Saturday train ride to Utsunomiya, Bike ride to Mashiko.

On Saturday Kate and I decided that we should make a trip to Utsunomiya. Typically we just drive, but it has been a while since Kate and the children have ridden on the train so we decided to take our bicycles to the station and then ride the train in to town. This method can be faster than driving sometimes (especially during rush hour.) We arrived at the station mid day and decided to walk around some of the shopping areas for fun.

Close to the station there are a number of different restaurants and shops so it doesn't take much effort to walk to any number of places.

Our first stop was LaLa Square. It is a multi-level shopping mall with eyes painted on the outside to make it more friendly looking. It also plays music and sings "La La Su-ku-e-ru" which is the katakana equivalent of La La Square. Actually there can be a lot of English around but it is typically disguised as it is written in Katakana.

Sometimes when foreign words are adopted into the language they can lose a little of the meaning. For example we saw the sign below while we were at the mall. Clearance has been split into two separate words..Clea and Rance in the end everyone knows there is a sale, it is just interesting to see it written as two words.

After we finished up at La La Square we stopped at a small restaurant to grab a bite before heading home on the train. We have not had Italian in a long time so when we walked past an Italian restaurant we decided it sounded good. Most times the Italian food in Japan is not exactly the same as we get in the states. It usually has a Japanese twist. My guess is that the American Italian food is also slightly different then true Italian, but I have not yet had true Italian so I can't be sure.

While at the restaurant Liam said "If somebody dared me to eat that Tabasco sauce I would." so I said "OK, I dare you." We put a little in his glass and he actually did drink it.

Afterwords he said he thought his lips were on fire. We all got a pretty good laugh out of it, including him.

It still gets dark pretty early now and so by the time we arrived back at Hoshakuji station it was already dark. 3 out of the 4 bicycles have lights on them with Colleen's being the exception, so we put her in the middle of the line and rode home. That put an end to our day out on the town.

Probably six months ago Liam decided that one of his goals before we leave Japan is to ride his bicycle from our home to the pottery town of Mashiko. I told him he will have to start training a little as the weather warms up. Before he takes on this adventure I wanted to ride it first to understand the road conditions, traffic, and how far it is so today I gave it a go. I was able to do the round trip in about 1 hour 40 min and the distance turned out to be about 17 miles one way.

I snagged a couple of pictures with my cell phone for pictorial evidence.

After doing the ride I think he will be able to do it in the spring. Most of the way has side walks and the route is pretty straight forward. Most likely we will just ride one way and have Kate pick us up in the van about mid day. Should be a good adventure for him.

Finally the children have had two different Japanese tutors since we have been living here. Their current tutor Noriko sensei has been with them since last March. She came today for class to help Liam prepare for a big math test in school tomorrow. Kate grabbed a picture of them as we have never posted a picture of them in the past.

Hope everyone has a great week..I am definitely ready for warmer weather to come our way.

Sake factory tour and visit to Shionome sans family..

This weekend we were able to go to Karasuyama with the Shionome's. They took us to a Sake factory for a tour to see how Sake is made. From the front it looks like a small building, but this building is connected to a large complex where everything happens.

Here is the entire group including our factory tour guides.

Before entering the facility we were required to remove our shoes and put on inside slippers. I have toured a handful of factories through work and about 1/3 of them require separate shoes inside the facility so this is not so unusual for factories in Japan.

Immediately after stepping into the building you could smell the Sake. There are a number of different processes during the making of Sake. First the rice is polished. This process removes the outer layer of the rice. Next is washing and then on to steaming. The picture below is of the steaming process. There is no one in the photo to give a size reference, but it is a huge container. It is similar to making rice for mochi, but on a much larger scale.

Next the rice is cooled and stored in a vat where it molds and ferments. The cooling machine is pictured below.

One of the critical steps is the filtering. There were two methods to filter. This machine was used to produce the expensive Sake. It presses the fermented rice into a screen that separates the Sake from the base rice.

The separated rice doesn't go to waste. It is used to make a number of products including soup, ice cream, and even soap. Next up was the Sake tasting. Kate and Chizuko san got to sample a variety of different types. One of them was blueberry Sake, and another was more than 20 years old at about $400 a bottle. They appeared to enjoy the tasting, Taka san and I were driving and so we were not able to partake.

Next up was a tour of the cave were the Sake is stored for aging. We drove up a small winding road that led us to the cave. The cave was in the side of a hill and the opening was lined with wood to support it. Our tour guide unlocked it and led us in.

Up front was a rack of Sake that is being stored for special occasions.

