Japan in Thirty Days

Set phasers to blog!

27 Oct 2010 6 Comments

by crastabule in Craig/クレイグ

My fantastic host family put in a wifi connection and set up a laptop for me to use while I am here. Let’s hear it for the Ozawa Family! YATTA!

I still need to figure out or buy a cable to get my pictures downloaded, as I have 10′s of fantastic images burning a hole in my camera.. OH WAIT! Just realized I DO have an iPhone cable, and I did take some pictures with it.. let’s get em!

When I arrived to Japan, we hopped on the train and this was my very first gift from the good people of Japan. Can you dig it? Anyhow, the last few days have been very busy, and I haven’t had any internets, but now I’ll try to catch up a bit. It’s actually pretty difficult to remember, with the intense amount of things we’ve been doing.

I will start with our arrival in Kofu, which is the town we are currently in. We got to the hotel and had a feast, and were warmly welcomed. Everyone became very nervous once the feast began, when we realized that the hosts we had spoke very little Japanese. Oh noes! How will this work, when everyone is having a hard time communicating!? Turns out that we did a pretty good job, only really getting stuck a few times. During the dinner, I went over to the hotel owner, Furuya-san, simply to thank him for the dinner and the hospitality. I cracked a few really bad jokes, but he must of like them because he informed me it was time to go to the onsen, and then a 100 year old Japanese bar. I didn’t try to object, but I get the impression that objection would not have been an option anyway. I managed to get Windy and Jillian roped into going, and off we went.

The bar was great. They kept ordering more and more food! Since we just had a feast, 4th meal was hard to accept, so we kinda just nibbled, until the huge bowls of ramen appeared. Then we ate again, because this was no American ramen. This was the good stuff. Best ramen I ever had, until two days later, when we went to a ramen shop and watched the owner (and rotary member) make us all ramen from scratch! We went back to the hotel and then sang some karaoke with a couple of Japanese guys, and I completely blew out my voice screaming Disturbed and Metallica to bewildered Japanese folks. (Since there were only 4 in the room, I figured it was ok.)

Fast forward to the ramen eating! We were at the local festival and once the ramen was made, we were directed to eat it with loud slurping! Why? Because we were being filmed for TV. That’s right, we’re a big deal in Japan. We’ve been in 2 newspapers, and filmed for TV, though we are probably on the cutting room floor.Those are real buildings in the background.

At the festival Jerry-san threw stuff off a scaffolding. Kids and adults alike trampled each other for the right to claim pieces of candy and most notably, a large dead fish. I managed to snag a tatami mat filled with rice patties and pieces of a tree. This means I’m lucky. I know because everyone told me it was great luck to catch a rice patty. Well I caught 8. At once. Luckyyy!

The big robot to your right was at the Gundam show. We got great group photos of it as well, but sadly, the lion’s share of my photos are bound to my camera.

My new host family set me up in a beautiful room, and made a great hamburger dinner the first night I was there. They were shocked when they found out that I liked seafood, of the raw persuasion, and so the next night was sushi time. I had drinks with Kenjiro, who is Akira Ozawa’s son, and we wrapped ties around our heads and celebrated. Yes, I have a photo of it. On my camera. The Ozawa’s have a wonderful family, and they have made me feel very welcome.

I’m going to blow through a couple points of interest… We saw Fuji up close.. Fantastic! We went to a few wineries… decadent! We saw a frozen cave… chilly! We saw the largest collection of owls and flowers I’ve ever seen. I apparantly have a knack for sending owls into a rage. Here is a picure of the one that hated me the most. At one point there were 8 other people in the room and the owl would not look away from me, feathers ruffled, and waiting to kill!