Niigata trip Day 2: Museum, Shrine, Ocean, Aquarium!

Sunday morning, we were once again up bright and early for our second day of adventure. I actually wanted to make it to our destinations today, so I insisted on driving instead of trying to wrestle with the public transportation system. As a result, we made it to all our intended destinations and then some!

First we headed out to the Northern Culture Museum just outside Niigata City. It was really beautiful house. The original owners were very wealthy landowners, and amongst the biggest landowners in Japan. After WWII a lot of their land was lost to others, and they decided to make their big house and surrounding land a museum.

 There were two big buildings, one was the actual house, and one has been made into a display area for artifacts.

This was an old beehive that was found on the property, but everyone thought it was too beautiful to be destroyed, so they put it in the museum.

 These are some old boats that were used to transport rice and hay down the river (as you can see in this old photograph.)

 Some old ledgers and workroom cabinets and drawers.

There was also a farm house with a lot of old farm equipment.

There was also a building for storing farming machinery and a smaller house behind it. There was also this nice lotus pond which had apparently been grown from a seed that was found in some archaeological site about 60 years ago. The seed was believed to be many hundreds of years old. So they tried planting it and it did germinate and became the beautiful lotus pond that is present today. Pretty neat, I thought.

After the museum, there was a little local festival taking place just outside the museum gates. The locals were excited that there were Westerners in their little food-festival and a lot of them gave us free samples. I think they just wanted us to experience their food and culture. It was very nice of them, and I did end up purchasing some foods to eat later. In addition to food there was a little display of an old-timey frame that was used to dry out rice after the harvest,

After that, we drove into Niigata City to Minato Inari Jinja, a Shinto shrine.

This shrine is unique because its Lion statues are the only ones in Japan that rotate on their bases. In ancient Niigata City, the local fishermen’s wives would come to the shrine, rotate the lions to face the ocean, and pray for bad weather so that their husbands would have to stay home with them. The lion statues that are on the pedestals today are fairly new, and the old ones are in cages on display next to the main shrine.

There were a lot of old statues on the side of the building that were not on display anymore. It was crazy to think just how old these stone statues were to have so much erosion visible.

After that, we were headed to the Marinepia Nihonkai Aquarium in Niigata City, but on the way there I saw a beach and had to stop. IT was really rainy and windy, so the sea was kinda scary, but that didn’t stop me from walking out onto the dock and taking some film of the amazing waves. Within ten minutes the waves were getting bigger and bigger and we decided to head to the museum.

                                           

Once we got to the aquarium, we took our sweet time admiring all the diverse ocean-life that was on display. There were also a few birds and mammals at the aquarium, not strictly fish. There were penguins and North American beavers, otters, seals and sea lions. I think the jellyfish and koi fish
were my favorite though.

I got to hold a Sea-Penis!  er... I mean a Sea Cucumber.

It was really fun and relaxing. We ended the day with an aquarium-themed purikura and headed back to Sanjo.

Niigata trip Day 1: Sake, Sake, Sake!

First night in Niigata. Friday and Saturday.
So, we (my friend Rihanna and I) started out our eening by driing to Sanjo, Niigata Prefecture. It took about four + hours, because I did take the wrong interchange for a short while. Sanjo is a little bit bigger than Minamisoma, with 98k people, but it seemed a lot bigger.

Either way, we got into town on Friday night 9/16/16, but we were up bright and early on Saturday morning with the intention to go to Echigo-Yuzawa station, and then take a train out to Joetsu. But we ended up on the wrong platform and took a wrong train in the opposite direction which set us back about an hour. But once we figured out our problem, we were back on track. We made it to Echigo-Yuzawa station on a really fancy shinkansen (bullet train.) This shinkansen had nice chairs, the kind you’d find in a livingroom, not like normal train or bus seats and televisions showing peaceful and artistic images, and two trains with art and photography displayed everywhere. There were also two colorful children’s cars with children’s toys and a café car. It was quite awesome. But we were only on that shinkasen for twenty minutes before our stop.

Once we got to Echigo-Yuzawa station we had lunch and then went to the “Sake Museum.” It’s a little area inside the station where you can sample five different types of sake with ￥500 (about $5.)

 I tried these five and my favorite one was the one with the red letters and the mountains on it. It was very subtle and light. It didn’t kick me in the face with its power like the brown one did. It was awesome to try all these different sake and be able to compare flavors. I didn’t really have much opportunity to do this back home, it was really neat.

There were also some different salt samples that were around for us to try. I tried all the ones that were odd colors, like green and pink. They were so interesting!

After that, we went to a sake onsen (bath.) It wasn’t as impressive as the internet would have me believe, but it was fine. Really couldn’t tell that there was any sake in the bath, seemed pretty normal, and not really worth the price.

By this time, it was getting late and we realized we didn’t have time to make it to Joetsu for the Rinsen-Ji Temple, but we made plans to visit it on Monday before we headed home. So we just headed back to Sanjo, and Rihanna made dinner (I helped.) We made a pasta with white shrimp sauce (because there is no such thing as alfredo sauce) and tomatoes and garlic. It was pretty good.

This is a beautiful mobile that was inside Echigo-Yuzawa station. All those little ornaments are made from a traditional Japanese cloth.

And a really cool, traditional-looking, life-size doll.

Apartment Tour

Come take a look at my living space in Japan! It's finally clean, so I can now show you what a typical Japanese apartment looks like. Sorry for the 4 videos. My camera was overheating (because it is a piece of shit) and it kept turning off. I also had a telephone call during the middle. Again, sorry for the multiple takes. Enjoy!

 

Return to Japan!

Well, Hello, Everybody! And Welcome back to the next exciting installation of  "Stacey's Bodacious Japan Trip!"  I last left things off three years ago when I was living, temporarily, in Osaka. Now I continue my (mis)adventures on the other side of the country in Minamisoma, Fukushima! I've been living in Minamisoma for just over one month. I just got my internet all hooked up, so I'm ready to start documenting again. First I'd like to describe my area. Its a small city. I say city because Wikipedia says city, but honestly I'd call this place a town. It has 63k people, and is rather sizable, but I really only need to drive five minutes in any direction to reach farmland. There may be a lot of people, but they're so spread out, and farmland, to me, means "town."  But don't let that suggest that I don't absolutely love it here. It is so small and so far out of the way, It's not like anything I've ever experienced before. I'm about a 15 minute drive from the beach. And there are a lot of shrines, both Buddhist and Shinto near me. Today, for example, I went on a drive and ended up at four of them, and I know where two more are for a visit at a later date. There are also buses that will take me to the nearest big cities including Fukushima City, Sendai and Tokyo, so it's really not too bad. On top of that, I now own a car. It's a cute little "Kei car." Oh I love my little "Yellow Plate." It at the moment has a worrying little shake, but I hope that gets fixed this month when I do my shakken (car registration where they pull apart and reassemble your car engine.)  Well, that's really all I have to say for the moment. Here are some pictures! --- Just kidding! Because when I went to download the photos from my phone they deleted instead!!  WTF?!?!   ... kinda angry now. I cant find those photos anywhere. Perhaps you'll see them. Perhaps I'll have to go take some more. (Oh, man! I took a really good video too! I cant recreate that!) Ok, well... That's all I guess.