Yakiniku w/ Friends

We loved the All You Can Eat / All You Can Drink format of this yakiniku place so much, that we came back on one of Phil’s last days in town. It was kind of awesome.

I love it that we have a group of friends here. There’s an awesome built in network in Yokohama, because you all are in the same circumstance, and because you’re brought together with people that you might not ordinarily live so close to. Also, I’ve been using the word “awesome” an incredible amount today.

Phil’s an awesome guy, and I’m excited to have gotten the chance to hang out with him for a bit. Since he lives on the other side of the pond (in Washington), it’s a rare day that we all get to hang out stateside. We’ll miss you, Phil!

Japanese Wine Country

I miss you when you don’t comment. Just so you know.

In this episode, teamEggers runs out of money. Really. For about 12 hours, I only had six cents in my possession.

Jon had to give up his reserve $20 bill. The rare 2000 Yen note, only created in the year 2000. It was… depressing. We’ve never not had any money before.

But. I’m getting ahead of myself. We put our j-girls (emi and Mao) in charge of find out hotel for the night. They called random numbers from the Internet for a while, and eventually told us that we had some rooms for $40 per person. Hurray! I’m SO much more okay with winging it when Emi’s around.

Later that night, we find ourselves at the Suzuki En. (Suzuki is kind of like Smith. Really common last name.)

The Suzuki En was nice! And charming. And had all kinds of really perfect things going on. I couldn’t have picked a better place if I researched and really, really tried. They had vineyards in the backyard, made their own wine, and had a whole wine-theme going on. It wasn’t kitchy at all, just really… charming. Here’s the courtyard:

We stayed in Room 5.

And spent some time hanging out in the chilly courtyard before turning in early. This may have been the first Saturday in existence that Brian Reece & I went to bed at the same hour.

I love the detail of this hotel.

There was a collection of antique wine openers. Look at that red and white one. They’re pantaloons. The corkscrew is, ahem…

And this is the same wood-burning oven that the Eggers have up north!

…see!!

So the hotel was $40. No one in our group thought to go to the ATM before leaving for this remote mountain town, and Will didn’t even come with enough money for the train ride. We decided to scround together our last dollars and cents for breakfast in the morning. I’m glad we did – it was really good!

Our plans for the morning: 1. find money. 2. find the farmers market.

Here’s the thing. I’ve never *not* had money before. I’ve never had six cents to my name. Without Emi & Mao, we certainly would have been lost. Or rather, we would have found our way with much less efficiency than we did.

The hills of Katsunuma:

Koshu. The local grape. It grows differently than any other grape I’ve ever seen. The vineyards look… incredibly different. And they’re plentiful – nearly all the houses in the area had vines in their driveway.

Because of its thick, bitter skin, one of the best ways to cultivate it is to allow it to be far from the ground, but not in direct sunlight. What do you do? Make a canopy.

About 6 feet from the ground, they’d lay wire nets, and the grapes hang from the bottom. Boy, i wish we had come in fall when the fruit was hanging. This valley is probably incredibly.

This vending machine is exciting only for its rarity. I wish there were more beer machines on the streets, or that i didn’t find this one at 10am.

Eventually we made it to our farmers market. I had incredibly low expectations and was really surprised at its awesomeness. It’s no West Allis farmer’s market. And it’s no Seattle farmer’s market, but it was way better than I expected.

First order of business: find the guy with the beans. There’s always one.

After some shopping about (I bought some greens and jon bought some fresh pasta!), we stopped by a tasting room and did a quick wine tasting. I came home with a bottle of rosé.

I love how thoroughly ingrained the grapes are into the culture here. I love wine country. It’s just so… perfect. For a weekend.

***

Boy. I’m exhausted. On our way home, we made a quick detour to get some long-sought after ramen. This place, basanova, was the last stop on our list of “must have” ramen joints. Nevermind that half of their sign fell down and they didn’t care. Nevermind that the bar next door looks like it’s been deserted for years.

Their claim to fame? Green Curry Ramen. I know it sounds crazy, but oh, god. It was so good. The best, perhaps.

I mean, look how happy we are.

Japanese Wine Country – The Wine Cave

We spent the weekend with some friends up in Japanese wine country. Tucked into the foothills of the Alps, you’ll find a little town called Katsunuma, and in it – a lot of Koshu grape vines. You’ll also find the cave at Budo no Oka (Grape Hill), where you can sample 150 Japanese wines for just over $10.

Even though our enthusiasm was not matched by the quality of wine, we managed to have a pretty great time. I was feeling rather inspired by some of the wine labels, and I’ve decided to make a professional goal: Someday, I want to design a wine label! How cool would that be?

The format of Budo no Oka was really cool – the wine was set out on the tops of barrels for you to sample. It was organized in the same order you should drink it: dry whites > sweet whites, roses, light reds > full-bodied reds. You get a little cup when you go in, and you’re welcome to stay as long as you want. Sip, sip, sip. I wish they had crackers or water around.

I’ve joked about how it’s easy to speak Japanese; just add an “u” to the end of any word. What does it say when the winemaker apologizes for their wine before you try it?

Yeah. It was about as good as you’d expect. Actually, a lot of the wines weren’t very good. Koshu is a tough grape to do well.

Here’s what we learned: None of the reds were good. None of them. Some were less-terrible than others, but we didn’t have a single red wine that we would have been happy with purchasing in a restaurant. Koshu is best if made in off-dry white style, when they take on the stonefruit-and-mineral characteristics of viognier. When they’re made too dry, they get super acidic and the lime & grapefruit flavours dominate. When they’re made too sweet Koshu turns into a cloying buckets of nectariney goo.

Don’t let me fool you though – we still had a great time. (below is me with Emi & Mao)

Outside the wine cave, we strained to see the ever-illusive Mt. Fuji (it was too cloudy), and commented on how we all love to visit the countryside.

Tune in next time: finding a place to sleep, farmers market, and green curry ramen!

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!

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.