teamEggers

Sake Brewery

Wow, did I have the wrong impression of this trip. I was actually looking at a different event’s brochure, reading about the haps, getting excited… so I was really surprised when the actual sake tour was nothing like I expected.

Here’s what was going to happen, in my head. I love when I make things up. So we get there, the brewery is run by a guy from Europe who happens to know a ton about sake, but speaks English. He explains the hows-and-whats of what we’re drinking, he teaches us how to read sake labels in japanese. We sip. We sample. We are merry.

Which is, you know, kind of like what happened. Except first we took off all our shoes. Because why would you consider going into a brewery with shoes on? Come on, people.

And then the sake master, who didn’t speak any English, explained a few things to our tour guide… who must not have thought it was worth while to translate for us.

But that’s okay. Because despite my snarky tone, we really did have a good time.

At this point we were like, “okay. so there’s… no tour. That’s okay. Because there will still be a sake tasting! And I love sake! The tour guide said we’d get to try five different kinds!!!” And perhaps my excitement level should have tipped me off that something was amiss. Because the tasting was…. not very exciting.

Two sakes, one plum wine. Plum wine? BUT WHY!!! Good lord. Why. They didn’t tell us anything about what we were tasting. Oh, enough focusing on the negatives here michelle. This was a new experience! You never get to spend 8 hours in a bus with tour groups!

On the bright side, we did get this picture…

Which is exciting. Because now that I have a pic of us on a blue screen, I can put the background of any other MWR trip in there and save myself the bus ride.

Strawberry Farm

The naval base has all kinds of activities planned for the families that come out here. It’s incredibly nice because I imagine there are quite a few people “stuck” in Japan that aren’t as adventurous as j and I. I married so well. Remember when we were growing up and I was the spontaneous one and jon was the methodical one? What happened to those versions of ourselves?

Where’s this going. We usually check out the list of things that MWR is doing and say “yeah, that sounds good! let’s plan our own trip for that!” – which is awesome because we learn about festivals and castles and sights and stuff that we might not otherwise hear of, but we don’t have to spend hours on a bus and herd around like american cattle.

This trip, however, was really far away. It was a 4 hour bus ride into a prefecture that just wasn’t very easy to get to, and they went a few places that we were excited about. So that’s a long way of qualifying why I’m in this bus, writing postcards to grandma, on our way to eat stuff our faces with strawberries.

Unlike U-pick places in the States, you don’t take the fruit with you here. You have 30 minutes to shove your face with as many berries as you can. Careful not to give yourself a stomachache! Those suckers are sweet!

Though how can you resist the elusive 6-legged, white strawberry?!

Just kidding.

You have thirty minutes. Go.

So most people left after about 15. Jon… jon couldn’t understand it. He stayed longer than anyone else, peeking and picking through the
bushes that our group was allotted. There’s so many berries left!

Personally, I had to tap out because I have no self-control. I literally mashed every decent looking berry in my face as fast as I could. After about 15 minutes I recognized the turning point – if I kept going, I was going to be complaining for the rest of the bus ride.

As with everything in life, jon’s style’s more refined than mine. He perused. He selected. He did not come out with a sticky face and red-stained hands.

Japanese History Museum

We happened to be in Chiba prefecture for other reasons, and the group we were with decided to swing by the Natural History Museum and Institute. It’s a museum megaplex, with six galleries covering everything from 3000BC to modern times (post WWII).

The Japanese are really good at making things into megaplexes. On our way there, we stopped at a “truck stop” for lunch. Boy, was I not excited about that. Here’s the thing – when you travel and spend time in other countries, you just can not bring your own bias with you. They don’t work out. The “truck stop”? A man-made island in the middle of Tokyo Bay. It’s a 6-story rest stop with restaurants, shops, and a big deck on the top.

We got a wiener wrapped in bacon, on a stick. Oh, I love street food. And bacon. And bacon wrapped street food. Jon is either concentrating really hard on growing his beard, or he’s staring me down and wondering why I’m taking so many photos.

Another thing I love? Things for little kids. That little guys gets to sit on the turtle? eff that. Take my picture on the turtle!

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The museum was way more interesting than I expected. Here are some highlights:

One of the galleries talked about how their writing forms began (kanji, katakana, hiragana, romanjii) and how they evolved over the years. There were some placards in English, so I don’t know the whole story about any of this, but it seems that hiragana started out as the women’s language and katakana was the men’s. Kanji derives straight from Chinese and romanji obviously comes from the West.

Later, they walk through the printing presses and some early graphic design / typography. I love it!

Another gallery was focused on spirituality; shinto, buddism, and life in between.

“What’s in your head sir?” “oh, well, let me show you!”

Jon thought I was a creepazoid for wanting my picture next to the paleolithic skeleton. I’m SO TALLLLLLL.

Would it really even be a museum without a Godzilla (I mean, Gojira) replica? No. I didn’t think so.

Stay tuned for something sweet: it’s off to the strawberry farm!

Going to Chiba

chibachibachiba! We’re like… totally going on an adventure. omg.

The adventure starts on a train south to a little ferry town. The ferry, while it looks like the Seattle-Bremerton ferry, is certainly classier than our ferry.

That is, until you take into account our breakfast of local beers and curry buns. I figure… if they sell beer everywhere, it’s a shame to not drink it. We knew there was something potentially wrong with public drinking at 11am when a pair of toothless bums stopped to cheers us.

Guest starring on today’s adventure is Ross. Ross, meet teamEggers. teamEggers, this is Ross. Ross works with jon and is in town for a week. He’s a cool guy and we enjoyed hanging out with him.

And a lighthouse for jon’s mom!

Okay. So we finally get off the ferry and start the walk around the bay and to the gondola that will take us up the mountain. Keep in mind that this is a fishing village. One the road, we see a fresh-fish stand. Really, really fresh. Some of the fish were still swimming in buckets.

And of course, a lot of temples / shrines.

Some Buddhas

I think this post may just be a lot of photos, with small bits of commentary mixed in. I don’t have a lot to say, but it was an awesome experience.

Carved into the mountainside is one of the world’s largest stone Buddhas, and sprinkled throughout the surrounding the trails were some 1500 buddha and arhatt statues. To get there (described more in the post above) we took a gondola up to the top of the mountain.

We crammed in a LOT of people. Somehow I was squished into the photo-op corner. What a view!

I hate waiting for the climax of events, so I’m going to go ahead and show you the big one now.

Next to this giant buddha there was this small area that people were praying and leaving little offerings. The crazy thing was that no where else in Japan have I seen cherry trees blossom.

Goddess of Mercy. I think she was 30 meters tall

Oooookay. So. there was this hill. with “stairs”. So you know, i stumbled up them, nearly fell down them.

THEN. then I found out what i was climbing up on. And how precarious it looked.

But you know. The views were worth the extra climb.

But speaking of the climb… there was a LOT of climbing. A lot of stairs.

A lot of arhats. (An arhat is the Buddhist who has attained enlightenment and has ended the cycle of reincarnation.)