subarashii unda za shii...

Don't even get me started on what I think about having school on Sundays. I don't care that I get Monday off in lieu, and that the day was a bludgy day consisting of a huge sing-off involving all the classes at school, and a marching band, which means I didn't have to teach at all today, but making Sunday a work day when you're used to a standard working week is just sacrilegious.

The only thing that made my day was watching marching band dancers perform. Not because they were awesome, because they weren't the best dancers in the world, and I'm not sure how I felt about their interpretive dance trying to narrate the story of superman. But, they did perform a flag dance to Disney's Under the Sea. The reason I was excited was that it wasn't just any version of Under the Sea, it was the Japanese version! So it made me overlook their oddly inappropriate dance moves to the song.

weekend away for free! free! free weekend! did i mention it was free?

Guess what I did last weekend? What? free Weekend? How did you know?

Well, since you were so insistent on me telling you what happened, I guess I'll fill you in on my pretty awesome weekend away in Hida. A while back, some random dropped by Kiri's school and was offering weekend trips away to Hida, the northern part of Gifu, organised by Hida city's Department of Tourism. It included a whole schedule of things to do the whole weekend, meals, accommodation, and the bus to transport us there and back. All for free! The catch? Apparently none, except for giving them permission to use photos taken on the tour as well as filling out a questionnaire at the end of the trip.

It seemed a little too good to be true, and I was paranoid about there being some hidden tourist tax or something upon entering the place, but nothing at all. We were warned that people in the area weren't accustomed to many foreign tourists and to watch out for that, but that simply meant everyone didn't speak English but seemed super nice about it.

Highlights of the weekend:

• Picking apples at the apple orchard. Sounds lame, I know, but it also involved all-you-can-eat apples and taking some home, which was pretty cool. I know it sounds like my definition of cool has probably deteriorated, but free fruit seems cool in a country that sells apples for around about $3 each. So it was probably that that made it seem cool, plus it was the first thing we did once we arrived in Hida, so I think we were just pumped to be doing anything for free. We also found out that it was just a week out of apple picking season, so all the apples had already been picked, but the apple people specifically left some trees with apples so that we could pick them over the weekend.
• Walking around the area was kinda cool because it counted as a type of physical exertion (ergo, and adequate amount of exercise) while still seeming touristy and non-exercisey. And, I was wondering why Japanese people make a huge fuss about the changing of the seasons, so I'm kinda seeing why they feel that way after seeing how picturesque everything is when the leaves change colour.
  
  
• Rail Mountain Biking. Yep, you heard right. the area just got rid of their train, and wanting to encourage tourism and do something with the remaining train tracks, they made rail bikes, that run on the tracks, hoping tourists come of the gimmick and to see the sites. It was pretty much just riding a bike, but you don't really choose where you want to go, but I think it seemed fun because we were some of the first people to try it out.
• Making soba noodles from scratch was awesome. I originally went in thinking that it could be something I do at home, but after seeing how much work goes into it, and the fancypants utensils and stuff they use (they have a specialised soba cutting knife that seems like a guillotine with a handle) I think I'll just buy it in a pack, thank you very much. We ended up taking some packs of soba we made home, but it turns out, I should have learnt how to cook soba properly before trying to eat it at home. yurgh.
• Food! Yes, it's me, so of course my highlight would be the food. It was all traditional Japanese food throughout the whole weekend, which seemed a bit much, we got to try the specialities of the region. Although, I think every region of Japan has a speciality, so I'm wondering if heaps of places share specialities with other regions and they just pretend that they don't know about any other region making, say, chicken on sticks. But dinner involved Hida beef, which is pretty much the same as Kobe beef, except it's not from Kobe. So the cattle are played music, to relax them, given beer so they eat more and get fat, and given massages to mix the meat with the fatty tissue. It's also pretty expensive, which is why I was surprised we got to eat it - I was expecting free food meant just some Japanese takeaway, not some lavish feast with free beer and sake.

So all in all, cool weekend - but the whole time, I was just thinking how amazing it was all for free, so I'm not too sure how much I'd pay for the weekend if I were to do it normally. Like, the rail mountain bike was fun, but if I was paying money to experience the feeling of riding my bike and the tunnel, I think I'd have to think it through. But did I mention it was free?

nirvana in nara

You should feel privleged reading this. Why? Because this blog, dear reader, is now written by someone who is now enlightened - that is, according to the Japanese legend that says if you pass through the Buddha's nostril (by Buddha's nostril, they mean hole in a pillar in Todaiji temple) you are promised enlightenment, apparently accompanied by a pompous and condescending tone that emerges in retrospective blog posts.

So, this moment of clarity and pretentiousness occurred during my weekend to Nara - Well, planned for a weekend in Nara, but ended out to be maybe less than 24 hours in the end. We had initially thought that going to Nara from a larger city such as Nagoya would make it quicker and easier to get to, but turns out not to be the case, as we found out soon enough after an riding a bike with a flat tire home as fast as possible to just miss the scheduled train to Nagoya, and the well-intentioned but seemingly ill-informed train driver in between Nagoya and Nara. We asked the train gu what was the fastest way to Nara, and told us to get off at a different stop than we had planned, and was even so nice as to stop the train at the station we were to get off and walk to the end of the carriage to us to tell us that was our stop, and would get us to Nara quicker. Unfortunately, after 5 hours of train riding, we found this not to be the case.

But our time in Nara was pretty awesome - turns out, just seeing the two main sights in the area can adequately fill a short weekend escape. We ended up visiting the nearby Daibutsu (Big Buddha), and seeing the hordes of sacred deer in the park. They were pretty cool deer, but I think I was a little disappointed when I saw them up close, since they kinda look like kangaroos. I wonder if Japanese people think the opposite when they come to Australia...



But see the similarity? It's kinda like how Goofy and Pluto are both apparently dogs. I still don't know how Mickey keeps one as a pet and hangs out with the other one though. Kangaroos are the like the Goofy to Pluto-like Deer. But they were still cool nonetheless - I got swarmed by like 10 when they all thought I was feeding one of the deer, and being Japanese deer, also bow as well! I ended up bowing and looking like a tool getting all the deer we encountered bow back though.

The visit to Nara also meant a visit to the Kasuga Shrine, which was cool, but a bit similar to most other shrines and temples here. I think I'm getting to the templed out point now, since temples slightly different, but still the same after a while. I used to think "wow, this temples amazing!" but it's degenerated to a feeling of "oh, this one's red...". So I think I might have give the temple/shrine visiting a break and explore other traditional Japanese culture to fill my Japanese quotient, which now thinking about it, may be difficult since the only other Japanese culture I can think about is Karaoke...