There were pictures on all of the bottles to designate who's they are and what the occasion will be. The one below was purchased at the birth of a families baby and will be opened and shared when the child turns 20 (the drinking age in Japan).

There were cartons of Sake lining the cave walls at various stages of storage. One area was fenced off and locked. It contained Sake that was more than 40 years old.

There were also a number of bats hibernating in the cave. The children all enjoyed touching them as they slept. I am not so familiar with bats so I was a little uncomfortable at first, but the bats just continued to hang there and slept through it all.

From there we drove to the Karasuyama paper factory. Kate had gone there one time before, but it was the first time for me. It was pretty interesting to see in person. The paper is made from what looked like a shrub. First sticks about 12 inches long are boiled to separate the the wood into different parts. The part under the bark and above the wood center is cleaned to remove the dark portion from it. Below are the different stages.

The material on the right in the above picture is then put into a machine with water and mixed into a pulpy goo that is used to make the paper. That can be seen in the picture below.

Next there are a couple of other steps, but finally it ends up in a vat where a screen is pulled through the mix to separate out a layer of the pulp that becomes the paper. The screen itself has a pattern on it that becomes imprinted in the paper and creates a water mark that can be seen when the paper is held up to light.

Each layer is then stacked on top of each other on a table. The paper below was being created for diplomas and the University's name was written on the screen to form the watermark.

Next the material is pressed to remove the water from the pulp and create the final product.

After the paper factory tour we visited the house that Taka san grew up in. His mother and father still live in the home. It is a very nice older farm house that is much bigger than the home we live in. Actually many of the rooms were quite large.

There were two huge tables lined up in the one room and we were all able to sit together and enjoy lunch. Behind me in the picture there were sliding doors that could be opened to let fresh air into the house. It was really nice to sit in the sun and have dinner with everyone together.

For lunch we had a number of different things. One of the things we had was fresh kiwi. While eating we were informed that the kiwi was grown at their house. We had never actually seen a Kiwi tree so Kate and I asked to see what it looked like. Here is the picture, it looks a lot like a wisteria vine to me.

They also grew their own shiitake mushrooms. The mushrooms are grown on old logs that are stacked against a wooden rack.

After exploring the home the adults sat at a kotatsu (heated table) drinking coffee and visiting while the children played outside. Taka san's father was interested in my I-pod because I was using it to look up words on the dictionary. Pictured he is checking it out with a magnifying glass. On TV behind me was a marathon relay. This time of year marathons are pretty popular and a lot of people watch them on TV. Shiono san told me that for new years his father and brother in law will watch a new years marathon relay for the entire day.

When we finished visiting we drove to a temple on a hill. We parked at the bottom and then hiked a pretty good ways to the top. About half way up there was a little station that had walking sticks for people to borrow during the walk to the top.

There were a lot of log steps to get to the top, but the view was great.

The temple was placed inside a natural cave in the side of the hill, one of the more interesting locations I have seen.

It was a beautiful day for this hike and we stayed at the top for about 15 min to take it in.

But on the way down I had to stop on one of the logs for a quick nap to regenerate enough energy to make it the rest of the way down the hill to the cars.

Hope everyone has a good week..

Friends birthday party, and....that is about it this week.

It is still quite hectic at work and neither Kate nor I have had a lot of motivation. As a result we have not taken the effort to get out and do a lot. Recently it has been pretty cold and that also does not help with the motivation. Last week when I got up to ride my bike to work I noticed thick ice had formed on the inside of the windows. We do not heat the house at all at night and it does get below freezing inside. We all have heated blankets to keep us from freezing while we sleep. Then I set the timers on the kerosene heaters to come on about 30 min before we get up. There is one heater in the living room and 2 on the second story where we sleep. Using that heating style we only use about 18 liters of kerosene per week. That is a little over $10 per week. Actually that is much cheaper than what it used to cost us in the US, but the difference is that we are only really keeping one room in the house at a comfortable temperature, rather than the entire house. With little to no insulation if the heater is not running the house immediately gets noticeably colder.

This weekend we had the Shionome's over for Chizuko sans birthday celebration. We served a variety of different foods that we typically made when we lived in the US. They also brought some Japanese dishes to share. For entertainment we played Jenga.

To make it more interesting we made a rule that whoever lost had to dance to the mayahi song in front of everyone. Here is a link to that song for you to enjoy, I think it was popular a few years back.

マイやヒ

Chizuko sans dance...

Kate...

and Taka san..

You will notice that there are no pictures of me, that is because I brought my Jenga A game and was able to get through the night with no dancing..

