AKP Spring Field Trip

Sadly we had our last AKP trip of the year this past weekend but happily it was just as good if not better than the fall field trip. We spent a billion years on the bus and then finally arrived at Asahi Sample Factory. The place was so sketch and the "factory" was a small building perched over a neat river. Nobody really knows how the place made money so Jamie sensei speculated that they run a drug business under the cover of a plastic food factory.

We made wax tempura. I burned myself on hot wax :(

The next stop was Gasho Zukuri where they have real and reproduced old-school houses with thatched roofs. We took a tour of one and it was five stories tall and huge. The only thing was that there was a fire on the first floor and the smoke rose up through all the floors, clouding up the whole building.

Since we were in the mountains it was chilly and snowy, but that made the atmosphere nice and the view and houses were amazingly cool --

Eventually we arrived at Takayama where we stayed the night. This was the first time that I've stayed in a ryokan that isn't in the middle of nowhere. The place was huge and pretty classy. We had a giant dinner complete with fish/ shrimp with eyeballs and beer paid for by the the tour company. Some of the stuff was gross and I was full so I couldn't finish the meal. The best parts were the egg and cabbage thing on the upper right and that poofy, bread thing on the lower left.

Furthermore, there was karaoke. Martin and I went first and melodiously performed "The Climb" by Miley Cyrus. Kate and Simon then did a stirring rendition of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Following karaoke we chilled out in our rooms and digested for a few hours and then hit up the onsen, which was outdoors. The next morning we had WESTERN BREAKFAST. Way better than wa-shoku (Japanese breakfast), which often includes boney fish and weird jellies and things I don't really want to eat in the morning..

Saturday we started our day by exploring Takayama and going to the morning market. The market wasn't really great but walking around the town was interesting and I went to a cafe and took pictures.

Finally, we stopped at Eiheiji after a long bus ride. Eiheiji is a monastery and a place for monks-in-training, and so there were a lot of bald twenty-something-year-olds wandering around in robes. Some of them were quite fineee.

First we were made to do zazen, which is where you sit and meditate in a room without moving. Usually you go for a long time but they only made us sit for twenty minutes. Kate D's feet turned purple and she said they felt like pillows or mushrooms or something when she touched them.

We were also able to take a tour of the complex and it was huge and quite pretty: