Shirakawago

Forgot to answer questions last time.
Ana, it's great to hear from you!
As for my research methods prof, I'm pretty sure his background is anthropology.  As for your Cambodia blog, even though you're back now I still want to hear all about it~!
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This past weekend we had our IES field trip to Shirakawago and Takayama. 
First I'm going to talk about Shirakawago because I liked it much better and it was gorgeous.

It's an old village, a world heritage site, apparently, up north.  It gets tons of snow, as much as 4 meters, our guides told us.  So it's full of a-frame style houses to keep the snow and the rain from collapsing in the roofs.

The first thing we did on our trip was stop at the Toyota Eco Institute and go on a nature hike!

We ate our bento (boxed lunches) and then got some time to wander around. 

I saw my first trace of fall, which was really exciting! Even though it was the end of October, it’s been warm almost non-stop.  Around 60 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit I think.  So it feels like this never-ending summer here.  It’s kind-of trying for me, actually, to not have seasons.  I feel like the summer’s just dragging out forever, even though it’s already November.  Like I’m caught in a time slip or something, and I’ll never be able to escape to the real world!  So it was really nice to go somewhere where there was a trace of seasons.

Then we met up with our guides, who were really cute. I guess they do a lot of tours for children, but that was fine by us.  It made their Japanese easy to understand!  We had three tour guides: a man and a woman who were working there and a slightly younger man who was apparently an intern.  They all wore these red outfits, hats, cargo vests, and were carrying big camping backpacks. 

The instructions we got were the following:
If you see bees, stop and be quiet until they leave you alone.
If you see a bear, start making a lot of noise and it will scare them off.  Also the guides are all carrying what basically amounts to bear pepper spray so be aware of that.

The hike, or, well, nature walk, more like, was dedicated to teaching us the relationship between Shirakawago’s people and the forest.  It was actually really interesting.  It reminded me of home, and going to nature centers and walking around in the state park as a kid, which was perfect because honestly I was feeling a bit homesick during that week.

Along the way our guides would pull out interesting things from the forest or point out different plants and explain them to us.

For example, a walnut tree.  One of our guides pulled out several empty walnut shells from his pocket, one split in half and one with the center bored out.  He said “What kind of animals do you think did this?” and we had to guess.  “The split in half one?” Squirrel? A bird? People?
He said “The truth is I have the animal in here!!” and pointed to his backpack.
As I was starting to wonder about animal cruelty he pulled it out.
TA-DAA! A squirrel stuffed animal! 

Bears also eat walnuts.

Look at how tall these trees are!

One tree in particular the guides pointed out was very strong and flexible.  The thing the guide is holding in this picture is the old fashioned Japanese version of a snow shoe, made from those tree branches.  The two middle slats are where you put your foot. 
Interesting, right?  I thought it was.

Since Shirakawago apparently looks like this in the winter, they’re necessary.


At one point Mikki, the intern, was made to put on a bear costume.  I don’t remember why.  But it was super cute, right?  (Oh man, my English is starting to sound like Japanese.  “Omishiroi deshou?” “Mecha kawaii ne? Ne?” all this “right??” is very Japanese, particularly Japanese girls.)

Another thing they showed us that was really cool was this other tree.  Once you break the outer shell of bark, the inner wood is incredibly flexible.  So flexible that you can tie it in a knot.  And it’s incredibly strong, too.  So inside Shirakawago’s distinctive A-frame houses, this wood is what’s actually used to hold together the logs forming the frame of the roof!

Our guide demonstrated, pounding the branch with a hammer to break the bark and soften it up a little, then tying the branch around one of the poles of the picnic shelter.

Guess who carried that hammer up here.  Mikki.  Wearing the bear costume, carrying the heavy stuff... Definitely an intern, right? やっぱりインタンっぽいね。

One of our guys gave it a try, too, but it didn’t go as well.  He also started out with a lot drier of a branch.

We were meant to go further on our hike, but apparently there were bears or something out and about farther up the trail lately, so our guides wouldn’t take us further.
Even though I wanted to meet a bear rather badly, the guides apparently didn’t think the two of us getting acquainted would be a very good idea.
How disappointing.  Bears, you’re missing out on my good company.

Well, it was probably lucky we turned around when we did because as we were walking back we saw a lovely rainbow! 

After that we got back on our bus and drove to Shirokawago proper.  We took a group photo, and then were free to just wander around, which was lovely.  Shirokawago is the only place we’ve been to on a trip with my study abroad program so far where I truly felt like we had enough time to see everything. 

