teamEggers

Snow Fest, Part 2

Is it bad that I want to stay in bed and read all day? Every day? I’m such a slug.

Also, despite my mothers frantic fears, there was no tsunami action in Tokyo. Should you have been worried, let me quell that by saying that we’re just fine. We spent the day in Tokyo (shinjuku and shibuya, mostly) eating ramen, wandering about, and drinking in the streets. With the exception of some rain showers in the morning, it was a very water-free day.

Part two of our Yuzawa trip, coming at you. In this episode, Jon and Michelle find a place to sleep and look at snow sculptures!

**

You’ll remember that we came out to the mountain town of Yuzawa without a hotel booked for the night. (scroll down if this doesn’t sound familiar. you probably missed part one!) We stopped in to the tourist association and found someone that spoke a small amount of English. Boy, what a help!

We really, really didn’t want to spend 300$ / night on a hotel (which seemed to be the going rate for most of the places we had found, and was also the reason why we didn’t book something BEFORE getting on the train). Other than that financial limitation, we tried to communicate to the guy that we didn’t really care about much else. Remember, I was okay with sleeping in the train station if it came to that!

A few phone calls later, he circles something on the map and tells us that it would be $50. … okay? okay! well. we still have no idea what we’re going to, but at least he circled it on the map. That will probably come in handy later.

We’re in the mountains this weekend to visit the Tokamachi snow festival, which is a 30-minute train ride away from where we were at. I think a lot of people were in town for this snow fest, because the trains were crazy packed.

The japanese need very little encouragement when it comes to having full-costume mascots. This is the suica (train pass) mascot! I hugged Suica the Penguin! Isaiah, are you hearing this!!?

We wander out to the streets and follow the crowd into a snow-walled off area filled with tents and sculptures. Speaking of trains, look at the level of detail!

This area is known for growing rice, so there’s a lot of sake makers around too. (remember, sake is basically rice wine) $1 for sake? count us in!

I love that this culture embraces drinking in public so wholeheartedly.

SUMO snow man! This isn’t the kind of stuff we made in our backyard. Tokamachi’ans really don’t mess around with their snowmen!

Just look at the level of detail!

But you know, not everyone… got the hint. Shouldn’t there at least be snow in the snowmen? Nice try, folks.

Boy. All this walking around in the snow is making me hungry. If only there was a guy selling meat on a stick around here somewhere…..

Did I mention how cold it was yet? And wet? Cold and wet!

Unlike jon’s (much more practical shoes), my tennis shoes aren’t waterproof. My toes were angry with me, and so when the opportunity came to warm myself with a beer around a trash-can-fire, like a hobo, my toes simply wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

They do this crazy thing all over Tokamachi & Yuzawa. Having lived in both Wisconsin and Colorado for some time, it struck me as odd that I’ve never seen anything like this before. It appears that the snow melt runoff is piped into the streets to keep them from freezing. Neat, huh? Neat that is, until you accidentally step in it and get your (already angry) toes more wet.

but you know, it’s okay. We’re having a good time and we’re together. And we did come for the snow, after all.

Yuzawa

There’s something really charming about the idea of a snow festival. We grew up in Wisconsin, a place where I’ve never know the people to celebrate the back-breaking winter weather. In Tokamachi, however, the perspective is different.

61 years ago, the locals decided to celebrate the mounds snow around them, instead of feeling oppressed by it. They built snow castles and drank in the streets. It was festive. Joyous. It was a way to lift spirits in the middle of a hard winter. I think I read that somewhere. If not, I might have made it up. As jon will tell you, I’m prone to doing that. Anyways, that’s the picture I want to keep of the Japanese people 61 years ago.

On Saturday morning, with little more than an idea of which train to take, we loaded ourselves onto the Shinkansen.

I packed brunch, which amounted to a bottle of sparkling wine (wrapped hobo-style) and some juice:

…and we sat back for 2 hours, as or bullet train carried us towards the mountains.

**

Remember from last year, we talked about how every little area seems to have it’s own local food specialty? The big one here is rice, but the omnipresent street food is a something packaged brightly in leaves.

Isn’t it beautiful? It looks like it could be a tropical fish, with all of it’s tails and tendrils.

Oh. It’s… green. Okay. And to think I had just sworn off macha for good this time (the thick green tea drink). But okay. We’ll go with it. I wonder what’s inside!

Oh. (sad face) it’s bean paste. in retrospect, why on earth would I have expected the bundle to be filled with anything but bean paste? Foiled again.

