Wrapping up Yuzawa
In this episode of teamEggers, Michelle pulls it together and finishes her story. How many adventures behind are we? I can’t even count.
The main event the night of the snow fest was held at this big stage. Turned out to be a concert of sorts. Light show. Fireworks at the end. Very theatrical.
It was snowing pretty hard by now, so to preserve the band (and their instruments? integrity? who knows.), they were placed in these little bubbles. I’d hate to be the lead singer that day. She must have been freezing!
One of the best things about the snow is that it makes for an instant cooler. Not that I should have continued drinking by this point in our evening.
This was a vertical wall. isn’t that just crazy!?
Beeeautiful!
Remember how we still had no idea where we were sleeping that night? We showed the taxi driver our map, where the man from the tourist association circled our home, and he whisked us away. Where were we going? Was it a hotel? Did he know? What’s happening!?
We were SO relieved when they dropped us off in front of this place (photos taken the next day), and the door was unlocked.
but… there’s no one there. The place appears totally deserted. They must have known we were coming right?
Eventually I found someone watching tv in the kitchen, and it all worked out. In true japanese style, this was our room:
Couldn’t have really asked for anything better if we had tried! We rolled our our futons and turned in for the night.
I noticed on the map that we were near the supermaket, so the next morning we grabbed breakfast and at the only place we could find – hobo style in an alley way.
It turned out to be such a beautiful day.
In this area, they grow a lot of rice. They say “good water makes for good rice”. makes sense. Take that one step further. Good rice makes for good…. sake! So there was a lot of sake to be had. After finding the sake brewery closed (we had wanted to take a tour!)…
…we settled for buying some at a local liquor store. This “liquor store” was more like a “sake emporium”. there were probably 100 different kinds, and the helpful men behind the bottles were pouring samples of half of them. We found one that we REALLY liked and bought two bottles. I can’t wait to drink it!
Next Stop: a gondola up to the base of a ski hill, for an incredible view of the mountains:
I was starting to feel a little under the weather about how we were the only people on the gondola who didn’t intend to SKI down the mountain, but the views really made up for it.
Look at his cute mochi kid? He’s so tubby. The next generation of japanese kids will grow up to be tubby adults like us americans.
After lunch…
…we got back on our bullet train and headed home.
Thanks for tuning in. Jon and I are about to go on another awesome adventure (in about 20 minutes!). I can’t wait to tell you about it!