A three hour (but really three day) tour!

Sept. 18-Sept. 20

Picking up right where I left off: the next place we went to in the Folkcraft Village was the Memorial Art Gallery of Gyuujin Takamura. He was a sumi-e painter famous for his kappitsugiho technique (ink painting with a dry brush) which made his pictures extremely expressive even when he only used black ink. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside but I bought some postcards and have taken pictures of them for you to see. I also bought a wall print (only 200yen!) that I need to find a cheap frame for. Slowly my apartment is becoming more than just white walls. The following pictures are the postcards, the pamphlet we received, and the last one is the print.

Next we looked at the 500 Disciples of Buddah (or something like that…). Everyone in the world is supposed to be able to find their ancestor among these statues. I didn’t manage to find one with blond hair and blue eyes but maybe I just didn’t look hard enough. It was very interesting to walk among all the statues and there was one bigger one in the front. Although this seemed like a place of honor our tour guide explained that really this disciple was more or less in timeout for misbehaving. His statue was separate from all the others because he was being punished for drinking too much sake. Supposedly if you have an injury or some sort of pain you can rub that spot on the statue and your pain will go away.

The graveyard in front of the 500 statues.

Some of the 500 statues. Next to each one was that little post. I have no idea what it's for.

Side view of several of the many rows of statues.

Taken near the top of the hill, so these are the back of the statues.

This was closest I came to finding a statue with any sort of similarity to me...a guy in what looks like a Pope hat and holding what I decided was a bowl of food :D

The last thing we did while in the Folkcraft Village was to drink tea. I thought we were going to participate in the entire tea ceremony but when we got to the tea house we found out that the tea was already prepared. We sat down and were instructed on how best to enjoy our tea. First we had to eat the Japanese sweet that was prepared by cutting it into quarters and eating one quarter at a time. Then, while the sweetness still lingered, we were supposed to drink the tea after turning the cup twice with our right hand. Although the tea is bitter, the “lingering sweetness” did make it more palatable and I personally really like the frothiness of this style tea.

This is the sweet we ate. The stick coming out of the bottom right corner is what we used to quarter it.

Frothy green tea!

After this, the camera crew that had been following us around at the Village left and we were set to depart for lunch at Unazuki Beer Restaurant. The restaurant was a buffet and the food there was pretty good. However, we had more fun trying the three beers they make. We had our two chaperones worried because our initial plan was to order a pitcher of each three to share between the six of us. They were smart and told us that our after lunch activity involved a long train ride with no bathroom breaks so instead we decided to split a pitcher of one type and a glass of the other two beers between us. I think Aoki-san and Kato-san were relieved. I liked the beers especially the one we had in the pitcher. It reminded me of Blue Moon and myself and the other Americans even put an orange slice in it.

The three beers of Unazuki. We had a pitcher of the middle one.

This is a funny omiyage I found at the gift shop at the restaurant. As far as I can tell, it's a meat lollipop.

Next we hopped back on the bus to head to take us to ride the Torokko. This is a small train that goes through a beautiful area called the Kurobe Gorge. The sights were absolutely amazing and I would love to go back closer to autumn because the trees are supposed to be stunning. The translation for how the Japanese describe it is “five layers of color.” More details about this in my next post!