth and friendly staff that even served coffee for us, after we had paid our bill. With this level of hospitality in Japan, we can only encourage you to come and try!
See you soon.

Weekend in Aizu-Wakamatsu

The 11th of February was the day the very first Japanese emperor was crowned; therefore this date is named the National Foundation Day (Kenkoku Kinenbi) and has become one of many national holidays derived from a prior emperor.


Since this day falls on a Monday this year, it meant a long weekend for us, so we packed the car and went to a onsen hotel in a city called Aizu-Wakamatsu. Spending time in an onsen is THE most popular way to spend your vacation here in Japan, and everybody does it several times per year.
So, what is an onsen? An onsen is a hot spring, which there by the way is many of here, due to the volcanoes. The onsens are either public or privately owned by a hotel like the one we went to.
The most important thing is that you go to the onsen to relax. It is pure pleasure – and it is said that the water, depending of its contents of minerals have healing effects on you. The baths are often separated gender wise - and the clever ones enjoy an ice-cold beer or cold sake as they soak them selves in the often unbelievable hot water.
This sounds super nice. There is just one tiny catch. You have to skinny-dip! Bathing clothes (often also tattoos) are strictly forbidden. For a shy, tall, Scandinavian girl – it can be a challenging limit to cross, to share these baths nude with several tiny Japanese women.
Anyway, this time, we paid us out of it. I mean, you need to start somewhere! We arranged a hotel room (well helped by Henriks Japanese interpreter) where we had our own private bath. Now we are talking! Not only did we have the privacy, and the benefit of sharing the bath instead of being separated in man and women baths – we also had none stop access for 24 hours to the most gorgeous steaming hot pool with a view to the mountains! If that isn’t what life is all about, what is?

Well actually we must admit, that this is not something we could just jump in to. We did try though, but jumped out of the pool even quicker than we got in. Damn it is hot! You can feel you skin reacting to the hot water, your nails tickles as if they are ready to jump off and after few minutes in the water, you prefer to sit next to the open balcony door, even though it must have been freezing cold as it snowed out side...
During the day we could gradually extend the time we spent in the bath pr time, but we honestly never got really familiar with the hot water. Anyway, we are sure, this will be an appreciated luxury way of spending many of our weekends here in Japan.

As we had one of the better rooms at the hotel it meant we had our own private garden instead of a hall! The garden had gravel to symbolize water, and bigger stones as sort of a bridge. In this context the bridge symbolized a change of mindset. You walk from your stressful normal life outside the room, and arrive at a place where it is all about finding peace and harmony in your thoughts. So neat!
The room we entered was spacious and in typical Japanese style with tatami mats at the floor, flower arrangements, green tea and legless chairs, meaning you practically sit on the floor. And then there was a really nice surprise: a super advanced electric massage chair! Did we fight over it, or what?
There were also yukatas for us, with is a kind of cotton kimonos, which is the proper dress to wear at a place like that...also at the restaurant...!

There was no place to sleep though…strange! Giving it no further thought, we went to the restaurant area for dinner. Once more, we were impressed by the creativity in the Japanese kitchen. Several dishes were lined up for us in our private booth, inclusive a fruit cocktail, we thought. The cherry turned out to be a tomato, and there were raw octopuses mixed with the fresh pineapple pieces. We also had a big bowl of boiling soymilk, to fry our chicken and shitake mushrooms in, and we had a hot stone, where we could fry scrimps and pieces of an octopussy. This was all new to us. We also had a little of the more common things for us like sashimi (raw fish), tiny whole squids and of cause we ordered beers and a bottle of sake. Campai!

When we returned to the room, the low table had been removed and our futons had been made up! A futon is basically a semi hard thin madras put directly on the floor…and it is no cliché that you need to be costumed to sleep on a futon, before you can really enjoy it. We are still in the process :o)

Aizu-Wakamatsu is not all about onsens. During the Edo period it was home to a Samurai clan, and there are several traces left behind to tell the (hi)story, like a five-floor castle, that used to be the headquarters of the clan, the mountain where a group of samurais committed suicide, and Saigo Tanomos villa named Aizu Bukeyashiki.
We went to the latter as it was on the way from our onsen to the center of Aizu.
Saigo Tanomo was a master of martial arts and a skilled military strategist. He was the retainer of the Clans chief and his Yashiki (villa) is quite impressive with 38 rooms and tons of stuff dating back to the Edo period. We passed the many different drawing rooms, the room where Tanomos wife and children committed suicide, and the lavatory secured against ninjas.
We passed samurai armors and spears, drawers and kimonos and Henrik almost bought a Samurai sword while Barbara figured out what some of Dads things really are for, like the inros for carrying medicine. The place had quite many signs in English, so we did pick up a few details about the Edo-period, but we both feel like reading up on the subject, probably starting with Shogun.
We could easily have spent much more time there than we did, but it was freezing, and as you should take of your shoes as you enter the un-heated villa, you kind of hurry through the place. We are pretty sure though, that we will take another look at the place during the summer, as well as we would love to see the other sights in Aizu...as soon as it gets warmer.

We also spent some time in the center of Aizu, where we tried a couple of restaurants and went shopping for lacquer ware.

One place we ate at was Takino. It was a very traditional place, where you have to sit on the floor to eat. This place did not have a hole under the table to stick your long legs into, as we have had all the other ‘traditional’ places we visited… nope – this was just a pillow on the floor! After trying to sit in the formal position for few minutes, we gave up and tried to sit in other positions…kept changing them, could not find a position that really worked for us – reckon we need to practice the floor sitting thing.
At Takino we had a local dish called Wappa meshi, which is steamed fish over rice, cooked and served in a round container made of tree bark. It tasted really good and special, as the food takes taste of the bark. We also got a couple of surprise side dishes... - One was horse meat! That was a new one for us.

Another restaurant we went to was Mitsutaya. We really wanted to go there, but we couldn’t find it and it was freezing cold. To get warmer, we went into a shop for browsing, and who would have imagined that we would find the restaurant in the back of the shop! We guessed that the sign outside probably told us that, but if you cant read the signs, what good does it?
We were happy that we stumbled into the place by coincidence. The restaurant was set up in a former bean-paste mill. Bean paste is very popular in Japan, as it is one of their key seasonings called Miso.
The line for the place was huge, but Henrik had us added to the waiting list anyway and we found a place to sit and wait for a table. We thought about shopping some of the many delicacies at the shop, but dropped the idea knowing we would have no clue what to do with them. A man approached us on his way out, handing us a brochure – in English, explaining all about Miso. Nice guy!
A little hour later, we got a table at the ‘bar’ and ordered the set menu, consisting of 7 different kind of Dengaku, which are bamboo skewers with grilled tofu, fish or veggies. Great taste!

We arrived back in Koriyama Monday afternoon after three nice days in Aizu, feeling we have learned quite a bit more about the magnificent place called Japan…we still have a long way to go though. Luckily!