Japan Getaway (Day 2)

July 15, 2012 - My Birthday!!!

Mmmmm, after a deep sleep in a tatami room I was refreshed and ready for my trip to really start! Breakfast is an important meal of the day, and when I travel, it's usually my favorite meal of the day as I tend to have a big breakfast to fill me up with energy for the rest of the day.

We had a salad with some of the mushrooms sauteed (we bought these the day before), fresh fruit, slow juiced carrot and apple juice, red bean bun and French Earl Grey tea that I'd brought over from HK. The mushrooms were delicious - I wonder how they are cooked, they taste cooked, but they are not overcooked so that they are very soft - there's still that chewy mushroom texture.....

 

The fresh fruits looks really sweet doesn't it? They were very sweet and fresh, and the fresh juice was very surprisingly good! As there were a lot of carrots used and probably only one apple, but it was really easy to drink. Also the juicer that they use is this new type of juicer that slowly squeezes all the juice out and the remaining fruit that is squeezed out as waste is so clean and dry - this means that you're getting all the juice out, and I think it probably keeps the juicer quite clean as things come out quite easily.... haha... now that I'm typing this, I can see more clearly that the way that I describe this machine seems like something that shouldn't be mentioned when talking about food....

The red bean bun was really good, there was a lot of red bean filling and the bread was nice and soft and not too thick. I had that with the French Earl Grey tea, which has added bellflower into Earl Grey, giving it a very nice smell!

After breakfast, we made our way to a nearby soba shop to learn to make soba. I had always thought "soba" was "cold noodles" in Japanese, but today I would learn that soba is actually a seed and this is a type of noodles that we were learning to make - soba noodles. Our lesson started right away, and the soba master was very nice and encouraging. He spoke only Japanese, but it was easy to just follow what he was doing.

below right: the soba master's work room

 

above middle and right: our lesson room

below right: soba flour and the soba mixing bowl

 

We used a mix of soba flour and normal flour to make the dough - I have forgotten the mix, is it 80% soba flour 20% normal flour, or 60% soba flour 40% normal flour? Anyways, soba flour has a distinctive smell - or well soba has a distinctive smell, it's similar to sesame or walnut aroma..... The flour is mixed in this big soba bowl and using very little water we 'massage' and 'played' with the flour until it formed one dough. There's some technique in forming the dough, as you make little pieces of dough that stick together first, and then as you change your kneading technique slightly the little pieces will start to stick together. In some ways, I think it might also have something to do with the heat of the hands or oil, as there was a slight sheen to the dough when it was ready.

Then we had to roll the dough out into a very flat, thin and square sheet, fold over 2 times and then we used a wooden board and HUGE knife to cut the soba noodles. The photos here on the right show the steps that we did, but I couldn't take photos when I was making the soba noodles, so these are not my noodles.... The whole process looked pretty much like this but my noodles were a bit more thick.

After the hard work, of course we had to taste our noodles! We enjoyed a lunch of soba noodles, tempura (these are a good match with soba noodles), and soba tea.... I really liked these soba noodles because they are very soft and a little chewy, not like the ones that I've had in the past which were probably a little more hard because they were made too early and left out for too long so they dried a bit. I also particularly enjoyed the soba tea because it has that soba smell, a little sweet and sesame-y smelling.

After lunch, we made our way back to the cottage for a rest before we headed out to a nearby town for the summer festival celebrations that evening. I took this opportunity to explore some of the roads nearby... actually I didn't really go that far, but it was nice to walk around and see lots of green and breathe in fresh air!

 

This is the cottage that I stayed in.

 Then I took some photos of the cottage that I was staying at... it's very modern, but also retains many of the traditional Japanese architectural elements. When I first entered the cottage the night before, I almost dropped my jaw at how many buttons there were in the house, EVERYTHING is automated! The kitchen had a lot of modern appliances, but the rest of the house was designed in the simplistic Japanese style - lots of white with accents of dark brown and wood textures. The living room ceiling was very high and airy - there were also traditional Japanese beams across the ceiling. Even my room, the guest room/tatami room was designed according to traditional tatami/tea ceremony rooms - the size/cut of the tatami mats are according to a specific size.

