Ninjas are people too!

Over the weekend, Kim, Alaina, and I went to a Ninja House with Youko and Youko's cousin and it was fun. Youko lives in Iiyama and speaks really good English. (Do you feel like you are reading a fourth grader's paper right now?) Anyway, Youko is pretty awesome and she offers to take us to various places. She also has a little shop and she makes oyaki which are like little breads with filling inside. They are DELICIOUS. My favorite is kabocha oyaki, which is a pumpkin of sorts... but I think in the US it would be squash. (the most delicious one I had was at Karuizawa YUM!)

Back to topic, we went to Togakushi, which is a Ninja House near Nagano city... but up in the mountains. Unfortunately I have no idea how to get back there because we kept getting lost on the way. Ha, or as Youko told us, we were just looking for a shorter route. So an hour or so later we are there and it is amazing. First, its in the mountains, so its just really beautiful, especially because its fall so the leaves are all sorts of different colors. Second its a NINJA HOUSE! There were a few museums and things that had a lot of different tools and clothes and weapons from the history of the Togakure school of Ninpo. Looking at all the tools brought up the question "why do ninjas need these tools?" and the answer "well, ninjas are people too!" It's not like they can conjure food out of thin air with their ninja amazingness.

The best part of the day was going into the actual house which had all kinds of trick doors and secret passages. There was one room that had the floor at an angle (maybe 30 degrees?), and literally just standing in there was disorienting. I think you are supposed to go from the entrance across the room and out the door, like at a diagonal. But we ended up mostly sticking to the wall and using the railing. The floor was really slippery, by the way, and we had socks on because we left our shoes at the door.

There are also a few other fun things like a zipwire, a balance beam, a fun wall that you are supposed to go all the way across without hitting the ground, and a shuriken "dojo" where you can throw the little stars. If you could hit the target 5 of 7 times, you got a unique prize, which turned out to be a fan that says Togakushi. Yes, I managed to hit the target 5 times, even in my incredible blindness. woot.

We had amazing soba for lunch on the way home (see the picture of mine), and also stopped by Zenkoji temple in Nagano.

That was my weekend in a nutshell.

What to look forward to next: Halloween in Shiojiri!