Sore and Slightly Sun-burnt, But So Much Fun

Monday, June 14, 2010, 11:30p.m.


Opening Disclaimer: I took very few of the photos that I'm about to post.  Helen held onto my camera and captured our memories all weekend. If there are any neat/skillful looking photos, you can be sure that she was the one that took them, not me.

This weekend was an absolute blast, and we visited some of the most breathtaking places I’ve ever been.

There were seven of us that went on this mountain adventure: six students and our guide, Declan. The only other student that I had met before was Helen, a girl from Twain who is in my class. There were two other Twainese girls, a girl from Bulgaria, and a boy from Utah, who has been in Japan for almost a year now. We left Yamasa a couple hours after classes finished on Friday, and drove to Hakuba, Nagano. We stopped for dinner along the way, and ended up arriving at the Youth Hostel around 10:30p.m. I shared a room with the four other girls, and fell asleep pretty quickly.

The next morning we had breakfast at 7:30a.m. The caretaker at the hostel had set out seven breakfast settings for us. It seemed like we were the only people in the hostel. It was nice though. When we loaded back into the van to drive a couple miles down the road to our stating destination for our mountain hike, I could see how beautiful the area was in the day light. It was mainly greenery, trees and flowers. But in the distance, you could see snow covered mountains. As we drove through the small town, it seemed like the area had been completely deserted, a ghost town almost. In the windows of almost all of the shops were signs that read “Ski and Snowboard Rental.” Hakuba is a big ski destination in Japan during the winter, but not quite so lively in June when the snow is melting.

We arrived at the entrance for the gondola/rope lift and Declan bought tickets. It took two separate gondola rides to reach the part of the mountain that we were going to. The view from the lift was absolutely incredible. I almost don’t want to post my pictures here because I know that there is no way that they can actually convey how perfect this sight was. (Really, that statement goes for most of my pictures from this weekend). 

Once we were off the gondola, there was snow everywhere. But it wasn’t too cold. I was comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt walking around all afternoon. We hiked further into the mountains on top of snow for about an hour before finding a bridge to sit down at and eat our sack lunches. After lunch we headed back the way that we had come, and hiked further down the mountain. The entire day, weather couldn’t have been more perfect.

This sign says watch out for bears.

 By the time we finished hiking and the gondolas brought us back to the little village, it was almost 3:00p.m. and we immediately headed out to see the Kurobe Dam, Japan’s largest damn, not too far away.

Once we arrived at the dam, we rode a bus through some dark tunnels, and walked up about a million stairs (which I found to be infinitely more tiring than mountain hiking, to tell the truth). But it was definitely worth it. The dam was shockingly big and the area that housed it was beautiful. We learned a bit of history about the dam: it was built in the 1960s and about 200 workers lost their lives during its creation.

After the dam we headed to Matsumoto, but first to dinner. We ate at another nice little restaurant, where the menu is entirely in Japanese, but thankfully there are quite a few pictures. I don’t think that I have ever appreciated the plight of illiterate people the way that I do when I am trying to order something to eat in Japan. I’ve eaten curry almost every time I’ve eaten anywhere that’s not my host family’s house, mainly because it’s one of the only things that I can recognize. However, I also happen to love curry, so this hasn’t been frustrating in the least.

After dinner we drove to our hotel in Matsumoto for the night. It was around 8:30p.m. when we checked in. At this hotel everyone had their own room, the smallest (yet incredibly comfy) hotel rooms that I have ever seen.

We unloaded our things quickly, and walked into the downtown area of the city to see the castle while it was still illuminated for the night. In a lot of ways it looked really similar to the Okazaki castle that I had visited with Collin. However, it was surrounded by a gigantic moat that was still completely intact. There were lights illuminating the castle, causing it to glow in the night. It turns out that my camera is not very good at taking night time photos, but I’ll try to find a picture from someone else to post here.

(Sylvia, my new friend from Bulgaria, took these pictures of the Matsumoto castle early on Sunday morning)

Our tour guide, Declan, had been feeling sick all weekend, and as soon as we finished viewing the castle, he headed back to the hotel. But the rest of us wandered around Matsumoto, which is a fairly large city, and has a lively downtown area, for a while longer. We were all pretty tired though, and before too late, we headed back to the hotel. I watched a little bit of Japanese television, took a very long shower, and fell asleep on my tiny pillow.

The next morning, Declan didn’t show up to eat breakfast at the hotel with the group, so after waiting awhile, we headed to eat alone and let him assumedly sleep in. The hotel dining area was quite full and we all had to split up to find places to sit. The hotel breakfast was delicious, just like every other time I’ve eaten anywhere since coming to Japan. The night before I had talked briefly to a Japanese man in the lobby of the hotel. He had explained that he actually lives in New York with his family at the moment, but was a member of a band that was on a short town in Japan. I spent almost an hour eating breakfast with him and one of his bandmates, who didn’t speak any English at all. It was so great to get to practice my Japanese in a legitimate situation for more than just a few seconds. And both of the men were very very nice. The one from New York was probably about my dad’s age, and the other was maybe in his mid-twenties? We talked about his family in Japanese, which means I’m only about 85% sure that this is what he said, but I think he explained that his wife and his one year old son live in Tokyo right now, and after the band plays there next show in Niko, he is going home to them. Anyway, it was a really fun breakfast.

After finally waking Declan up around 9:30a.m., we left Matsumoto for the rest of our adventure and our journey home. We made our way slowly back to Okazaki, stopping to eat unpasteurized milk icecream, see a view mountain and lake views, eat lunch at a cute little café, and to visit an onsen for my second time since coming to Japan. The server at the café was incredibly sweet, and the food was, of course, excellent. And the onsen was more fun the second time, when I wasn’t alone and wasn’t entirely clueless as to how it worked. The bathroom at the Youth hostel that we stayed at Friday night had public bathing rooms as the only showers too. I think I’m getting a lot more used to being unclothed in front of other people, although, I’m pretty sure that I won’t miss it when I head back to Okazaki.

After lunch and the onsen, and many more miles through the beautiful windy Japanese hills, we stopped at a famous Japanese temple. It was more secluded in the woods than any of the other temples that I had been too. The trees were indescribably tall and huge, and the entire temples, with all of its shrines and fountains, seemed to almost fade into the nature surrounding it.

After exploring the temple and finding some bathrooms, we headed back to Okazaki with no more stops. It was around 7:30p.m. when we arrived back at the school, and I biked home to my homestay just in time to eat dinner with Frank and Hibiki, and my host mother, who of course, didn’t actually eat with us, but stood in front of the stove cooking additional delicious food. 

So much more to say, but I'm exhausted from the two hours I just spent fighting with blogspot.com to upload all of my pictures. I'll try to post more soon.

Thanks for reading :-)