Adventures with Tye!: Days 3 and 4. Minamisoma and Soma, Fukushima

5/1/2017

On this day I had to work, so while I was at work Tye walked around and explored Minamisoma.(Again, a lot of the photos I own from these places have already been posted in other posts. So if you'd like to see more, please check out the post titled "Minamisoma Adventures.")

After work I picked up Tye and we went north to Soma. Our first stop was to the Big Stone Buddha/Kannon. Tye was quite impressed with the size of this relief statue.

This giant Kannon relief stands over 26 meters tall. It was started in 1931 by a man named Ara Yoshiaki. It is apparently not finished, and the 4th generation Yoshiaki is still working on it.

We got there right as it was closing. We could still go look at the Kannon and light incense, but we couldn't go into the gift shop or buy omikuji.

The sun was starting to get low in the sky, so we had enough time to go to one more destination before it got too dark. So from here we went to Mano Dam.

Mano Dam is a large and pretty dam located on the border between Minamisoma City and Itate town. It is quite large and the resevoir is large and pretty. I personally don’t think it’s as pretty as the one closer to my house, but it is pretty nonetheless.

It was really windy when we were there, but I think Tye enjoyed himself all the same. He took a lot of pictures with his nice, new camera.

It was so windy!

From there we drove back to my apartment with the fading daylight. Tye took pictures of the mountains and fields of Minamisoma from the car window.

After coming down from Mano Dam I messaged Rihanna and got her recipe for poke. It is super simple.

Poke:

• Choice of raw fish cut into cubes. We chose tuna and salmon
• Raw onion cut into cubes. You can use as much as you want according to personal taste.
• Soy sauce (you don’t need to use a lot, just enough to coat all the fish during mixing) can use as much as you want according to personal taste
• Use a big mixing bowl to mix all the ingredients together
• From here you can distribute into individual bowls.
• There is an alternate recipe where you add some Japanese spicy mayonnaise to create spicy poke. This too is delicious, but a bit more fattening and unhealthy. 

As an alternative we added some chili powder to ours to give it a bit of a spicy kick.


After we finished making the poke we sat down and watched the first episode of American Gods while we ate. It was crazy good! I was so impressed with the cinematography of the episode. It was freaking beautiful! I think they did a wonderful job of casting, and combining humor and drama. I cannot wait to get back to America and watch the rest of it!

The poke we made was really good too! I don’t know how I don’t eat this every day of my life.


5/2/2017

Like the day before I had to work on this day as well. And once again, Tye entertained himself by exploring a different area of Minamisoma.


After work, I picked him up and we went to Minamisoma Beach. We were the only two people there save for two skateboarders, and later some ladies walking their dogs.

When we arrived it was pretty windy and a little chilly, but it was nice. The sun was shining and it was a great opportunity for some photographs.

On the way back we stopped at this old, cool-looking tree. Its branches are so big and heavy that they need to be supported by these large beams.

There was an information plaque nearby that gave information about the tree and surrounding area. It was quite old and sun-bleached, so I wasn’t able to gather much info from it. I do know that the tree was hit by the tsunami in 2011 as it is within the inundation area.

After that we headed back home where I started packing and getting ready for our big trip that was to start the next day.  Tye was nice enough to cook us some curry and rice. After eating we retired for the night so that we would be able to wake up nice and early. We had shit to do!

Adventures with Tye!: Day 2. Aizuwakamatsu

4/30/2017
We woke up bright and early the next day and got ourselves ready to drive to Aizuwakamatsu.
Tye was practicing with his new camera, and I swear to god, half of the pictures he took are blurry, and the other half are centered wrong, lol! But please, look past the blur. :P

I was able to drive to Fukushima City without using gps navigation, but once I got close I turned it on. Tye was helping me navigate from here to Aizu. Really early on I took a wrong turn and added about 10-15 minutes onto our trip, but we were able to drive through the countryside just south of Fukushima City in Minami Fukushima. There were beautiful alleys between mountains and hills.

These alleys were filed with farms and small neighborhoods. It was so quaint! I love it! I had never seen this part of Fukushima City before, and I was not bothered at all about the increase in drive time.

