Shortcuts through rice fields

Hi again.

So, the weekend after Nagoya, Alaina, Kim and I road-tripped to Shizuoka (Kim drove). Shizuoka is a city on the East coast of Japan...sorta near Tokyo, but not really. Anyway, there is ocean in Shizuoka, which is nice, and you can also access Mt Fuji from Shizuoka, though we did not do that this trip. What did we go to do, you may wonder? Well, to see the Real Grade Gundam, of course! I do not know much about Gundam, but they are robots and there is a tv series. Alaina knows a lot more about Gundam and she wanted to go, and I figured "why not...could be fun!" so I went along, too. Anyway... apparently in honor of the 30th anniversary of Gundam, they built a life-size model. Last year it was in Tokyo and this year it's in Shizuoka. And thus...I present to you... Real Grade Gundam!!! (and some other randoms)

Here it is from the train station!!!

It is 18m tall.

Tourist shot!

This is from the prefectural office observatory. You can see Mt Fuji on a clear day.

Too bad Japan does not ever have clear days. Its back there somewhere. In the clouds. grrrrr.

Driving home, it poured on us. But then we got to see a rainbow! It was declared by Kim to be "a real rainbow."

This is at "Obasute" which is a well-known rest stop off the high way. It has a-mazing views. Unfortunately, the rain clouds were still lingering, but it is still pretty.

And... I just never get sick of mountains and clouds, so just another picture of nice scenery. This is what I see every day. Mountains, clouds, and rice fields.

SUMO!

Hello again. Here is a potentially interesting update for you to read. I went to Nagoya a few weekends ago to see a sumo tournament. Now, most of us are familiar with sumo, at least in general. Two rather large men slap each other around in an attempt to knock the other to the ground or out of the ring. Well, while that is the main gist, there is SO much more to it! An actual match may only last about 30 seconds, but the 10 minutes up to the match are what are interesting. The athletes are announced and come out. And they drink some ceremonial water, and then do the like leg stomping thing that everyone makes fun of (its real, you know) and then they throw salt into the ring to help protect them from injury. Then they go and face each other in the middle of the ring and do the foot stomping thing again. They one will get into the start position with one fist on the ground... and the other...will go halfway to the starting position and then stand back up and return to his corner! Then the repeat the whole process. As I learned, a lot of the match is about psyching the other guy out. And matches start by some sort of mutual consent. I never quite figured out how it works, but essentially they both have to be in the middle in that starting position and then somehow they agree to start rather than to go repeat the stomping, drinking, salt throwing again. It was totally bizarre to see these guys repeatedly doing this preparation stuff and then the match would be less than 30 seconds.

There is also a whole ranking system and in the tournament, there is one guy who is like "the best" so he fought last. His match was like 5 seconds. If I had blinked at the wrong time, it would have been over and I would have missed it. There were a few upsets in the tournament we saw where under guys beat the higher ranked ones, but the yokozuna (the top dog of the tournament) won his bout easily. very easily, in fact. I think he sorta picked up his opponent and set him down outside the ring. haha.So, yeah, thats sumo. It is really interesting. I actually expected to be bored, but I was never bored while we were there, and I would definitely go again if given the chance.

The rest of that weekend... visited Sarah! That was totally awesome. And in the process, we went to an event that the Ogaki CIR was interpreting for (they wanted foreigners to come, it seems, so it worked out well that we were in Nagoya that weekend, which is just a quick ride away from Gifu!). We got a tour or a more traditional Japanese house, got to try tea ceremony and got to try calligraphy. I even got some kanji for my name, and I am totally excited about that!!!! I should mention that the tea ceremony teacher spoke French! So the lesson was a mix of French and Japanese which was just fine with me!We also ate some amazing ramen in Nagoya at a cute place Sarah knew. It was one of those places that I would have never found on my own due to the fact that its a real traditional like counter ramen shop...I find those intimidating.

ok... I guess that is Sumo. Here are some pictures... including my personal favorite... the back of the ticket. I took a TON of pictures, as usual. Not all are good, but eventually I will manage to post them all on my shutterfly site so you can see them.

This is in the cute place where we did calligraphy and tea ceremony. They had a super cute cafe in the back. I ordered apple tea... and this is what I got. Delicious!!!

Nagoya castle. It was cool, but also slightly disappointing due to the fact that it has been redone (probably several times) so its more like a museum inside with exhibits, rather than the actual castle of old. Oh well.