 

With all the nature outside the cottage, the large windows let in a lot of light but also gave an amazing view of all the trees and greenery outside. The family even makes their own compost - which is pretty cool, I don't know, maybe this is very common in Japan, but even in Canada I don't think many people make their own compost. With the compost they use it to fertilize their little vegetable and herb garden.

above right: an eggplant plant - didn't know that there would be a flower... kirei

below: blueberry plant (left) and tomato (right) - we tried so hard to grow tomatoes in our office, but didn't see any....

Later on we made our way by train to a nearby city/village - Togura, there is a summer festival there that weekend. Up till now, the weather had been quite hot, even in Karuizawa, where the temperature is supposed to be 12-24 degrees celcius, we have been having high 20s almost 30..... and when we got to Togura, it was even more hot, because it's a valley surrounded by mountains so there was no wind.

When we got to the village centre we saw two groups of people, one group of men, one group of women, each carrying a little house/shrine as a group, and they were shouting "wasa" - not really sure what that means, but we (the spectators) were supposed to respond with "wasa" too.

There were drums and even a proposal! When the two groups reached the stage in the village centre, a man proposed to his soon-to-be-fiancee in front of the entire audience! Happy for them that they got to do this with such a big group of friends and supporters!

In some ways, it seems like all this "wasa"-ing is like a tradition between boys and girls.... hmmmm, is that what it is? cuz they rocked back and forth calling out to each other...

The drummers who helped out were really good too! They were beating the drums hard and shouting... It was really fun to watch them. They even allowed little kids to go up on stage after their performance to try it out. I like that it looks like they are passing down the tradition and skills to their next generation.

As this was a summer festival, many of the villagers and tourist who came to this village for the oensen were dressed in their summer dress - Yukata! The ladies yukatas are all so beautiful! But I think it was still too hot to wear one of those... Little kids were also dressed up for the occasion.

Along the road there were many street food stalls - like Octopus balls (takoyaki), Fried Chicken, Japanese pancakes (okonomiyaki), cotton candy, slushies and more. We took a stroll around and I noticed that in this little, simple village there are A LOT OF BARS, seems like this is a popular destination for Japanese tourists, so they like to party at night and go to the bars.

On our way to search for a restaurant for dinner, we saw an outdoor show of Japanese dance... well at first I thought it might be Kabuki or Noh theatre, but in fact it was guys dressed in kimonos and dresses and dancing and singing... Not sure what kind of entertainment this is, but it was funny and they were sometimes very good and it's good entertainment for the villagers.

We finally found a restaurant that was recommended by the festival organizers, an udon store. This village and the surrounding area is well-known for the udon, which I also like. And when we looked on the menu, the first thing on there - and probably the only thing I can guess at is Horse meat sashimi, so we ordered that!

The horse meat sashimi came, and it looked a little like raw meat, just not bloody.... I gave it a try, although in the past I might have politely refused, but I try anything now when I travel. It was actually not bad - there wasn't any strong meat taste to it, and I thin the first piece, I just chewed it really quickly and swallowed it.... hahaha... but the texture is not tough or too soft, it was easy to chew.

Then a BIG pot of udon came, the noodles are a bit different from the ones that we are used to, they are a lot thicker and chewier. We also had a radish juice and miso dip to dip the udon noodles into. It was a bit hard to swallow at first because the radish juice was quite strong, but after a while it became milder and was ok. Not the tastiest food, but I think it was an interesting experience.

We didn't eat too much as we wanted to go back to the street food stalls for more food.... haha....

After a stroll around the food stalls, we made our way to pick a spot to watch the fireworks. The fireworks were not very big and showy, but still very nice, and it's a special treat to have fireworks on your birthday!

Happy birthday to me!