vacation Saturday1: castle

We visited Okayama Castle in the morning.  There was a giraffe in our taxi, so we obviously got a picture.

Travis and Scarlet got there a bit before us (due to Travis practically stealing a taxi and making us look foolish. :D).  But there was a strat cat and a heron so Scarlet was happy.

The castle walls looked amazing for climbing.  Seriously.  That's all I saw when I looked at them.  I think that even I could probably climb them.  However, Isaac and I stayed off the walls and just commented on what looked easy (or hard) about climbing them.

The castle!  Most of the castle was destroyed at some point or another, either by neighboring tribes or in WWII.  They took the opportunity to rebuild the castle with better earthquake protections and turned it into a museum; we were able to go through almost the whole space.

More rocks that looked fun to jump on.  These were the original castle foundations, so once again we held ourselves back.

The first area was very interactive, with guns and swords to try out,

a palanquin to ride in,  

and a horse to ride on.

This was the view from the top floor.

In the basement there was this photo oppertunity, which at first glance looks pretty boring.

But when you use the flash, you suddenly get a really cool scene behind you!  If you look closely at the black area you can see that the picture is there, but we weren't really sure how it worked.

After the castle we went to the gardens behind it.  There are large fields of grass...that we can't walk on.  I understand they're trying to keep it looking nice, but the cultural differences are apparent: in the US you would be encouraged to walk on the grass.

There were a bunch of cute koi.  They all had different colorations which made them pretty interesting to watch.

Rock bridges!  No one fell off.

A steep bridge!

The drinking fountain water stream shot straight up, vertically.  It was easier to drink from than I expected.

There were tons of koi in the large pond, along with several turtles, and you could feed them!  It was a lot more fun to feed them than I was expecting; there were so many of them that the sound of them trying to get the food and vying for position was surprisingly loud.

This day is also getting rather long, so it'll be continued!

Saturday: a lovely day

Today was a lovely day...and I only heard "I'm bored" once. :D

We put together Lego sets in the morning, got some chores done, played some games, and Ben went to e-Foil.  Cheryl came over for dinner.  The weather was lovely so the slider was open all day.

Friday: last day of school

We made it to the last day of school!  Ever since we got back from Japan we've been ready to be done.

Joshua came home with a packet about fourth grade.  Most of it was pretty normal, but I took pictures of the funny ones.

All the people were stick figures; drawn as quickly as possible.

His favorite part of the classroom was the floor.  (Without the floor there would be problems!)

His goal for next year is to not dye.

Isaac emptied out his math stuff.

We also got an ice cream cake.  It did not thaw quickly enough in the center and I got really frustrated with it.  However, once I got it cut it was delicious.

Thursday: O:CtH

Since today was the last full day of school, I gave myself permission to work on the storage room instead of some of the more important chores.  The important chores are just so much more boring.

Tonight after reading to Joshua I fake trapped him.  However, it's been a long standing rule that I don't do traps at bedtime: Ben does that.  Anyway, I clearly wasn't trapping Joshua, because I don't do traps, so I told him I was doing a part.  (Trap backwards, but no one realized that.)  However, then whenever Joshua asked if I was doing apart I would tickle him.  (I wasn't doing apart.  I was doing part.)  Isaac came over and sort of got in on the action, but oddly enough it didn't work for him.  He's been so silly lately.

vacation Friday2: Tofukuji Temple, shabu-shabu

After we finished the gates, we took a ten minute walk over to Tofukuji Temple.  This was one that Ben had found on-line and we didn't know much about it...and it was great!  There were barely any tourists there, so it actually felt peaceful.  It also had a rock garden and a plant garden.

The walk over there was like all the other walks in Japan; let's go down these random side-streets that are small but clean and end up at your destination.

The buildings here were huge.  One of the signs said that that was one of the goals: make the largest temples.  This seemed like an odd juxtaposition to the theme of the temple grounds which was Zen and meditation.

We took a brief bathroom break.  This sign was inside the toilet.  Normally I would have ignored the sign, but Cheryl said the same thing that I had thought a moment earlier: "don't put babies in the toilet"

Then we walked around the rock gardens.  There was only one main rock garden, one small one, and two that included plant life too.

It was a nice place to sit and be calm for a few minutes.

The bridge in the background is the next place that we go.

Cheryl mentioned this looks like a quilt that I had made in the past.  She's right, but it would also be interesting to make one directly based on this picture.

I just liked this tree.

We went over to the garden area next.  There were a few more buildings and a bridge over a river.

I liked the red trees in mostly green trees.

At the small bridge overlook

A garden by one of the building above

More rocks!

Several of us, instead of going over the big bridge on the way back, went down into the valley and crossed over on the small bridge.

Every time Scarlet saw an animal we stopped to observe it.  In these pots are some small fish.

It started to sprinkle just as we got into our taxi.  We did use the umbrellas so I guess they were worth carrying around.  We grabbed our luggage from the hotel and went to the train station.   We ate lunch at a restaurant there; it was fine and had some different foods that we were but I don't remember it being amazing either.  We had a little bit of extra time so we got a few snacks - assorted flavor mochi balls and some triangles.

Travis kept teasing Isaac by calling them mocha or machi balls.  Honestly, I said the wrong word several times.  The fact that you can have macha mochis is a bit confusing.  There were five flavors and I think they were soybean, macha, chocolate, strawberry, and peach.  Soybean was the least favorite.  I don't remember the favorite but it wasn't macha.

We arrived in Okayama and the hotel was connected to the train station which was super nice.  We met up with Larry and the president, Mr. Kitahara (pictured below) and his nephew.

On our way to the rooms I tried opening the wrong door first; I forgot which room we were in.  So imagine my panic when ten seconds later the door opens and someone comes out.  Luckily, it was only Travis and he just happened to be coming out; he didn't hear that I tried to open his door first.  We deposited our stuff in our room and had a few minutes to relax.  Except Ben and I didn't.  We took out the dress clothes for tomorrow and tried to figure out how to work the pant press.  We didn't really figure it out until later when Ben looked it up.  I was unimpressed and think there should have just been irons in the rooms.  (We could have requested an iron.)  These rooms were probably the largest of the trip - they were a bit larger than a hotel room in the US.  I got to sleep with Isaac this time.

The view from our hotel room in this "small" city.

For dinner we had shabu-shabu, which is very thinly sliced beef and vegetables that you cook yourself in hot broth.  The vegetables need to be cooked for a while while the beef only needs to be cooked for a few seconds.  Sashimi and sushi were also ordered, since we hadn't tried any of that yet.

Sashimi: I'm not a huge fan.  It was ok, but I don't think I appreciated it well enough to understand how good it was.

The cooking chopsticks were gigantic!  We were getting pretty good at chopsticks by this point, but Ben and I both had trouble with these.  The waitress put in a bunch of vegetables for us at the beginning, but she really put in too many.  It was a bit hard to get what we wanted after that.  

The beef was excellent.  There were some dipping sauces but even without those it was really good.  

The sushi was really good too.  I think Isaac had one from this plate but I think I ate the rest...and one off Travis and Scarlet's plate.  Last time I was in Japan I remember the sushi being really large and hard to eat because you have to put it all in your mouth at once.  These, while large, more easily fit in my mouth and so I was able to enjoy the taste instead of worrying about how to eat it.  (*Sigh, yes, maybe I have a big mouth now.*)