I loved Shirakawago.  It was a little cool and misty, but the temperature felt perfect to me.  The houses were gorgeous.  Flowers and persimmon trees everywhere, and along the sidewalk there were gutters with running water. Occasionally the gutters would open up into full-fledged streams, with fish and everything. 

After our afternoon in Shirakawago, we got back on our bus and stopped at our ryokan (inn) in Takayama for the night.  Which meant more giant dinners! Except this time I actually ate everything!  We got to try Hida Beef, beef this area is apparently famous for, and grill it ourselves at our seats.  It was delicious.

Kanazawa Field Trip

First, response to comments.

Shaun, okay, more thoughts on sociology babble.  We talked about social class on Friday in my Japanese Culture/sociolinguistics class.  Our teacher was asking us about what we can perceive just from a conversation about the weather and we all mentioned social class.  She then asked us how many classes there were in each of our countries.  The Australians were very adamant about there being two: upper and lower.  The Americans got the most fuzzy about the boundaries and talked a lot about upper-middle vs. middle vs. lower middle, along with super-wealthy vs. upper class and working poor vs. like, really really poor.  A lot of people thought we were overthinking it, but I think that really is the way Americans seem to talk about class, particularly the trying to incorporate everyone into the middle class.
Our professor said if you ask the average Japanese person, they'll say Japan doesn't have socioeconomic classes, that everyone's in the same kind of class.  Not sure what conclusions to draw from this, but it's interesting.



To Mom and everyone else worried about the IV, I had other people confirm for me too that that's definitely a much more normal move in Japan, like Shaun was saying.





To Lily and Nancy,  I'm feeling just fine now, thanks for your concern!

Nancy, I'm really having a great time here, the typhoon just overwhelmed me is all!
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This weekend we went on a field trip to Kanazawa!
It’s a traditional style village about a four hour drive from Nagoya.

All 24 of the people from my study abroad program were together on a charter bus.  It was funny because it was the first time we’d been together like that since our four day orientation in Inuyama, when we’d all just gotten to Japan and were jet lagged and didn’t know each other at all.  Suffice to say this time was much more fun!

On the way we stopped at a Buddhist temple, Eiheiji.  I’m not really sure what the significance of this particular temple is, but it’s very large.  I took a few pictures, but mostly of the landscaping in and around the temple. 

I don’t know the significance of anything, so it’s hard to really talk about what we saw.  But there was this huge tatami room near the front that had these really cool painted panels on the ceiling.
There were also lots of monks and monks in training walking around doing... whatever monks do, but we were expressly forbidden to take pictures of them. 

This is where it would have been nice to have taken some Japanese culture, history, religion, etc. type classes before coming here.  Hopefully I’ll know more by the time we get to Kyoto.

We hit the road again, and went to another building to do what our itinerary called “a gold leaf sticking experience”.  Kanazawa is famous for its gold leaf so we got to do this little workshop where we designed and gold-leafed the lid to a little box we got to keep!
IT WAS REALLY HARD.  We had two different thicknesses of tape to mask off areas of the box we didn’t want covered in gold or silver leaf, and then we got glue painted on our boxes, and cut pieces of the sheets of gold and silver leaf to stick down.  Then a coating gets painted over it.  After it’s dry you can take your tape off and see what your design looks like.

The guy running the workshop only gave us 15 minutes to design something!  Other people managed to do some really cool stuff, but I knew that if I tried to do something complicated I’d probably screw it up, so after whining about how I didn’t know what to do for a few minutes I decided to just do something really simple.  The lines are uneven and that bothers me a bit, but when your only tools are tape and you there’s only so much you can do...!

The silver leaf in particular was really difficult to work with.  It just kind-of dissolved if you (I swear) breathed on it the wrong way.  The stuff was set up with a layer of plastic, the leaf, and a layer of thin paper.  Right before you stuck it down to the box you were supposed to remove the paper.  But I swear it static-ed to the plastic and screwed me up! ughhhh.

In the end I was happy with the results though.

After gold leaf we hit the road again, for the ryokan where we were spending the night.  On the way, we drove along the coast!

Arriving at the ryokan meant more crazy ryokan dinners where you start out with more courses than you can possibly eat

This is that broth you see in the background with the raw meat and vegetables that were sitting on the plate on the side now cooking in it.

and then they bring you more

not pictured, the tempura, miso soup, rice, and dessert they brought later.

