Golden week has begun. I took it easy my first 24 hours. I had plans to go out with friends on Saturday night in Osaka but i was just too tired after work and I figured I would just save the money and relax. I ended up being pretty lazy most of the day Sunday too until my buddy Koichi texted me and motivated me to meet him for some food in Osaka. We went for sushi. It was good as always, but a bit expensive. I feel so impressed with myself. I am no longer SUCH a newbie at sushi here. I am actually able to see past the standard deliciousness and criticize places. I have preferences, when before I was just ready to eat anything and pay whatever wherever because it is all so much better than Sushi in America. I was very happy with this sushi place for one reason though….(I suggest any Greenpeace hippies that are reading this skip to the next paragraph)…..They had whale! I had been searching for a place to try whale meat ever since arriving in Japan. It is so controversial and I know I would never find it in America so I really wanted to give it a try, and let me tell you! ……It wasn’t really that good at all…. I had it raw on top of rice, just like the other sushi. It was really dark red, almost like raw steak but darker. It wasn’t as fibrous as beef though. It was really soft and I didn’t really have to chew at all. It was kind of bland and was kind of a heavy taste. Not like tuna or any other raw fish I had tried before. I don’t think I will be trying it again, but who knows. Koichi said sometimes people like to fry it, which sounded like something I might like a little better. Anything is better when it is fried in oil, am I right?
After sushi we went to an arcade/DZ Discovery Zone type place to kill some time before going out for the night. It was 4 floors of games. They had one floor of arcade games, then the next few floors were filled with other activities. There was basketball, tennis, ping pong, archery, mini golf, pool, and they even had a mechanical bull. On the top floor was a roller rink. I would have loved to have a birthday party here as a kid. They had everything. Totally blows Chuckie Cheese out of the water. It was only about $12 for an hour and a half of being able to ply whatever you wanted. We mostly just played ping pong and pool, but we tried some of the other things too. I made sure to thoroughly embarrass myself at tennis before leaving.
After the hour and a half flash back to my life as an 11 year old we headed to the club to embarrass ourselves in a more adult setting. Koichi didn’t end up coming in, so it was just me wandering around until I found my friends. It took me a while and I was starting to feel pretty awkward. Just as I was texting Koichi to make him feel guilty for ditching me I found who I was looking for. We ended up having a great time. It was my first time at this place. I actually almost got into a fight with some kid who kept grinding up on my friends uninvited. I just got in between them so he wouldn’t bother them any more then he started dancing next to me bumping me and just being an asshole so I had to give him a little shove. He got up all pissed off and his friends came over, but they were all apologizing to me and told him to chill out. I was surprised at that. I guess I am not in America anymore.
The rest of the night was good though. I had to head home on the last train which left Osaka at 1145. I had plans to meet Ayako in the morning to begin our trip to the mountains.
So far we have been having a great time even though it has been raining since we started the 4 hour bus ride here. It is nice to be out in the mountains away from everything. I was beginning to wonder if there were places like this in Japan. Everywhere I have been so far has been one big interconnected metropolis. This is definitely more isolated. More like a small mountain town in West Virginia, just a bit of a different landscape and people with teeth. The people have all been nice to me, even though I am foreign and cant really speak any Japanese. The lady who ran the place we stayed in last night was very nice. She had a little dog who seemed to like me. The lady kept picking the dog up and putting her in my lap. Also when we were hiking along the road today (through the pouring down rain) some people we say at breakfast stopped and picked us up. They gave us a ride to where we were going and back to the inn after.
The place we were going was a little mountain top village called Kumano. There were only about 10 houses up on this mountain top. It was really bad weather so we couldn’t see far, but we could at least see some of the neighboring mountains. At the top of the mountain there was an old man and his wife planting rice. As we were walking by taking a picture, he said something along the lines of “Thanks for coming to help” (Ayako has been translating for me all week so far). Of course I wanted to give it a try but I didn’t jump right away. We (by ‘we’ I mean Ayako) were chatting with him for a few minutes and his wife came over. She smiled and handed me a few plants, somehow sensing my curiosity. These people were so nice. They were thanking me as Ayako made jokes about how healthy (or unhealthy) “my” plants would grow to be. The guy that gave us a ride wanted to plant too so he asked for a try. Right away he took a big step out into the rice patty (which is just a small field covered in about 2 inches of standing water). His nice shiny running shoes sunk right into the mud and took a huge chunk out of the bank. The lady did not look so pleased with him for that, but she was very happy and thanked me as we went to leave, telling me she would take care of my plants. I think she liked me 🙂
After we got back to the inn, we had some tea then chilled out in the hot springs for a little until the bus came to take us to where we are now, another mountain town called Kawayu, about an hour from where we were last night. This place is on a river, which is a little smaller and faster moving than the river we stayed next to last night. This place reminds me of home a little more. I can here the river running right now as I am laying in my room typing this. As soon as we got here this afternoon the man showed us the place and gave us some tea, Ayako asked him if he knew where I could rent a fishing rod. He automatically offered to let me borrow his. It was not like any rod I have ever used before. It was a bamboo cane pole about 20′-25′ long. It telescoped down into about a 2 foot section, but it was a little tough to walk down to the river with when it was all the way extended. All this rain has really made the river a lot cloudier and much faster, so I didn’t have much luck. I actually snapped the hook off when I snagged on a branch or something under the water. I went back to the inn with my tail between my legs and apologized. He couldn’t have cared less. He wanted to know if I wanted another hook to go back out, but I didn’t bother fishing anymore. I just went to hang out in the hot spring and have a few beers.
There are natural hot springs everywhere in these mountains. There is a pretty big hot tub/pool about 20 yards from the river which someone fashioned out of some big river rocks. You can literally dig your own personal hot tub anywhere next to the river here. We dug for a little while but the rocks were pretty big and the pre made tub was much nicer than anything we could have made.
After hot tubbing for a while we made our way back to our inn for dinner. It was very traditional Japanese. We sat on the floor. We had several types of fish. Of course there were pickled things (which I am learning to like). We had some roe of some fish, and a lot of rice as well. There were a bunch of other things that I couldn’t identify, but it was all good and I am stuffed now. The food may be the best part of this trip so far. That or my quick lesson in rice farming.
Either way, I am having fun. I didnt want to skip out on my blog this week and I just wanted to write a post before I forget what has happened on this trip thus far. I will write about the rest of my vacation next week when I get back. We are planning on heading to the beach tomorrow and then farther north the next day to camp along a lake by Mt. Fuji. I think my buddy Greg will be joining us there. Good vacation so far. I hope you are all having a nice week. Thanks for reading.
PS I wrote this on my iPhone so sorry for not being so entertaining. This is a little more frustrating than a normal keyboard. 🙂
Jealous I missed out on those hot springs!