One of the side effects of coming from a
tiny speck of dirt down the bottom corner of the globe, is that when you travel
somewhere – you TRAVEL. New Zealand being so isolated from just about
everywhere but Australia (which is full of Australians) we tend to get a little
over excited, especially when we go places where you can drive to another
country.
A huge factor of the excitement of
travelling around Japan is the clear cut prefectures that the country is separated
into. It adds a certain sense of achievement to a day that would have been
otherwise spent poaching in self-inflicted misery from nomihoudai when you can pop over to another part of the country for
an afternoon.
This is effectively the mentality that fueled
my travel plans for the winter trip with the ball and chain (aka Henry)
Thursday 22nd December 2016
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| Rough seas in Konoura |
School finished for the winter break which
meant that it was time for another trip to Akita airport. After 5 months apart Henry
and I may have been ever so slightly excited to see each other – resulting in
Henry bowling straight into the arrivals area without first picking up his
luggage. After rambling about my life in the Akitan country side for months, it
felt amazing for Henry actually being there and seeing everything for himself.
Friday 23rd December
I refused to get up at 6 the next morning
when Henry’s jet lag was telling him it was 10am and time to get up. We cooked
up a feast of French toast, bacon, bananas and coffee before going for a stroll
around Konoura. We drove into Honjo for a change of scenery and picked up a
bottle of locally brewed Sake to accompany our multi-course combini dinner.
Saturday 24th December –
Christmas Eve
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| Tastuko, Lake Tazawa |
Day trip to Lake Tazawa – in spite of
visiting the lake a few times already I had yet to see the bronze statue of
Tatsuko (I’m fairly certain I’ve already had a ramble about the legend of the
lake in one of my previous posts so google will be your friend this time). We
feasted on Honey pork pizza for lunch at a table with views over snow covered
rice paddies and mountains before driving through the winding mountain roads to
Tsuru no Yu Onsen. Last time I had been there it was autumn, the hills were
orange and red with the changing leaves with fluttered through the air
overhead. This time it was completely covered in snow and snowflakes fell on us
as we soaked in the sulfuric water. Given it was Henry’s first time hot
spring-ing Japanese style (ie butt naked with a bunch of other butt naked
people) he didn’t seem fazed at all.
Still smelling of sulfur we returned to
Honjo for dinner at the local sushi train restaurant.
Sunday 25th December – Christmas
Day.
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| Ginzan Onsen |
There’s something about opening the
curtains to a blanket of white outside that unleashes the child in you.
Christmas breakfast was a feast of …..french toast and bacon, while we
unwrapped presents from the family which Henry had kindly lugged over with him.
With many ALTs travelling home to their respective countries for the holidays
there were a small handful left in Akita for Christmas. As such, a small group
of us had planned to spend the day together at Ginzan Onsen, in Yamagata.
Josh picked us up and we drove to Ginzan
where we met Priscilla and her friend.
Ginzan literally means silver mountain – a
reference to the town’s history of Silver mining. Nestled in the mountains with
a river running through the centre, the lack of cars and abundance of
traditional style buildings adds to the sensation that you’ve fallen into a
time warp.
Monday 26th December
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| Tsuru no Yu Onsen |
Being a stingy moo and not wanting to burn
through all of my leave I returned to school on Monday, Henry came to have a
look around (causing quite a stir) before taking off to various places around
Kisakata and Honjo that I had mapped out for him. Our set up of Henry with my
cell phone (used primarily as a hot spot to that he had a method of
communication and access to google maps) with myself using messenger on the
school laptop (shhhh….) worked rather well.
School lunches are not provided during the
holidays so I trotted home during the break to a ready laid out lunch that
Henry had picked up. That night it was back to Honjo for a dinner of yakiniku.
Tuesday 27th December
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| Ginzan Onsen |
Armed with enough Japanese to say `full
tank regular` at the petrol station, and a run down of how to pay at toll
roads, Henry headed off to Iwate for a day of skiing while I was at school.
What I forgot to teach him was that the petrol station attendants will ask you
if you are going to pay by card or cash – genkin.
Knowing that genki meant how are
you, Henry spent a bit of time caught in a loop of the attendant asking if he
was paying cash and Henry replying with `Yes I’m fine thank you’. Cock up
number two was that I had neglected to tell him that cars without an ETC card
need to drive through a different lane at tolls…despite all this he made it
back to Konoura in one piece, such are the struggles of living in an area where
very few people speak English.
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