My weekend started on the 21st. I met some friends in Fukushima City. We went out to dinner and then to karaoke. I crashed on the couch of a friend before we had to catch a bus bright and early the next morning.
The first place we went is to a Farmer’s market called JA Farmers' Market (Kokora Yanome Store), where we were able to buy some fresh fruits, veggies and miscellaneous food items before heading over to a restaurant in the mountains near Fukushima City to eat lunch.
I honestly think these are Huckleberries. Not "Hackle"berries.
The restaurant is at the base of a waterfall, and they built the floor and tables over the river so you can look out at the waterfall as you eat.
At the head of each table is a pipe from which water flows through a canal down the center of the table. The chefs then feed soba noodles through the pipes so that it is washed down the center of the table with the water. At the head of the table near the pipe spout you have to be fast if you’re going to catch the noodles, they speed by pretty fast, further along the table it slows down, so the noodles are easier to catch.
This is my friend Mercedes (end of the video,) She had a rough time at getting the noodles. :)
(You can find more of her at gaijinnomonogatari.tumblr.com)
I was right next to the spout. Once you caught the noodles with your chopsticks you then put them into a bowl with a bit of cold broth and ate your cold noodles. It was delicious. They also served us a whole fish that had been roasted above coals whole. It was interesting, not my favorite. I had to pick around the fish’s gizzards and bones for the meat. It was tasty but difficult. They also served us some tempura leafy vegetable, I still don’t know what it was but it was very good. They also served us some tofu soup. I don’t know what that was either.
Right after lunch the tour took us to an orchard outside Fukushima city called Michinoku Fruit Garden. The owner told us that after the nuclear disaster he did everything to make sure that the fruits he grew would be safe for consumption. He washed his trees and removed the top 5 centimeters of topsoil and had it replaced with clean soil. He also has his fruit tested every year to make sure it’s safe. He hasn’t had any abnormal levels of radiation for a couple of years now. The apples were so big and juicy!
This is the man who owned the orchard.
I picked one red apple and had a hard time finishing it after my big lunch, but there were some other people who were competing to see who could eat the most apples. I think the person who won was a man named James with 4 apples….. ((er… I mean Mercedes, who ate ten apples!)) I was content to eat my one apple, although I did have a nibble of someone else’s golden apple, and it was heavenly. I would have given anything for some more room in my stomach for one of those tart, yet sweet, golden apples!
There was a small fruit stand on the side of the road that sold the apples from the orchard, I’ll definitely have to go back and buy some of those one of these days.
After the orchard we drove to the west of Fukushima City to a town called Tsuchiyu where they have some famous hot springs. We first went to see a Binary power plant that generates energy for the town by creating steam from the hot water of the hot springs.
The “power plant” was not ugly and imposing on the surrounding nature. It was composed of just a few contraptions that were quite small. The machines were actually not much of an eyesore. I was amazed that they could supply energy for the surrounding area with very little machinery. They were telling us how the water from the hot springs is quite hot, but not hot enough to generate enough energy. So they add a chemical, n-Pentane, that evaporates at a lower temperature along with the water to create energy. The hot spring water that is not used in this process is diverted and fed to some of the local onsen. Fascinating stuff. I always loved science.
This guy is demonstrating the steam that can come from the machine. After his demonstration of the steam (which lasted about a minute) he showed us the ground beneath the spout and there was very little water on the ground. This demonstrated just how hot the steam is. It evaporates before it hits the ground.
After our little tour of the power plant they gave us some soft boiled eggs that were cooked in the onsen water as well as potatoes and sweet potatoes that had been cooked using the steam.
This man is holding the box of potatoes that were cooked in the steam box.
This is what the area looked like as we were steaming the potatoes.
After the tour of the power plant we went to a little community center where we got to paint our own Kokeshi Dolls. Kokeshi dolls were made in the region in the 1800s, and were a toy for little girls to play house with. We were taught how to paint the Kokeshi dolls by a man in the community center who was a master of painting traditional Kokeshi dolls. He told us the traditional characteristics for the features of a Kokeshi doll, which include circles on the top of the head, bangs and long hair framing the face. Along with the traditional way to draw the face and hair ribbons. With the body/clothes there is no set way to do the colors and it is up to the imagination. As far as I know there are only four colors that were used traditionally, although today you can use many colors. We used the four traditional colors of black, red, green and purple.
The way you painted the doll was you put the doll horizontally in a little crank that held the doll in place with a brush rest. Then you can crank the handle to spin the doll with one hand, and paint with the other. But because there were so many of us JETs and so few cranks, we helped each other with the cranking.
In this photo you can see the cranks really well.
I really liked how my doll turned out.
Took a face-swap with my Kokeshi. Cant find it. Will post when/if I do.
After we were finished with painting our Kokeshi dolls we headed to a local Ryokan (traditional Japanese Inn) called Sansuishou in Tsuchiyu. There were five of us in a large hotel room complete with tatami mats, a low table, a sitting area by the window and we slept on traditional style futons. It was super fun.
We got dressed in some yukata that the inn provided for us and headed down to dinner. It was all traditional Japanese food. I tried everything, but I gotta admit, some of it was way strange and I didn’t like a whole lot of it. For example, I’ve never been the biggest fan of shrimp, but I tried some shrimp sashimi and it was so slimy! That didn’t fly over well.
After dinner all us girls headed to the onsen in the ryokan. The ryokan had two, one indoors on the first floor and one outdoors on the third floor. The indoor one was so hot, we only stayed for about fifteen minures and most of us could only stand to have our legs in the water. The outdoor one was really tiny, and only four of us actually went to sit in it, and that was fine because it would probably only hold about 6-7 people if we sat really close. After that a group of us hung out in the lobby for a while until we all got tired enough to crash.
A lot of people say they’d never like to sleep on a futon in Japan, but I’ll tell you something. I love sleeping on Japanese-style futons. I’ve slept on mattresses on the floor before, but I’ve always hated it. But for some reason, the Japanese know exactly what needs to be done to make it alright. I love sleeping on Japanese-style futons. They are so comfortable! I am actually sad that I don’t have a futon in my house, and I’m thinking about buying one. I sleep on a twin-size mattress and I feel all the springs, so as I type this and remember the futons, I am definitely tempted to drop the money on a futon.
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