Dinner vs Breakfast: Japanese hut

The meals are quite good in this Japanese hut.... Although some may not be your typical breakfast.

 Dinner:

Breakfast: (Japanese "hot dogs") corn, coleslaw, and fake meat with cucumber 

The Nakasendo nature walk

Today we went on a beautiful nature walk. The nature walk was a great experience for our family. We started of at magome town. Our kind friend Koda-San drove us to the start of the walk. That was very nice. At the start we walked through this small little town that had small shops and very few restaurants. As we walked a little further thought the town we started to get into the forest area where there were lots of trees,and waterfalls. We heard about bear warnings on the trail so mommy,Abby and I started to clap and stomp and sing to scare away the Bears. Daddy thought that we were all really crazy for making a lot of noise.

 However about halfway through the walk we did see a bear!!! It was brown small and short and ran right across the trail from one side to the other and went really fast and scared all of us right out of our shoes! Mommy was first to see the bear and react with clapping and stomping and hollering. And then daddy who was behind Mommy started growling at the bear and then Abby put me in front of her and dug her nails into my skin. That hurt. About two more kilometres after the bear sighting we saw two beautiful waterfalls and we just had to take a picture and splash the clear water on our faces.  Ten minutes after I stopped our family to breathe in the moment and smell the beautiful nature. When we got to the end  we were really hungry and tired and so was the guy in front of us who was also checking restaurants to see if there was food. We had soba noodles, tempura, gohei machi ( disgusting rice thing dipped in peanut sauce)) and ice cream.  Koda-San picked us up at the tourist information centre and then we had our third ice cream of the day (we couldn't say no). Then we got home and relaxed and had vegetarian sushi, koroke (Japanese hash brown things), inari (overly sweet rice wrapped in tofu). They offered us ice cream again and then we went to bed. 

Day 4: Hiking the Nakasendo highway

Today Koda-san was nice enough to drive us to Magome, the start of the Nakasendo highway.  The Nakasendo was the ancient highway between Kyoto and Tokyo (about 500km).  There are pilgrims that do the whole route on foot, but we settled for the 10km section between the historically preserved way stations of Magome and Tsumago.

The towns were fantastic and the walk was very scenic. It was an amazing opportunity for Beth and I as we had never seen this part of Japan.  Huge bamboo and Cypress forests, rolling hills and mountains, rivers and waterfalls... then we saw a bear!  Awesome day and at the end, Koda-san was once again so helpful as he picked us up in Tsumago and drove us home.

Poem by Abby: Japan

I wrote a poem on the white board provided in the lotus bud (Japanese hut) and decided to post it to the blog. It's about all of Japan- the country (peaceful, beautiful, relaxed) and the city (rushed, busy, lively). Hope you enjoy! 

Mount Fuji

Yesterday I saw the sight of a life time. Mount Fuji. 😍😍😍

Well we were on the Shinkansen!😍😘😉

 

Early morning math

We are sitting in the Japanese lotus bud "hut" after a great night sleep on the futons. The girls are doing their math which is a tad painful but good to get it out of the way when their brains are awake. We've separated from Kris and Steve for two nights and are meeting up with them in Kyoto on Saturday and all staying together. This little town of Ena City is really peaceful and beautiful. Our host Koda-San is amazing. A zen Buddhist and sat with us for over two hours and talked about the area, Buddhism etc. Really lovely man and the kids asked if we could keep him for the rest of the trip. Lol. He and his wife Kero-chan opened up their guesthouse two months ago on air bnb and we are their first Canadian guests and the first children they have had. Last night we went into town for some groceries and stopped in a little restaurant where they had clearly not experienced many foreign travellers! Craig and I are using our Japanese which is slowly coming back. Basic but helps us read a bit and order food, ask for directions etc. Has come in handy! A nice way to start the trip given our comfort level. As Stephen said, Craig is a nice guy to have around as his research and basic language skills help shave 20 minutes off every transaction! Hard to believe we've been gone less than a week. Seems much longer! 

Japanese hut

We're staying in a Japanese "hut" and it's really cool and very traditional. I love it!!