A tour of Morioka

Here are some the things that we did when Kunino and her friend Shizuka came into town this past weekend. We went around the city the first day and went to Hachimandai the second day. We were really lucky because the fall colors started to show. It was a beautiful sight to see.

Soup party!

I've realized that things like "Soup party", "Cricket party", and "business party" never really have anything to do with soup, cricket, or business. It's all code for DRINKING PARTY. This past weekend, we had an amazing experience. Our friends from Tokyo came and we got to show them around. It made us realize how cool Morioka actually is. We went to a nearby mountain and already the fall colors are showing, and showing beautifully. Ill have pictures later. We got to take them around and really realized that our little city had a lot to offer.

One of the places we went to was a bar that Ron and I have grown to love. Its a small sophisticated whiskey bar called "Lupin." The bartender (who we call Master) makes amazing drinks and when we went he invited us to his Soup Party. After dropping off our friends at the station, he picked us up and we went to his home where 12 other bar regulars were. We quickly realized that although there was soup. The real celebration was trying to finish a Sapporo keg that they brought. But we ended up spending 5 hours with these people, who many of only speak Japanese. It was an amazing time to meet amazing people and to further try out our Japanese. We left really full, really buzzed, and really happy. We walked home feeling like we were the luckiest people.

Inekari~

Ikanadate

THAT'S RICE!!

Hirosaki Castle Front Gate

Inekari in Japanese means "rice harvest" and this past weekend that's just what we did. We picked up two friends and went to Hirosaki which is about a two hour drive away. Its best known for its Cherry Blossoms in the springtime at Hirosaki Castle. But for this weekend, we went to Ikanadate which is a little ways from Hirosaki. Its a town with a size of 800, but for the rice planting and harvesting, they get about 200,000 visitors to help. So for that Sunday, we chucked rice, bundled it up, and schleped it off to the side. The most amazing part of this rice field is that every year, the planters make a design with four different kinds of rice. They spread it in such a way that as the rice grows, the different colors start to make designs in the rice field. The have created Edo period art, Samurai, and this year they did a design in the model of Hokusai's wood block tsunami. They built an observation building just to show the design. It's positively breathtaking. After the harvest, we made our way to look at Hirosaki Castle, also awesome, and made our way home. It was an amazing experience. It made me realize the hard work those hunched over baachans were doing. I felt a little bit more Japanese after that. I would gladly try that again.