And of course I had just been sick two days previous so I was still working my stomach up to being able to eat full sized meals again!  Needless to say this was impossible.

(I finally asked my host mom if it’s really possible for anyone can eat all that.  She says Japanese people can do it.  Even though they’re small, they can put away all that food.  They don’t normally do it but if they go to a ryokan it’s apparently chow down time.)

Here’s a picture of our room.  We were in groups of six this time.  I ended up in the room with all the quiet people, which was perfectly fine, they’re all great people, but I ended up going to another room and hanging out and getting to know some of the other people from my program better, which was really really fun!

The ryokan we stayed at had 3 different onsen, public bath/hot spring things.  We only had one night there so we chose to do the Grand Onsen Tour, as I referred to it in my head.  Going to each of the different baths in the evening after dinner.  One was a normal one of the style they had at Inuyama, indoors.  We went there first because we had to wash our bodies and stuff first because you weren’t supposed to do that at the other two, and you had to be clean before getting in the bath.
After that there was another bath where you bathe naked like in a normal bath, and it’s outside, but there’s a roof over your head.  That one was really nice because the air was cool, and the water was really hot, but I didn’t spend that much time there because I actually started getting a little too hot.  I feel like it gets a little hard to breathe sometimes if you’re just sitting in really hot water.

The best one was the totally outdoor bath.  This one wasn’t separated by sex, so everyone was given a little wrap to wear.  It was dark because it was probably like 9:00 at night, so I couldn’t really see the scenery around, but the water and the rocks around it were really pretty.  You could feel the cool fall air, which kept the bath from feeling too hot, and you could really just relax.  It was awesome.  After you got out of the bath and changed back into your yukata and stuff there was cool tea for you, too.  It was wonderful.

The next day we actually went to Kanazawa.  As you can tell, it’s a touristy spot for Japanese people, too.
One complaint I have about my study abroad program is they never quite give us enough time to explore places.  It’s like, an hour here, two hours there (usually only an hour though) and then we’re moving on.  So unfortunately we really only kept to the main streets.

First we all were given admission to this old tea house that had been turned into a museum, and maybe if we’d had some kind of information or a tour or something it would have been more interesting, but I think most of us kinda rushed through it to get onto other stuff.
Along with the gold leaf, Kanazawa’s known for pottery, so I was on a pottery shopping mission.

After walking around the old district of Kanazawa and doing some souvenir shopping, we moved to another part of town and split up to have lunch and explore Kenrokuen, one of Japan’s three most famous gardens. 
It was very pretty, but it was a little disappointing because it’s right at the end of summer, beginning of fall here.  So nothing was flowering and the leaves haven’t changed yet.  We walked by sakura and plum trees and all this stuff and I never would have known if it weren’t for the map.
But I really like the way Japanese gardens use water and bridges and stones along with all the greenery, so it was still cool.

And we also saw this one plant that was just full of butterflies!

It apparently snows a lot in Kanazawa in the winter, and the snow gets really heavy, so a lot of the trees have supports like these attached to them to keep the snow from breaking off the branches in the winter. 

After the garden (and more souvenir shopping) we went to a workshop for making Japanese sweets.  Here are the examples.

I’m not sure entirely what they’re supposed to look like, other than one is a flower, but they were pretty.  There were pictures on the wall of other sweets you could buy, too, and they were really pretty and detailed and colorful.

You started out with balls of anko, or sweet read bean paste, and balls of other colorful stuff, which I think was colored bean paste?  Making the sweets was actually surprisingly easy.  The bean paste was incredibly moldable.  You just patted it flat, wrapped it around the bean paste filling, and closed it up, and then shaped it.  Of course my attempts didn’t turn out nearly as nice as the samples, but the techniques themselves were pretty simple to execute.

Here’s me, Paochu, one of the girls from my program, and Masae, one of my program coordinators with our sweets!

After that we were on the road again for our four hour drive home.

On the way there and on the way back, we stopped a couple times for fifteen minute breaks at service areas.  The Japanese answer to a truck stop is, like most mass-produced Japanese things (i.e. convenience stores), much nicer seeming than the American version.  The bathrooms are clean (!), and there are a bunch of shops and restaurants inside.  We didn’t have time to stop and eat at the restaurants, just buy snacks, but apparently the restaurants are pretty good, too.  Katrina, a girl on my program, said that her host mom took her on a trip and said “Oh we’ve got to stop at this cool place on the way they have good food I’ll have to take you there sometime!” and it was a service area...! 

Mysterious.