Enjoying Simple Pleasures

These days have been treating me well, perhaps to make up for the Nine Week Silence. I went with friends to a beautiful organic Japanese restaurant in Koide a few days ago. It was located in a gorgeous old fashioned Japanese building, complete with a pond and traditional garden. Inside, the ambiance was amazing in every detail, and they offered things like sakura scones and imported pastas and soya. The menu sounded so delicious cover to cover that deciding was an extremely painful experience. I ended up with a Tempeh Burger, and was not a mite disappointed.

Today, my cycling buddy messaged me shortly after class and we met with our bikes to face the ‘chance of rain’ forecast. It was perfect cycling weather, except for the unusually strong winds which actually pushed us around a lot! We went to the park and explored every corner. I bought some veggies at my favorite veggie vendor, after which the two of us sat out by the pond taking in the view. Luckily, she was up for fuwa-fuwa dome after a while, and we spent half an hour or so enjoying the bizarre trampoline and laughing like children. It was very refreshing. Check out the quality of this cell phone shot from the park!

After riding around the park for a bit, we caught a bite to eat for lunch at Budou no Hana and then headed back to campus. We took a totally new route neither of us had explored before, and found an enormous and beautiful old sakura tree, as well as a whole huge line of younger trees planted not 15 minutes from campus. They were all in bloom, and looked amazing against the still snow-capped mountains.

I think after today we have a pact to go to the park at least once a week. I’m looking forward to next time already.

Layover in Minakami

Three hours of wandering while waiting for the next train departure towards Niigata. Traveling long distances on the 青春１８切符(Seishun 18 Kippu) provides ample opportunity for impromptu, serendipitous exploration. This is Minakami.
Minakami, Gunma, Japan. December 2009.

Some snow in Snow Country

The second snow came this week after dark, and we watched the snow fall in a huge, thick shower of flakes. The light of the lamppost reflected off of each falling spot, creating an otherworldly affect – it almost felt like flying. The next morning we took a walk through the snow, and admired the frosted look it gave to the surrounding mountains. This was not my first snow, but it was certainly the most magical yet. And I am looking forward to the build up of snow that should occur in the coming months – this is “雪国 (yukiguni)” or Snow Country after all.

An Extremely Overdue Update

So, as many of you gathered from twitter, fb, or some other futuristic time wasting machine social networking site, it snowed here just a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately, I was way too excited about it to grab any photos, really.  But here are some excited shots of friends and classmates (cool fact: some people here were seeing snow for the first time! Including some visiting Indonesian professors who were only in Japan for a couple of weeks). These four photos aren’t mine, they’re all from friends’ fb pages.

Here is what it looked like the next day around lunchtime.  We’ve enjoyed snowcapped mountains to a greater or lesser extent ever since.  And there are a few more rooftop shots on flickr - here.

In other news, I survived midterms and will live to tackle finals in only a few short weeks. I also finally got my hands on a fridge, which is in very questionable condition but keeps food sufficiently cold.  I would like to replace it as soon as I can though because for many reasons due to age, storage and the treatment of former owners, it is not an energy efficient appliance by any stretch of the imagination.

I have really been enjoying the fall weather, to some extent to the detriment to my productivity, but also to the great boon to my spirit.  One particularly lovely day I walked with a classmate through the dormant rice fields to the town’s charming park, nearby produce market, and local winery. The produce shop is called 「八人八色」or Hachinin Yairo, and you can purchase gorgeous seasonal locally grown vegetables for extremely good prices. Most of their vegetables are actually cheaper than at the grocery store.  Below are some photos from that uplifting excursion.

The park also has the strangest – slash – most interesting trampoline I’ve ever seen, which basically looks like a squishy, three peaked mountain range. There are usually at least a few children with their parents playing there, and once I even saw a mother stretching atop the center mound while her tiny child jumped on her back (presumably deepening the stretch? but he fell off and bounced along the other side). I haven’t tried this out yet, but it looks like loads of fun. I’m thinking some IUJ students need to go down to the park for a picnic in the winter. We can jump until we are no longer cold, then sit in the park and eat. Maybe this only sounds like a good idea to me though. Haha!