Long weekend in Niigata

I'll start this one with a map - we're living in Tokyo, which is the red area on the map (we're in the eastern, most urban part of Tokyo).  Niigata Prefecture is marked in green here.

Last Friday night (Oct 2), Steve and I grabbed the kids from school, and hopped on a local train to Omiya, in Tokyo's north suburbs.  After Evan took a slew of pictures of the marvelous trains, to the great amusement of the regular commuters, we caught a two-story bullet train there, headed to Niigata. One hour on the second story, and we got off at the Echigo-Yuzawa stop, at the southeast corner of the prefecture, up in the mountains.  Yuzawa is an old hot springs resort, and a popular weekend ski spot.  Japan's Nobel prize winning author Kawabata Yasunari set his famous novel, Snow Country, here.  Our good friends O and Y (protected for the web!!) met us at the gates, and the weekend began.

I can't say enough about the delight of good friends - they thought of all the amazing things I'm going to write about below, made the reservations, and took the time to drive us around from lovely place to lovely place, leaving all four of us with indelible memories.  We've had a few chances to play guide for them, too, but I am really eager to do it again, once we're back in MN.  They were our first guests there, and will hopefully come back before too long.

I can't hope to have you read about all the things we did if I keep writing in this way, so I'm going to resort to a list -it's amazing enough that way - and then let the kids fill in a few favorite stories later.  Here goes!

Friday night:

• Shoes off at the entrance, so we could check in at our resort inn - an updated old Japanese style "ryokan."  Start with tea and treats around an open hearth.  
• Up to rooms, over the tatami floors.  Changed into our yukata (cotton kimono), and off for a bath in the ryokan's natural hot spring pools.  
• In yukata, down for a dinner of local specialities - special seasonal vegetables, tofu, fish, beer, sake, rice.
• Still in yukata, out for an evening stroll down the streets of the resort town.  Found a simple stand with a pop-gun target shooting stand, kids winning little toy bugs for themselves, while Steve and O went off empty-handed (tee hee).
• Kids to bed, Steve and I enjoy a drink with our friends in our room.

Saturday morning

• Japanese style buffet breakfast - Evan and Lia and Steve all try natto - fermented soybeans - and decide that other things are much better.  Like the poached eggs that were cooked in the hot springs water.
• Another bath!  Some of you will know that bathing in hot springs is perhaps the single most popular Japanese vacation activity.  They are divine!!!! - here's a quick description of the experience, if you want to know a little more: Japan's Onsen Culture.
• Check out, and ride a cable car up to one of the mountain tops looming over the town.
• Walk through an alpine botanical gardens, play on the playground equipment, kids take a spin in a go cart.

 Saturday afternoon

• O and Y drive us through the mountains, headed into a rural area that they know well from their volunteer work with rice farmers.  Japan's old villages and farming towns are threatened from the shrinking population and lack of jobs/entertainment needed to keep young families in the area. Our friends join in with other urban residents who want to protect traditional rice farming for its rich culture and environmental benefits.  Centuries-old rice terraces left fallow will crumble and cause considerable erosion, and although lots of farming is reliant on heavy pesticide/fertilizer usage, these folks also work to head back towards more organic methods.  
• Lunch of "hegi soba" - huge trays of cold buckwheat noodles - and tempura.
• Stop at multiple exhibits that are part of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial ("world's largest international art festival"), which draws people into these gorgeous old villages with inventive displays scattered throughout the region.  The link is well worth visiting!  We saw a big exhibit at an abandoned school, dedicated to the last three students, a shaded hill top grove of beaded flowers, and a magical forest display of gold and silver threads, ladders, mirrors and eyes (really, hard to describe).
• Stop at a mountain top hot spring, and take another bath.  This one includes an outdoor pool with views of the majestic mountains all around.
  

 Saturday night

• Arrive at the Satomi eco-inn, owned by O and Y's friends, the rice farming Tanaka family.  It's dark when we arrive, but I know from pictures ahead of time that we're in a narrow valley, surrounded by rice fields and mountain streams.
• Huge dinner of more local specialities - this time, more simply prepared, but delicious and satisfying.
• Out for an evening walk by the light of the full moon, to the village's centuries-old shinto shrine.  The son of the inn's owners shows us the stone lanterns, turtle at the base of the pillars, ancient carvings by lantern light.  Lia decides that the six of us on the walk should form a ring and hug the big tree at the heart of the shrine, so we do.
• Early bedtime for all - kids a little earlier - so we'll be ready for the next day's plans.  We looked at lots of pictures of farm work first, including lots of parties including the many volunteers who come and go from this place.  And enjoyed talking with the family who owns the inn.  I don't think they believed me when I described how large American farm equipment is.....
  