Kate and I made a cake for the event. It was from one of the cake mixes we brought with us, but we put fresh strawberries and whipped cream on in in place of heavy frosting.

Chizuko san was happy to get the cake.

and everyone really seemed to like it. The children went crazy for it.

Here are all the children after the sugar buzz....

To finish off this post I am attaching a picture of a rugged looking motorcycle we saw recently. It is a Honda Motra. It is a fairly small bike with multipurpose tires on it. Looks like a cool ride. The owner even attached a horse shoe on it to add to the rugged motif. Anyway I like this picture so I figured I would share..

That is all for this post, hope everyone has a good week..

Takanezawa Run, Nikko..

This week we were a little tired coming off of our vacation last week and it has been pretty busy at work recently. Originally we were thinking that we may not have much of anything this week for the blog. Actually I was looking forward to a simple post of "we did nothing". In the end we were able to accomplish enough for a small write up of what we could muster on Sunday.

In the morning the children had the Takanezawa run. It actually turned out to be a pretty big event. We figured that out when we went for registration and had to wait in a line to park. There were a number of events for people of all ages ranging from 1 km to a half marathon. The children competed with other children in their age group from all over. Both Liam and Colleen ran 1 km in separate races. When we registered we were given chips to put on the children's shoes. The chip allows the race organizers to get the exact time and position for all competitors.

Colleen's group was first. She had 81 children in her race 65 of which were in her class for competition. Her number was 2527, you can see her in the photo below. Only the 527 is showing. This was an action shot as she is running in the picture and you can see two children in front of her, one on the ground and the other in the process of ending up there. Fortunately no one got hurt and they eventually got up and finished the race.

The race started and finished from the same location and so the children did a big loop. We ran to the back side to cheer the children on and then went back and watched them finish. Colleen was able to finish 34th in her class.

Liam's group was a little bigger with 220 children 70 of which directly competed against him. The picture below is a where is Waldo photo...he is in there, if you look hard enough you can see him.

Liam was number 4060. He also had a good run. When he saw us on the back side cheering him on he sped up and passed a couple of other children. In his race the pace motorcycle fell down on the turn around corner and all the children had to run around him.

Amazingly Liam also finished #34 in his group. When we got the certificate with the stats on it of course it was all in Japanese. Kate and I looked for a number on the two certificates to determine their position. Since both said 34 I thought that must be the 34th annual race. We had to have someone tell us which number was the position, then we laughed because they were the exact same position in separate races. We were proud to watch them get out and do there best in the race.

When we were driving home from the race we could see the mountains in the distance with snow on them. Kate said we hadn't been to Nikko in a while so why don't we go. There was one temple in that area that we had not yet gone to see, so we decided to head there to see it. There is a famous carving of monkeys at Nikko in the see no evil hear no evil speak no evil pose. To date I had never been able to find it and thought it may be in the temple area we had not yet been. That was my goal for the trip, to see the carving. There are a lot of beautiful buildings with huge evergreen trees surrounding all the temples the trees really make the atmosphere of the Nikko temples.

This cluster of temples also seams to be a bit more colorful and ornate than the others we have seen.

And we did find the monkey carvings. Actually it was pretty easy to find as there was a wall of people taking pictures of it when we rounded the corner.

We also decided to stop at one of our favorite shops in the area. It is called Nikko Urushiya. The owners of the shop have always been very friendly to us and we try to stop in when we are in the area. Typically they invite us to sit and have coffee or tea and chat about whatever we can. About 90% Japanese 10% English and usually help from the children and the translator are required.

This time we all had Coffee, including the children, it was a bit of a special occasion for them as I usually do not allow them to drink it. They said it tasted funny and good at the same time. I told them enjoy it while you can cause it is going to be a while. After the coffee they let the children wear a dragon head costume for fun.

Both Liam and Colleen got to enjoy wearing the costume.

They also had the children try on an old Tokyo firefighter outfit. The owner used to be a firefighter in Tokyo and still had the clothing. He said he was a firefighter 20 years ago.

As usually we had a fun visit at the store and enjoyed hanging out and talking. I think we accidentally kept them past closing time. I believe they also enjoy visiting, especially with the children.

On the way home we decided we were hungry and should grab a quick bite. Trying to get the photo with Kernel Santa after Christmas made us think we should stop and try a KFC at least one time while we were in Japan, so we stopped at one on the way. There were a few menu items that were different and a few missing, but in general it was pretty much like eating at a US KFC. Not bad, but I don't figure we will stop again for the rest of our time here.

Have a good week..