About an hour alter we drove past Lake Inawashiro, the second biggest lake in Japan. There were not nearly as many ducks as the last time I went, but there were a few. The lake was calm and beautiful. There was a slight breeze, but it felt good because the sun was shining down hard and it was quite hot out.

Before we left the lake I had to go touch the water.

From here we drove into Aizuwakamatsu City. Our first stop was the castle, Tsuruga-jo.

Tsuruga-jo is famous for its red roof.

Little bird in the trees.

We parked the car and walked up to the castle. Tye was able to take many lovely photos with his nice, new camera. He is still learning how to use it properly and practicing with different settings, so he took a lot of pictures of me to help him practice.

I told him about the Dancing Lady stone and we walked around the grounds of the castle taking pictures and talking. I told him some of the history of the castle and about the siege during the Boshin War. He thought it was all pretty cool. He was super impressed with the steep walls of the castle. I showed him the “falling ninja wall” and he thought that was just the coolest.

I asked him if he wanted to go inside the castle and check it out from there, but he was fine not going in. He wanted there to still be time to go see some other things in Aizuwakamatsu. But while we were walking the grounds, there was some sort of music festival going on, so many performers were dressed in cool outfits.

There was also a copse of shops off to one end of the castle grounds. On the way out we walked through the section of small shops and food stalls. There were many new and delicious foods to try. Tye and I bought a skewer of mocha with a green (edamame?) sauce on it. It was actually really good, and Tye liked it as well.

The castle grounds also had a beautiful view of Mt. Bandai.

We went back to the car and drove the short distance to Iimori where the Byakkotai Warriors commit seppuku. (You can read more about the history of the mountain on my “Let’s Aizu-ing” blog post.)
The mountain was beautiful! I had seen it in autumn and in winter, but it was also lovely in the springtime

I told Tye the story of the Byakkotai Warriors and showed him the graves and memorials around the mountain. I also showed him the Sazae-do Buddhist temple. This is the temple that has the double-helix floor spiraling up the entire building. This is my favorite building in all of Japan (so far!) Tye didn’t want to pay the money to go in, and was content to view it from the outside. I wanted him to see the inside, but he wasn’t bothered. That was ok. We got some good pictures from the outside. I think this is the prettiest building in all of Japan. I could look at it every day.

We then walked over to the memorials that were dedicated to the Byakkotai Warriors by both the Japanese and by Mussolini.

He also liked the cemetery crawling up the steep sides of the mountain, and the beautiful of the surrounding city you can see from this vantage point.

We left Mt. Iimori and went to our next stop the Bandai Daikannon and gardens. We arrived at 4:05 pm and were told that the place closes at 5. We said we could be out by then and went inside. I told Tye that we had to hurry a bit if we were going to see everything within the hour.

He loved the gardens and took a million pictures. He also helped me with some nice glamour shots.

We saw the sleeping Kannon statue;

And the small Buddhist temple on one side of the grounds.

And then over to the tall pagoda in the center of the grounds.

I thought this section of path was absolutely gorgeous under the sakura trees as they were losing the petals to their flowers. I have photos from both my point of view and Tye's point of view.

By this time we had very little time left and we had to hurry to the Kannon Statue and hurry our way to the top.

I told Tye about the inside of the Daikannon statue and what the significance of all the iconography was including all the different incarnation of Kannon-sama and why people give candy and children’s toys as offerings to Kannon (for more info please read my previous post from my trip in December called “Aizu Jibo Dai Kannon in Aizu, Fukushima.)

The view from the top.

We realized that it was three minutes until 5 O’clock and rushed down the stairs of the Daikannon and out the front gates.  On the way out I noticed this open-walled building with a miniature version of the Daikannon inside of it.

From here we drove to Fukushima City to go eat some conveyor belt sushi before making the long drive back to Minamisoma.

When we returned I knocked on Rihanna’s door and invited her to come upstairs and socialize with us for a while. She finally got to meet Tye and was excited to talk with us, and I was excited to introduce her to Tye and vice versa.

When Rihanna had to go Tye and I retired for the evening. I sadly had work in the morning and was crashing from our big day. I had so much fun!