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Megapost on Japan: Part 2

Thanks to your encouragement, I feel inspired enough to try and finish up the Japan megapost.

Day five (Tues) - Day trip with Nasu: Some of you met our good friend "Nasu" when she came to visit a few months ago. She returned the hospitality by taking us for a fun day by the ocean. She brought her nice minivan from work and too us from Toyama up to Noto Island (能登島). Taisei loved riding in the "bus." After that day, he wanted to get in every minivan that he saw. I digress. It was a long drive, but worth it from all the beautiful scenery. I realized on this trip that Wami truly grew up by the ocean. From her place, every direction you travel seems to take you to the ocean.

Day six (Wed) - Day trip with Mi-chan: Wami's mom booked us tickets for a bus tour to a place ironically called "Obama" (小浜市). It was made famous in Japan the same way a lot of places in Japan become famous - it was the location of a popular TV drama. It was a nice town up in the mountains. I didn't get to snap a photo, but did get a chuckle when I saw a sign in a nice hotel that said "I love Obama" accompanied by a caricature of our's truly, Barack.

It was a bummer the weather was not to so hot that day - mostly cloudy and rainy. This was a small village on the way to Obama.
On the way back, we stopped by a do-it-yourself chopstick place. I don't know what else to call it. We had a presentation on chopsticks and then we got to make our own. Here's Wami and Taisei putting their chopsticks to the grinding wheel. It turned out to be tougher than we thought. We didn't make anything worthy of presenting.

The last stop was to a "kamaboko" (かまぼこ) factory. They had lots of yummy types of kamaboko, from fish and crab flavored to Anpanman shaped ones. Taisei really enjoyed eating all the samples.

Day seven (Thu): This day, we did some shopping and then relaxed at Wami's uncle's restaurant, where they pampered us once again with delicious seafood, pizza and pasta. They always spoil me with a special clam dish, but I think it's pretty much become Taisei's dish now because he always eats up all the clams before I can get any. This is an old picture of the same dish.

Wami's mom prepared a nice treat for us again that evening - tickets to a special dinner and onsen bath in a seaside hotel called Iso Hanabi (磯はなび）. I snuck the camera in this time because we were alone. Not a bad view to look at while soaking in piping hot water, eh?


Yikes. I'm going to stop because I really enjoyed the last few days and I want to do it justice. I promise I never meant for this thing to become a 3 part report! Lemme just finish with the first half of day eight.

Day eight (Fri) - Bye bye family in Toyama!: We spent the last morning in Toyama hanging around by the bay with the family. Leaving is always hard because we don't know when our next trip back will be.

I'll show you next time where we finally ended up after all the different train rides. I was blown away by this last part of the trip.
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ps. All Japanese writing contained herein was actually entered by the author himself. No natives were enlisted or hurt in the writing of this blog entry.
pps. Japanese is 1000 times easier to type than Chinese!!

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