teamEggers

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.

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!)