Pics from My Holiday Week

Well, first, here are some pictures that Kanako sent me from our daytrip to Nasu. As we left the onsen, this friendly, but hesitant dog came over to meet us. Here he is, sizing me up. A moment later, he went off to chase a car:

Kanako was able to snap a pic of what the onsen looked like as no one was in the women's bath yet. I'm not sure how it is at other places, but at this one, one side was hot and the other side was scalding. I put one foot in the scalding side before deciding to stay on the hot side:

On New Year's Day, my students Tomoko and Isao invited me over for a traditional meal. It's called osechi. While these days, most people go to department store food courts to order this meal, Tomoko made hers. It tasted great:

This was followed by cheese fondue:

And here are my gracious hosts. We had a great time listening to jazz, eating and drinking, and then watching Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin concert DVDs:

Two days earlier another student, Aiichiro, and his son, Motoki, took me to Tochigi city. This smaller town was at one time a merchant town - with the river running through it and heading toward Tokyo, it soon became an important place for people to transport products from the country to Tokyo. Today, it is a quiet town with some lovely spots along the river where you can get an idea of how the city might have looked 100 years ago. This building is a city office and might have at one time been the prefectural office (I believe Tochigi prefecture used to be divided into two prefectures):

Here's an example of some of the old buildings you can see in Tochigi - this kind of building is a bit more rare in Utsunomiya, which had to be rebuilt after being bombed in WWII:

Here I am on a bridge wearing the cool Eddie Bauer hat that Setsuko gave me for Christmas:

And here I am with Aiichiro in front of this cool broom and wicker type shop on the main street. We stopped in and looked around a bit. Pretty cool stuff:

Here's another view of the river and an old building that once was a store house and is now a museum:

Next we went to see Ohira-san, Tochigi's mountain. Michel has climbed this bad boy more than once, but today was cold and I was not about to freeze my ears off climbing, so Aiichiro drove us to the top:

Here I am at the lookout point at the top:

We found tons of padlocks attached to the fence surrounding the lookout point. They all had writing on them. Turns out, lovers go there and put their names on the lock and then lock it to the fence as a symbol of their ever-lasting love (n.b. We also saw places where the fence was cut and locks were removed):


We stopped at a small restaurant and had some snacks. This is konyaku. It's a gelatinous substance made from a (sweet?) potato starch and is served with yuzu miso (citron flavored miso sauce):

This is dango. The small balls are made from rice powder and then they are covered in sweet bean paste (one of Michel's favorite things to eat):

I also tried amazake, which is a warmed sweet, thick sake. It was perfect on this cold day:

We headed back to Aiichiro's house where Fumi had prepared everything for nabe. Nabe simply means pot, so this meal was served in a pot at the table. It was made of a simple chicken broth with small chicken drumsticks, Chinese cabbage, chrysanthamum leaves, tofu, mushrooms, noodles, and green onions (after depleting the veggies and meat from the pot, udon noodles were added and then gyoza):

Here I am with Fumi, Aiichiro, and one of Fumi's friends who came over for dinner as well. We all had a great time eating and drinking and enjoying each other's company

I'm continually impressed with the level of hospitality I've seen here. I was feeling a bit down about spending the holidays alone in a foreign country, but so many people invited me out or to their homes. I had a very memorable holiday time indeed.

Tomorrow? Back to work.