Sunday morning

• Up at 6 am to go chestnut hunting.  Another member of the volunteer farm crew arrived from Tokyo overnight, and he drives us up the mountain side to a small grove of chestnuts.  Another stop near the shrine from the night before yields even larger chestnuts covering the ground, just waiting for us to pick them up.
• Quick drive up to the hillside village, to see the small waterfall on our hosts' land.
• Drive a little farther to a miniature version of the Shikoku's 88 Buddhist temples.  Pilgrimages to all 88 temples brings great merit.  At the end of the 18th century, a local official made the pilgrimage, and then erected a meter-high stone representing each temple in a small grove for villagers at home.  Praying at each stone is said to bring the same merit as the original pilgrimage, for those who cannot go such a great distance.  Such miniatures used to be scattered across the countryside, but not many remain.
• Breakfast!  Lots and lots more delicious home made food.
• Off to the rice fields - it's harvest time, and the combines are out.  We get a chance to do the hand-cutting of the rice, still necessary in the corners of each field, since the machines don't fit there.  After working for half an hour or so, O takes us off to explore more, while Y stays behind to help.
• A walk in "beauty's woods"　groves of beech trees, warped by the famously heavy snows that fall on this region every year (and I mean HEAVY - 3-10 meters a year).  Kids build a little fairy house in the woods, playing angelically together.  A visit to the neighboring bug museum, and a quick peak at another of the art exhibits.
• Back to the rice fields, where we get to help a little bit more, loading bagged rice onto a truck.  Kids play in the irrigation ditches, and we all enjoy a delicious picnic of homemade pickles, barley tea and onigiri.

Sunday afternoon

• Load up the car, with many fond goodbyes, and the kids make a last run to feed the bunnies and chickens and ducks.
• Stopped an even older farm village to see the cattail thatch roofed farmhouses - and a surprise from me, an exhibit house with the ancient style roof and paper walls and floors, built by a famous architect.
• Drove for nearly two hours through the mountains and along the coasts, seeing much beauty, but also the world's largest nuclear power plant, which mars a stretch of the coast line.  It is closed since a major earthquake several years ago - expect much conflict over whether or not to reopen it.  All power generated there is shipped off to Tokyo, as the plant is owned by Tokyo's electric utility, not Niigata's.
• Stopped at another onsen, on the coast, to take a bath and watch the sun set over the Japan Sea.

Sunday night

• Dinner at a top-notch sushi restaurant (I was lucky enough to eat there before, and this had been my own specific request).  Kids enjoy a special futomaki (fat roll) with eggs, cucumber, and a local specialty walnut paste, among other ingredients.  Lia crashed early, and slept at the low table, but the rest of us feasted at the counter.  Evan took dozens of pictures (yes, I will get to posting pics this week!!), and we left full and happy.
• Back to O and Y's apartment for the night - they have views of a major river and pine trees, and a breeze blew through the place all night.  So comfortable.
  

Monday

• Breakfast from our friends - more delicious food, including homemade umeboshi (sour plum pickles).
• Off to the car, for a drive up the coast to Murakami city.  Big rice fields spread out across the wide plain, harvest underway.
  
• Murakami turns out to have held tight to its samurai culture, continuing to distinguish the old classes for schooling and housing right up until after world war 2, even though that system was banned in the middle of the 19th century.  Visited a samurai house - walked thru house and gardens as we talked about Murakami history.  Lia and Evan had many questions about Japan's feudal class system, I did my best to answer them!
• Visit an old salmon merchant, took pictures of salted salmon drying on racks hung from the ceiling and heard about the traditional methods.  I thought is was especially interesting how a big of the big fish's gut is left intact so the fish doesn't look like a samurai who had committed hara-kiri suicide.  
• Quick run thru the salmon museum, including an underwater view of the river, from windows that run right up against it.  We missed the salmon run by just a few weeks.
• Drive down the coast, for a short stop on a wide beach.  Kids build another fairy house on the beach!

 
Back to Niigata City for our train ride home - what an amazing, amazing weekend.  I had to write this all out this morning, so I wouldn't start to think that I was exaggerating just how much we did.  I'll have the kids post a few favorite stories, impressions, reactions later on, when they're home from school today.    Now, to work!