Perhaps 4 photos of that was gratuitous, but i wanted you to experience the excitement (and subsequent disappointment) with me.

**

At this point, we’re wandering around the town of Yuzawa, which is akin to a neighborhood ski town. Not ritzy like Vail, or quaint and charming like Breckenridge. Yuzawa felt like the working-man’s ski town. There were onsens (hot baths) abound, and lots of houses. Very neighborhoody-like.

Despite all these [theoretical] housing opportunities around us, Jon and I came to Yuzawa without a hotel booked. I think I’ll leave you there, since the telling of that story could be quite long.

Instead, I’ll leave you with this totally awesome picture of the area that we were in. Mountains are so pretty. (Although I find it’s best to look at pictures of them rather than to climb around in them!)

“it loves you”

Jon reminded me today that I shouldn’t abandon the blog to work on other things. He says “it loves you. It just wants some love back.”
This is another reason I would not be a good Mommy. I forget about things.

Today I saw a child screaming… screaming, running after a woman and a stroller. The “mom”-woman was gaining distance and the little girls screams started sounding less and less like “fun game” and more like “mommy come back”. I wondered… was that woman running away from her child? Literally? Was she trying to abandon the girl in the middle of the park? And more importantly, did I fault her?

Anyways. I love you, teamEggers. I love that you’re dependable and don’t ask too much from me. My mom called me yesterday, as I was in the middle of what must have sounded like a quarter-life-crisis. Despite our glorious surroundings, which I keep forgetting to enjoy, I seem to be having a small mental breakdown over the past few weeks. I think things are on the upswing, and I resolve that March will be better.

So for you today, I bring a very happy tale of one girl who gets to stay in Japan.

Yesterday afternoon, I jumped on a train into the unexplored Burroughs of Yokohama.

• Final destination: The Japanese Immigration office.
• The task: An attempt to extend my 90-day tourist visa, so that I don’t have to leave the country in April.

After standing in various lines in a room that was set up similar to the DMV, lots of back and forth with a man named Ki-no-shi-ta, and the most charmingest smile I could muster, I was awarded a visa extension!

(I just had to buy a 40$ revenue stamp before they let me have it. Good thing I had some cash in my pocket!) Really though, $40 is a gift, considering that leaving the country to go to Hong Kong would have probably cost us close to $1500.

Happy, happy.

Valentines Day Weekend

I’ve given you a few snapshots of Valentines Day weekend, but I thought I’d talk a bit more about the weekend on a whole. You may be thinking to yourself about now, “what, they don’t do anything during the week anymore? Here it’s a week later and she’s still talking about last sunday? this sucks! I want my money back!”

Yes, dear reader, you’re right. I’m lazy. Some days I don’t even leave the house. But I cook dinner almost every night! You want recipes? That’s about all I can give you. Recipes and pity parties.

To close up the weekend before I start the next one, here’s a quick recap:

Ramen Adventures! Jangara Ramen, recommended by two of the ramen blogs that we follow. Located right off the main drag in Akihabara (the electronics district)

The line is always this long!

Inside (they say not to take photos, so i had to sneak a few covert-like with my iPhone. I’m sure they didnt notice because I blend in really well. … and my iPhone is lime-green)

Then we went to the Edo history museum, where I sat in things:

…and jon stood in front of things (look, sumo!)

. next morning . up before dawn to take in the sights at the tsukiji fish market. Boy, I wish I had some coffee.

We were careful not to get in the way or get hit by one of the speeding fish cars. The market before it wakes up…

…as the vendors are still preparing for their days.

Large semi trucks unload fish to be sold starting at 3am. Most of them come in Styrofoam boxes that are turned into the makings of a mountain.

I love the view here of the city in the background. It looks so… dismal. If you think about it, a lot of fishies gave their lives for this picture. It is dismal.

We ended our day with a sushi breakfast (at 7am!). I was feeling kind of sick, but decided that stomachache or not, I was eating raw tuna that morning!! (it was worth it!)

Yuzawa + Tokamachi = Yokamachi?

Here we go!  Flying by the seat of our pants.  Embracing laziness in planning spontaneity!

Jon and I are taking the bullet train up to the central western side of Japan (Niigata prefecture) to check out the Japan’s #2 snow festival in Tokamachi.

Will we find a place to stay?  Will we have to sleep in the train station and bathe like hobos!? Tune in next time and find out!