The Trip to Yamanashi Prefecture

Hi, everyone!
I guess it's time for me to talk about the trip to Yamanashi prefecture. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting for the story!

First of all, the program of the trip was made by International Exchange Center(IEC) at AGU, and the purpose of the trip is to understand more about the Japanese culture and the cultures of the countries where the international student came from by talking to each other and do something together. In short, I guess all I had to do was just to enjoy as much as I could!

**Day 1

We left Aoyama Campus which is located in Shibuya at about 9 am. Then the first place we arrived was called 御坂(mi-sa-ka). Misaka is the name of the small town in the east side of Yamanashi prefecture. According to the handout I got from IEC, Misaka means "the sacred mountain path with gods and goddesses". We had a kind of BBQ lunch there and we also did grapes picking! You can eat as many as grapes you want!(But there was, of course, the time limit.) I really enjoyed it because it actually was the first time for me to do it. After that, the bus took us to the hotel. The next thing we did was discussions! I really felt like taking a nap after I arrived at the hotel because I woke up early in the morning. But I managed to do discussions with other participants. The topic was "Good things and Bad things about Japan". I found it really interesting for me to talk about the topic like this especially with the people from foreign countries because their views gave me new perspectives about Japan. The opinions I've heard were, for example, "People in Tokyo are very kind to foreign people", "Convenient stores open for 24 hours, so that's very nice!" and so on. On the other hand, I've also heard the negative opinions like "Japanese people should pay more respect to elderly people especially when we get on trains", "Japanese men should be nice to women." or something like that. I was interested in the topics of the other groups as well. The other groups talked about "The differences between Japanese student and the students of your countries", "How you want to raise your children" and so on. The discussions lasted about 2 hours or so, to be honest I was tired. But I enjoyed listening to opinions from each of the groups.

Then, I finally could have dinner! I was surprised that there was a variety of dishes like a petit pot dish cooked at the table, sashimi(sliced raw fish), and so on. The dinner was actually more than expected! After the delicious dinner, there was still something I looked forward to! Guess what? It's hot springs!! I heard that there were 8 kinds of bathes at each area of men and women. I enjoyed soaking in all 8 kinds of bathes with Yuki! I was able to have a good sleep because of that.

**Day 2

I woke up at 7 am, and I had breakfast with Yuki and Hiro at the buffet. Then we left the hotel about 9 am to make ほうとう(hou-tou). Houtou tastes like udon (the one that I mentioned before on this blog, do you remember?),but it's not exactly the same. It's Yamanashi's local food, and also my favorite food! The handout said "9:30-12:30 Houtou making", and I thought it was joke because I didn't think that we had to make it from the very first step! So it did take 3 hours because we began with mixing water and wheat flour vigorously by hand. But the taste was very good and it was an awesome experience for both Japanese students and international students because even the Japanese don't know much about how to make it. After eating it, we went to the place which is called Saiko-Lake Iyashi no Sato Nenba. There's a lot of houses which were made from plants like reed grass,Japanese silver grass,Japanese blood grass. So being there really made me feel like I was in countryside and it was relaxing to be there. Yuki wish she would stay longer! Then we still had places to go! We went to Narusawa Icicle lava cave. I had no idea what it was at first, but it was interesting to visit the place like that. You can figure out what it looks like by looking at the pictures I took there. The information board of this said that the occupation army (Maybe they were from the US.)used this as a dance hall! I don't think if it is a nice idea because the temperature of this cave was very low. (I guess they didn't care because dancing would make them warm!?)

Wow...I'm now realizing how many places I visited on this trip by writing them down. The program passed me by so fast that I didn't know that I actually went to so many different places! However, I'm sure I really enjoyed this trip! I think it was a bit short to make many friends, but I could talk to many people and I was surprised that the students who came to study at AGU were really good at Japanese! They spoke Japanese like they really were Japanese people! Thanks to that, I didn't need to speak English at all! (Well, was it really good for a person who studies English, like me? Hahaha...Never mind.)Seeing them speak Japanese fluently made me want to learn English much more!

As always, I'll put the rest of the pictures that I took on bubbleshare.

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I hope this post will make you feel as if you also went on this trip!
See you soon~!