Fukui experience

The last three days of Golden Week, we joined two other families for a trip up to Fukui prefecture. It's beautiful there.

The mountains were reflected in the rice fields.

It was one of the most naturally pretty places I've been in Japan. Not over-engineered, as things sometimes are here.

We all drove there in two cars. Cars! The tolls would have been 4050 yen, but since it was a holiday weekend, they were only 1050 each way.

The boys clowned around at the rest stop.

We stayed in a cabin at a campground--run by KOA!

The boys played a LOT of beyblades.
One day we went to a fabulous dinosaur museum. They have discovered many fossils in Fukui, and there is even a dinosaur named Fukuisaurus (or something).

Here's Max and his little buddy, R-kun.R-kun called Max "Ma-ku-ra" and played with him all weekend. So cute. In a couple more years, Max will be raking in the dough as a babysitter.

Here's a great slide, lined with rollers.

At the museum, kids have the chance to dig for real fossils. They bring in truckloads of rock from a nearby site and chuck them into a sand-box.

Here we go again--handing kids real tools and letting them play around.
We found some fossils of plants...nothing major. If you've seen our (shrinking) retaining wall back home, you'll understand that breaking rocks was 90% of the fun.

Later at the campground, we did a great bbq and had some Japanese s'mores (with tiny marshmallows, Meiji chocolate, and Marie biscuits). Then kids did some regular sparklers.

But at the end, M-san brought out these traditional Japanese sparklers. They are tiny. You light them and then wait....

If you're patient and can hold it still enough, you start to get a tiny set of sparkles. It's all very low-intensity, short-lived, and delicate. Aaaaah....kind of like the cherry blossom.....

The next day, we drove up to the mountains for a whitewater rafting trip. It was very short--25 minutes--but so fun!

Max, you look so brave and dry for now. Just wait, dude.

Here we are, starting out in our boat.

See those oars? Useless.

This first drop was a doozy. This is the last time we were dry.

We bumped around, ran into every rock we could, got stuck whenever possible, went backwards half of the time, and screamed occasionally. It was totally thrilling. I am imagining taking one of those multi-day Colorado trips when the boys are older.

Here's our second drop--! The water was running high because of the spring melt, and the boat before us actually flipped over. So this guy was working hard to steer us in the right way. We almost pushed him down with us. (Not our fault! It's the oars!)

Whoosh! Made it to the bottom, but Darrin fell half out, and I fell on top of Alek.

Ask him. He'll tell you all about it.

Hearts beating wildly at the end of the course.

You look a little wet, boys!

The sweet thing was that this place also ran an onsen, so we crossed the street and warmed up in the hot springs and changed into dry clothes. This is the life, I tell you. .

Finally, on Sunday we got a short tour of a dairy farm.

Hi, ladies!

These are their cow-nobori!

Spinning around in Shigaraki

Catching up a bit from Golden Week....

After we visited the ninja village last Monday, we took a train to Shigaraki village, home of Shigaraki-yaki. (That is, pottery.) The town is rather rural.

We stayed in a basic ryokan that night, and had a nice dinner served in all different pieces of Shigaraki yaki.

Our ryokan had two beds in one room, and three futons in the adjoining tatami room. Tatami rooms are incredibly convenient for fitting extra people in a room!

The next day, we wandered around the stores and viewed the displays of Tanuki-san you can buy. They apparently make a lot of Tanuki in this town. It is a ceramic statue of a raccoon thing that lots of stores in Kyoto display outside the door. People think Tanuki are so cute. In my opinion, the jury is still out on that.

Anyway, most of the boy Tanuki have a large.....let's just say, bulge. (This being a family blog) Study the photos; you'll see what I mean.

I should mention that inside the stores are much more beautiful pieces, created by local artists in that rustic Japanese style with thick glazes and simple shapes. Who knows? Some of you helpful people might even get to see some in person.

We made our way over to a place where you can play with clay. The teacher made it look sooooo easy.

The boys had a great time spinning clay for two hours. They spun a lot of pots.

One of us was very upset that he couldn't take home every single pot he made. However, at the end they each picked one, and the store will fire it, glaze it, and send it to us (unless it cracks in the process).

Alek decided he'd rather do free-form.
He started out making a hedgehog, but decided it was turning into a platypus. So, that's what he made. It has a hole in the top to hold stuff.

Alek wins the "cutest kid in an apron" award from Mommy.

All the clay comes from the land around Shigaraki. Hugo and Max burned through about five of those cylinders, each.

We got home Tuesday night. Later that week, it was Children's day. You might recall the koi nobori (carp kites) from the ninja village. My boys each got to dye one of their own at school, and we hung them outside our house on Children's day.

Here are some more hanging in a local park. They look cool, don't they? Bringing you some classic Japanese culture here, folks!