"A Quiet Mountain Retreat" (8/18/10 - 8/19/10)

Although we staying in last weekend, we were able to join almost everyone in the Takemura Lab on a two-day lab trip out to various places in the Chūbu region of Japan, such as the Gifu and Ishikawa Prefectures.

August 18th, 2010: On the first day of our trip, we woke up early and boarded the bus outside the Cybermedia Center at around 7:30AM. After picking up some more people at the Suita campus, we embarked on a 4 hour ride to Shirakawa-gō. This village is a historic World Heritage site with many thatched-roof houses surrounded by many mountains. It was very hot and sunny while we walked around the village and there were several souvenir shops that sold cold drinks and shaved ice. One of the places we stopped at was a small museum in one of the houses. There were some ceramics and other items on the first floor and many old tools and machines on the upper floors for farming and other tasks. Upon leaving the museum, some of us headed for the mountain viewpoint up an inclined path at one end of the village. From the top, we could see all of the houses and the adjacent mountain in a beautiful panoramic view. We descended from the viewpoint back to the entrance of the village and spent some time at a rocky area by a small river, and then got back on the bus to head to our hotel.

The ride to the hotel took about an hour or two, and it seemed as though our group had reserved half (or more) of the floors of the hotel for our group. The hotel itself was fairly small, but I'm pretty sure we took up most of it. The WPI and UCSD students occupied the 5th floor of the hotel, which was three rooms for 4-5 people each. Shortly after dropping our stuff off in our rooms, we attempted to try out the onsen before dinner but didn't have enough time. Also, since we were awkward American foreigners, we were a little uncomfortable with the Japanese customs surrounding the onsen and decided to try after eating. The dinner was very fancy and obviously pretty expensive. Unfortunately, most of it consisted of seafood so the hotel staff had to make an impromptu non-seafood dinner for me. I felt bad that they weren't informed beforehand, but they were very kind about preparing a separate meal for me. I think my favorite part of it was the tempura vegetables with sea salt. I definitely would like to try some more (non-shrimp) tempura in the future.

After eating, the UCSD students gave brief statements about their stay since it was their last week in Japan and we all headed to the onsen. There were a few different baths with different temperature water in each, ranging from normal swimming pool temperature to scalding hot. We stayed until the hotel started closing the baths, and then went back to our rooms and got ready for bed. The hotel rooms were very traditional, with tatami floors and futons for beds. The futons were extremely comfortable and the blankets were fluffy and heavenly. If there was one thing I wanted to take from the hotel, it was one of those blankets.

* * *

August 19th, 2010: We were told the night before that breakfast would be at 8:00AM, but we stayed up until 3:00AM for no reason and were woken up at 8:05AM by the organizer of the trip. Half-asleep, I picked at my breakfast and afterwards packed up my backpack and got ready for another bus ride to Yunokuni no Mori, a village whose main attraction is the handicrafts that are created there. The first thing we did was paint our own ceramic cups. The cups were supposedly baked to complete them, but at this time we haven't gotten our cups and I'm not sure if we will. We hung out in this village for a bit, walking around and checking out the other shops that were in the area. There was a souvenir shop with other hand-made crafts and a "gold leaf" store with a lot of gold items. We met at the entrance when we were finished walking around and we took the bus up the hill to a very seafood-y restaurant. Luckily, the staff was informed that there were two vegetarian meals that were to be prepared (one for me and one for a UCSD student) so I was fitted with a non-fish meal again.

Following lunch, we took a large group photo with all the trip attendees and boarded the bus to our final destination: the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum. Prior to the trip, we were asked if we wanted to go to a large temple or the dinosaur museum, and I obviously picked the latter. As interesting and visually intriguing as temples are, we've seen a fair amount of them but haven't seen anything relating to dinosaurs. The museum consisted of 4 floors of fossils and information about Japanese archeological digs and findings. The building was filled with full skeletons of several types of dinosaurs, some smaller fossils of other creatures, and even some moving animatronic dinosaurs. The museum was spectacular and I enjoyed all of it. I thought about purchasing something in the gift shop, but couldn't decide on what would make a good souvenir for myself. Also, I already have some fossils that my amazing girlfriend got me in Morocco. We only spent about an hour in the museum, but that was enough time to see everything that was on display. We boarded the bus after that and headed back to Osaka, which took another 4-5 hours. I'd say the whole trip was definitely worth the ~$270 we paid since we got to visit and see places that we wouldn't have on our own.

(Check out all of the photos from the trip here, here, and here!)

Our next scheduled trip is to Toyko for the IVRC Finals, which we will conclude with a hike up Mt. Fuji! I'll try to take notes during the week (8/23 - 8/27) and compile them into a blog post next weekend (hopefully). I may split the week-long trip into smaller posts, especially since the IVRC Finals and Mt. Fuji hike are fairly separate topics. Anyway, that'll be coming in about a week!