The Golden Week finally arrived. A hectic national holiday week in Japan. National holiday is in itself a bad idea. Now, do it in Japan and it will get even worse. Everybody is moving around japan, all the hotels and trains are full-booked. You better organize yourself.
On my side, I decided to visit Khue (a.k.a. Kukuli, cf blog links) in Aizu, a 3-hours bus + 1-hour car trip from Tokyo (including 2 hours bus just to leave Tokyo), up in the mountains, where spring just barely began. I was there warmly welcomed by the team of the Haryu Wood Studio (http://haganuma.exblog.jp/), the architect bureau in which Khue is doing her internship now.
It was really nice, we first went to Onsen, natural hot-spring bath. Hot, hot, hot… It is very nice as you can see, it is an outside bath with stones. Men and women sides are separated by a wooden fence.
Next day, we went to some place in the mountain where people used to hide if they where researched (as I understood) quiet a long way. We were supposed to have a walk with snowshoes, but finally we hadn’t time to do it… So we just wandered around a bit…
The day before yesterday, Sei-san took us on a tour of Tochigi. We stopped to see two museums built by Kuma Kengo, a famous japanese architect. This tour also included my first visit in an automatic sushi restaurant (with plates of sushis moving automatically around the bar, if you want one, you take it!). 8-plates. I couldn’t beat Sei-san (12-plates + dessert). Yumi!!!
Yesterday was bread day. I baked for my hosts bread. The typical swiss “Tresse” a sesame bread and did some experiment with a “Nori” (japanese seaweed) bread, quiet good.
Today is my last day in Aizu and I will try my first chair 3-D design this afternoon… Then, tonight, we take the car with Tanaka to go to Aomori. There we want to visit the Hirosaki castle which is supposed to be incredibly beautiful, especially at this time because the sakuras (cherry-tree) are in full blossom right now!!! More on this next time.
Mata ne!!!!
It is a studied article.