Thirty-First Week

This week I went with a friend for a visit of their grandmother who lives in the countryside in Toyota City. We just went for a visit. They gave me some tea and Japanese snacks, while we talked for a while.  My friend speaks English, but her family doesn't, so the conversation was in Japanese with an occasional translation from my friend.

 I've noticed that taking pictures inside or of residences or stores can be considered rude, so I decided not to take pictures of my friend's family's house. But I did take pictures of the view from the house.

 For lunch they took me to a local restaurant where the sell a dish called "Goheimochi."  It's a very large piece of mochi, a rice cake, covered with a type of sweet miso and it's on a large stick.  It was very good, but I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture until I was in the car on the way back.

 After lunch, my friend's family wanted to go to the miso factory that I went to in November, so I went again.  After the tour, we were all a little sleepy from a full stomach, so we stopped for coffee before heading back home.

Thirtieth Week

I went back and retook the pictures of the area near Proxy. 

 When you go down the stairs from the lobby turn left, towards the Meitetsu bus stop.

 To the right will be Benten Pond.

 Keep going straight.

 To the left there will be a park for small kids.

 Keep going straight and at the stoplight you'll see a hair salon to your left.

 Across the street is an Italian buffet.  I've heard the food is good and the price is not to bad on weekends.  Most weekends I'm in Nagoya city so I haven't eaten here.

 Keep going straight.

 To your left you'll see a sweets shop.  I didn't go inside but it looks like they sell both Western and Japanese sweets.

 Keep going straight and you'll come across a restaurant.  I'm not sure but I think they sell spaghetti there, based on the sign.  It's actually a chain, I've seen a few of this restaurant around.

 Keep going and you'll see a Shell.

 Go past the Shell.

 Apparently there's a McDonald's straight ahead.

 But I turned right on this clothing store.

 Keep going down the smaller road.

I came across a small pharmacy.  I had been trying to find a Post office that is marked in a map of the area the school provided for us, but at this point it start drizzling and it looked like it was going to rain.  I didn't have my umbrella and I didn't want to get caught in the rain, so I turned back.  But according to the map, if you keep going straight on this road, you'll eventually come to the Post office.

I know have three weeks left of classes and then I go back home a few days later.  I had wanted to do more but looks like I'm out of time.  I'm gonna have to start packing soon, since I don't want to leave everything for the last minute, and I want to see if I can go to Tokyo Disneyland before I leave.  I hope I don't get too busy with classes, though I know we'll start having tests in two weeks.

Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Ninth Weeks

TWENTY-EIGHT WEEK

I decided to take pictures of the local stores and post them, but I had a problem with my camera and my camera's memory card and I had to format it.  I had a backup of most of my photos, but not the newest ones, including the ones of the local stores.  I'll have to go again and take pictures of them.

TWENTY-NINTH WEEK

SAKE AND VINEGAR MUSEUM

 Due to my problems with my camera, some of my photos are a little blurry.  I apologize, but you can't tell it's blurry from the camera. I have to wait until I look at the photos in a computer to be able to tell.  This week's excursion was to a sake museum and then a vinegar museum.

 We first went to the sake museum.

 Sake producer put this ball of some kind of plant outside their business and they change it once a year once the first sake has been made.  The new ball is bright green, but the ball we saw was definitely not new and kind of brown color.

 The different types of rice are used for different things.  Sake is made from the highest quality.

 Examples of all the different types of rice.

 The process of how sake used to be made.

 Different equipment that used to be used to make sake.

 After we toured the museum, we were taken to another room where we watched the video on how sake is made. After the video they offered tasting of different kinds of sake to those of legal drinking age.

 Afterwards, we went to vinegar museum.

 This wheel had figures of the process of how vinegar used to be made.

 Tools for making vinegar in the old days.

 A red vinegar, which is very difficult to make, was very popular because the taste went very well with sushi.

 Inside those big boxes is where the vinegar is fermented with some kind of bacteria.  They showed us the process in a video and opened one of the boxes to show us what it looks like.  It isn't a pleasant sight if you ask me.

After the tour, we were again taken to another room to watch a video on how vinegar is made and the many uses for vinegar.  After the video we were given a taste of vinegar mixed with blueberry juice to drink.  Apparently drinking vinegar is healthy, and in order to make it more appetizing the company started selling it mixed with juice.  Actually the company said that pure vinegar sales is only 30% of the total sales.  The rest is made up of other products that contain vinegar, such as the juices, or sauces, and natto.