Awe and wonder

We are all speechless and awed by the lights.

Ruminaria

Ruminaria is an event in Kobe where you look at Christmas lights (iruminashion in Japanese). They were originally put up to honor the people who died in the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995. So people would probably be offended that I just said they were Christmas lights because they were taken down a week before Christmas, I think. It's grown in popularity and seems to be a big economic draw for the town as it has been rebuilt. Although I have no statistics on this.

There were tons of people there! It was more crowded than Target the day after Thanksgiving. Calm and gentle people turned into jerks in the big crowd. Pushing and shoving were commonplace. I was really shocked!

After walking through this street with a beautiful arch of lighs we came upon the sight of this ever so giant pavilion of lights. It was so gorgeous. We were all in awe of it!

Kobe Beef

We traveled to Kobe with our friend Matt. One of my main goals while there was to eat the famous Kobe Beef. So after getting off our train we ambled around looking for a place to eat it. We had a place in mind, but weren't really sure where it was. We happened to find it, and when I opened the big wooden door to enter the restaurant I was greeted by a server in a suit. The atmosphere was dark. Classiness as well as delicious smells wafted out of the entryway. We had to wait 10 minutes to get a table, but it was well worth it.
Here's our chef making steak!


They sell wine and wooden boxes filled with meat! The cow on the front is their logo. It's divided up into cuts of meat.

Our "Special Lunch Set A" came with an appetizer of salmon and nama ham on lettuce and sweet onions, a salad, coffee, a tiny cup filled with some amazing potato soup, 150 grams of kobe beef on a stone plate along with grilled onions, mushrooms, fries, broccoli, and a carrot. It was so amazingly good. You barely had to chew the steak - that's how tender and juicy it was. It was seared on the outside and pink in the middle. Then, my lil steak was finished off with some hennesay and lit on fire to give it some flavor and class as it was presented to me at the table. Incredible!
They provided us with paper aprons to keep juices off our nice clothes - well in our case t-shirts weren't so nice. But I'm sure all of the other really fancy people there appreciated it. We just enjoyed it for its comedic value.

Myotsuji Temple

Next we traveled even further south to the only National Treasure Building in Fukui! Hard to believe so few people know about the temple. There was this lord named Tamuramaro Sakanoue who was going to fight in a war and on his way he had a dream and was instructed by Buddha? (or the man who brought Buddhism to Japan, possibly) to build a temple. It was built up in a mountain to keep the religion pure and away from the worldly influences of the Heian court. This was typical of the style of temples built in 806. Yep, that's right, the temple is 1,200 years old this year. Actually the main hall and the three-story pagoda were reconstructed about 750 years ago because they burned down. but you can hardly fault a temple for only being 800 years old.

Because it's in the mountain everything is really serene and calm. Moss is growing on all the trees, rocks, and buildings. Paths connect the buildings and wind their way up the mounain. It's really nice, and if I hadn't been there with 80 other foreigners it would have been really calm and a good place to reflect on life.

They had two ponds on the grounds. One of which had these ghost fish in it. creepy ghost fish!

Wakasa Tour

A long time ago I went on a tour of the Southern part of Fukui. The area is called Wakasa. Today I finally got some time to post about it because I got off work 2 hours early! that's never happened to me so I am ecstatic!

This is Mikata-go-ko. The Five lakes of Mikata. They are really beautiful. Some people say there are really only 4 lakes, but 4 is an unlucky number in Japan - and 5 is very lucky. Hence the naming. About 30 years ago the government built a scenic toll road that allows you to drive up a mountain. From here you can see all 5 lakes and the ocean. 2 or 3 of the lakes are freshwater and 2 are salt water.


Then we went to a restaurant to eat some delicious food. One thing I love about fancy dinners here is the dishes and presentation of the food. It is amazing - I wish I cared enough about food to do this every time I prepared a meal.

Japanese is taking over my life.

We have been spending all of our free time these past three weeks studying. Yesterday was the JLPT test. It's the most well known and recognized test of Japanese Language Proficiency. It's only offered once a year so we wanted to spend tons of time preparing and getting ready. All of it paid off because we both got passing scores with a pretty big margin on the practice test.

Unfortunately, we won't know if we could have passed the test because we didn't take this years test. We got the test location wrong and then spent the next hour running through Nagoya, racing to catch trains to get to the test site. But it was all in vain. We didn't have enough time to get there before it started. And we couldn't pass the test without taking the first section.

But we did do a bit of sightseeing in Nagoya. Rob took tons of pictures with our new camera. We'll try and get those posted this week.