Kurashiki!

This past weekend I visited Nisrene in Kurashiki. We also went to Okayama. Now to start things off right, I'd like to read the following story, a very well known ancient tale of Japan:

"Once upon a time there lived an old man and an old woman in the country of Okayama. The old man went everyday into the mountains to cut wood, while his wife would go to the river to wash clothes. One day, while the old woman was down at the river washing clothes, a big peach came floating down the river! It looked so delicious; she decided to take it home for her and her husband to eat. When the old man came back to their home, the old woman cut the peach open, and to their surprise, there was a small boy inside! They decided to call him Momotaro, which means 'peach boy'.

The old couple raised Momotaro to be big and strong. One day, he decided to go and defeat the ogres living on Ogre Island that were pillaging the land. The old woman fixed him some delicious millet dumplings, known as kibi-dango, for his long journey to the island. On the way, a monkey, a dog, and a pheasant joined him, giving them a dumpling each in return for their help in fighting the ogres.

Upon reaching the Ogre Island, Momotaro and his companions found that the gate was locked to the Ogre's fort. The pheasant flew inside, and grabbed a key to let the others in. Once inside, they fought the evil ogres. The pheasant pecked their eyes, the dog bit their legs and the monkey jumped on their backs, clawing at the beasts. Finally, the ogres cried for mercy! They gave the strong Momotaro all of their treasure, and he returned to his village triumphantly. Momotaro and the old couple lived happily ever after."

(http://www.pref.okayama.jp/kikaku/kokusai/momo/e/momotarou/momotarou.html)

Now wasn't that a good story? So Momotaro is all over the place in Kurashiki and Okayama as well as peaches (lots of もも/ momo). The souvenirs centered on him and peaches. (very very cute).

Switching gears, let's first how I got to Kurashiki. Let's Google Map it. It's about 230 km from Nara (or 142 miles). I left work on Friday and took my usual train to Yamato-Saidaiji where I changed to a train headed to Osaka-Namba, there I took the subway to Osaka station. Then I took my first JR train ride from Osaka to Himeji. At Himeji I had a minute to change to the next train bound for Shin-Kurashiki! I left work at 5:30 pm, arrived at Shin-Kurashiki at 10:30 pm and was at Nisrene's dorm before 11 pm. Now that I know that I only traveled 142 miles, this seems like a ridiculous amount of time spent traveling. Oh well, it was the least expensive route and cost me about 4000 yen or about 40 dollars. Nisrene and her friend (Yoshiko-san) picked me up at the station, and we drove back (thanks Yoshiko-san for the car rides!). Nisrene gave me the grand tour of her dorm. It was amazingly large. Kitchen and bathroom, then living room, then tatami room, then another room with a huge closet. I really liked it.

Saturday morning started the excitement with a trip to the Seto Bridge. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Seto_Bridge) The bridge connects Honshu and Shikoku, and is 13.1 km long! (over 8 miles!) And of course you have to pay a crazy toll to go across it. There's a tier for cars and a tier for the train. After the bridge, we went to the Bisen area of Kurashiki, an old-fashioned shopping district complete with waterway and gondola. I did a littleおみやげ shopping. We were going to ride the gondola but it was busier than we thought, so we went to lunch at a restaurant. We got the lunch specials, mine had salmon with onions and asparagus (maybe?), rice, miso soup, some side dish with cold eggplant and beef, and picked radish. They also gave us a really cute dessert; it was green tea flavored something…uhh sort of like flan maybe? But I've never had flan so I wouldn't really know that. It was good anyway. After lunch, we headed out to see some shrines and temples in the area, very famous of course. This is when it started to rain. We started to head back (by car thanks to Yoshiko-san), and Nisrene asked me where I wanted to go next. I had seen a few stores on my train ride to Kurashiki called Mega Mart. They were big and had large parking lots (not something normal in Japan I don't think). I was thinking that this must be the Japanese version of Walmart. So I tell Nisrene that I want to go to Mega Mart, and she tells me not to get my hopes up. I'm excited anyway, and we get there and there's a McDonald's inside (just like our old Walmart!) and it's set up just about the same as Walmart or Kmart. Just by looking around, I would say the quality is more like Kmart (as in lesser than Walmart but not bad). We looked around the food section, getting spaghetti noodles and ice cream for dinner. Then we went home.

Nisrene cooked us spaghetti and toasted bread for dinner. She also mixed random spices together and added red wine for salad dressing for our cabbage. I almost forgot! Nisrene made breakfast too! She's amazing. We had hot cakes, omelet, bread, apples, grapefruit, and little hamburger patties! Back to dinner, we ate, and then there was a surprise for me! Yoshiko-san and Nisrene got me a birthday cake!! I got to blow out candles and make a wish and everything! Then we ate the cake, and it was banana cream and chocolate, and very delicious.

Sunday Nisrene and I rode our bikes to her church that was about 25 minutes away. Kurashiki is beautiful!! And riding bikes was super fun! I wish I had one here in Nara. Her church was small and cute, and mass was interesting trying to follow again in Japanese. (This was my third Japanese mass so far here!!) Then after the priest's sermon, he made me introduce myself to everyone! I was really embarrassed! So we got out of there pretty quickly after it was over, and we headed to a bakery to pick up chocolate eclairs for later. Mmm. We went back to Nisrene's place and met up with Yoshiko-san, then we were on our way to Okayama. We went to the Okayama castle (very pretty, it's black!) and then we went to the park that next to it. I forget what it's called. Also, very beautiful and organized! After that it was time to head back to the station where we went to Baskin Robbins and got ice cream. I got twinberry cheesecake which was delicious. I don't know what the berries were, and there were chunks of cheesecake in it!! After that, I got on the train to go home. And after three trains and a subway ride I made it home. Best weekend ever! Thank youuuu!!!