Bus tour

Yesterday, Sunday, I went on my first bus tour with the Koriyama International Exchange Association. It was a full tour of 20 Japanese and 20 foreigners. I sat next to a woman named Bethany. Her husband and 4 year old daughter sat in front of us. Bethany is teaching English, while her husband works from home, and her daughter goes to early kindergarten with other Japanese children. I also met a lot people Bethany works with (Jared, Denise, Patti, Adam and Hannah, and Amy). Seems the whole crew was there. I met some of the Japanese people, but I have a hard time remembering their names!!

We started at the Sake factory. Our translator, Ken (from Kenichi. He's Japanese, and his translating was Ok) gave us short descriptions of what the tour guide was saying. Sake season is actually from October to March, so we didn't get to see the process, just the buildings. The company branch in Koriyama began in 1742, or so I am lead to believe. It's hard to dispute such a date when you see the buildings they make the sake in. I don't think the buildings have ever been renovated, or cleaned for that matter. The only thing similar to a winery we got was the free tasting, lol. They also gave us a free bottle (about .5 liters) of sake with a label that was our group picture (we took the pic as soon as we got there).

After the sake tour, we ate at the herb garden. There was a buffet covered end to end with Japanese food. I took a little of this and that, and I liked most of it! I also ate mochi and anko. Mochi is very chewy rice cake/dumpling. People pair it with almost anything and eat it for dessert. Anko is read bean, which I remembered having last time I came to Japan. It was exciting to eat a Japanese food and already be familiar with it!!!

The next stop was the Abukuma caves. They were awesome, though they look just the same as our caves. The part open to the public isn't too extensive, so we walked through it pretty quickly. I decided to go back and pay 200 yen ($2) to take the "explorer walk." Ken went with me to check it out. It was honestly the best time I've had in a cave! It would be hard for my dad to get through because most of the trail is short and narrow, and you even have to crawl through some places. Ken said he felt like Indiana Jones, and I totally agree.

We stopped at a local kabuki festival next. We saw a couple performances by some of the junior high kids, and no one understood any of it! We couldn't even follow body language because the actors hardly moved. Some of our new Japanese friends translated the basic story, but even they got confused a bit, lol.

Our last stop was to view paper lantern illuminations. This is where I realized that all of the festivals, and mochi stuff was in honor of the full moon. Moon gazing is an old tradition in Japan, but one that sadly is not moving much into the modern era. We are lucky that we live close to the country and see people still celebrating this pass time.

I'll try to get pics up soon!