Friday, July 3rd, 2009
Today was another do-nothing day.
In the morning, I finished setting up the wireless access point. This device also works as a file server, using external USB harddrive that we can attach—which is the part I worked on. Now I can start dumping all the photos I’m taking on this network drive, leaving them for my family to enjoy later.
Right after lunch, we went to the hardware store again to buy some of the stuff we missed last week. There, we ran into my uncle Shinsaku. From that point, we went to his house for a while, killed some time…
Then we came home, I finished setting up the out door curtain (pictures coming later), ate dinner (yummy again), and reserved hotels for next week’s trips.
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
This was a unique day.
My aunt Noriko is taking Japanese traditional tea ceremony (sado) lessons. We were invited to attend a part of the lesson. I think it was quite an experience for Evan.
The experience started with wearing of Yukata, a casual version of Kimono. We did wear yukata at the hotel the other day, but this version was more formal than that.
Then we attended the tea ceremony lesson held at a city-owned facility with nice big Japanese style room. My apologies—I didn’t take the pictures or movies of the ceremony itself.
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
After the boat ride, the my brother’s family went home on the car, then we headed to Magome-juku, one of the highway towns built during the Edo period. The place is easily accessible with train (2 stations over from Ena), and a bus (it runs almost every hour, connecting between Nakatsugawa station and Magome-juku).
By the time we arrived at Magome, it was almost 1PM. It’s time for another round of delicious food. The place we entered had a combination plate for a super bargain price of 650 yen, with udon, soba, and goheimochi served side by side.
After lunch, we strolled through the town. There’s not much to do here. It’s just one street full of shops in old houses… and couple different spots. Evan had pretty good fun here though. She didn’t have to watch out for her two young nieces, and there was plenty of place to run around. The steep slope provided plenty of exercise challenge. The streams running along the street provided nice sound scape, making it feel cooler than actual. Some of the shops provided some entertainment as well.
Overall, the trip was really fun. I highly recommend Magome-juku area to people interested in the historic view of the town.
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
We took a 2-day trip. 3 highlights were an amusement park, hot springs, and an old town.
Ena city is one of the smaller city in the mountains in Gifu prefecture. The city was built near Kiso River. It is a pretty place to visit. And to make more people come to the place, city of Ena and its neighbor city, Nakatsugawa, built an amusement park in 1970.
This park once had a booming business. The business started dwindling down in the 90s, and closed its door in 2000. Another company bought the facility, and reopened it in 2002, but the business is not booming like before. Added to that, we went on a weekday, and the Japanese schools have not started their summer break. And Japan is feeling the recession as much as America…
All of that added up. The place was practically empty. Perhaps there were more people working there than us visitors. Each ride attendants were operating several rides in turn. At one point, one attendant was walking along with us, from ride to ride… That’s personal service.
After having fun at the amusement park, we moved to the hotel. That’s a trip by itself. We packed a small car with 4 adults and 3 kids. That was a tight fit.
The hotel has public bath style hot spring. This particular hotel, Enakyo Grand Hotel, also has 2 private hot springs that a group of guests can reserve so many minutes at a time. (If you ever travel to Ena and want to experience onsen, but feel uncomfortable with the public style bath, you can use this private bath. Each room also have bath rooms, but they don’t use onsen water.) The water tasted funky, but I suppose it’s good for the skin. (No, I did not drink the water.)
Then comes the dinner. What good is a trip without a huge dinner at one point? See the pictures for more. All was good, except giant eggplant was not to Evan’s liking.
All of us took the bath in the evening. Some of us even took the bath in the morning as well. Onsen feels so good, we can take as many baths as we want during the hotel stay.
To wrap up our stay at Ena, we took a boat tour. It’s pretty, but without the English Evan looked somewhat bored.