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Kanazawa Dreamin' (on such a winter's day)
So this morning started out at 7:40am. Breakfast was supposed to be at 8am but it turns out it wasn't really, and that "western breakfast" is just coffee and toast, so I basically ditched breakfast to go take a shower and get changed. Then I took a nap for about 20 minutes until we were all ready to get out the door, finally. Sigh.
We ended up splitting up in the morning due to disagreements on where to go. Carl and I headed to Kanazawa Castle first and then to Kenrokuen, the big famous garden. I had seen a weather report saying it would rain this afternoon, and I really wanted to take pictures of the garden before the rain hit. We went around and I took many pictures. Then we headed back to Kanazawa station on the bus... and Oren called and said he'd also find us at the station. We got lunch (omurice-katsu set for the win!) and omiyage and then switched groups, essentially, with Carl and Oren going off to some candy museum...
...and I went off to the middle of nowhere to see the Hideki Matsui Baseball Museum! Wheeee. Man, that was pretty crazy. First I had to take the Hokuriku train out to Terai, and since it's like 2 miles from the station, I ended up taking a taxi, which cost me 1350 yen, which kind of sucked. Museum entrance fee itself was only 300 yen. And basically it's just this gigantic collection of Matsui's pictures and stuff. You ever wonder what these guys do with all of their MVP and golden glove trophies and so on? Apparently Matsui's brother went and built an entire museum to store Hideki's stuff. It's pretty cool though, I saw a lot of really neat things in there, including a lot of his old stuff from high school. Ended up buying a few souvenirs to bring back and yet another omiyage box (yes, I have three boxes of omiyage now -- one is of reverse-mochi from Kenrokuen, one is of ame candy from the station, and one is of wafer cookies from the Matsui Museum. Dammit these better be enough for all of my students).
I noticed that the bus to Terai was leaving at 4:09pm, so even though the taxi driver had given me his company's number to call for a ride back, I said "screw that" and took the 20-minute bus ride through Neagari for 100 yen. As a result I had to catch the train back at 4:44pm and didn't get to Kanazawa until 5:10, but oh well.
We went out to Mitsuya to go to the Maegawa family house. This was Oren's host family when he and Carl were studying in Kanazawa for the summer of 1999, and he still keeps in touch with them and sees them every time he ends up back in the country. I met them once, in 2001, on my first ever trip to Japan. Anyway, apparently their youngest son (who was like 13 back then?) is now in Tokyo in college, and their oldest son (who I think is my age) is now married and has two kids. As it turns out, he and his wife met when he was playing on a baseball team and she was a team manager, and it ALSO turns out they are huge fans of the Ishikawa Million Stars, and so I got to talk to them about that a bit, and they said I should come out this summer and go to a game with them! Maybe I will! That would be fun.
Anyway, we had a lot of food for dinner and sat around talking entirely in Japanese for like 4 hours straight. It made my brain hurt, but they kept saying how "wow, we remember when we met you 6 years ago you couldn't speak at ALL and now you sound really good", despite that I kept coming to a complete blank several times on words and having to ask a lot of questions. Amusingly, every time I started talking about baseball I would get a LOT more coherent. Go figure. We got a ride home to the ryokan after that, wow, and that's where I am now, writing this. In the morning we're going to check out and skip town. Whee.
Oh, the family also has a dog so my clothes are kind of covered in dog hair. Argh.
We ended up splitting up in the morning due to disagreements on where to go. Carl and I headed to Kanazawa Castle first and then to Kenrokuen, the big famous garden. I had seen a weather report saying it would rain this afternoon, and I really wanted to take pictures of the garden before the rain hit. We went around and I took many pictures. Then we headed back to Kanazawa station on the bus... and Oren called and said he'd also find us at the station. We got lunch (omurice-katsu set for the win!) and omiyage and then switched groups, essentially, with Carl and Oren going off to some candy museum...
...and I went off to the middle of nowhere to see the Hideki Matsui Baseball Museum! Wheeee. Man, that was pretty crazy. First I had to take the Hokuriku train out to Terai, and since it's like 2 miles from the station, I ended up taking a taxi, which cost me 1350 yen, which kind of sucked. Museum entrance fee itself was only 300 yen. And basically it's just this gigantic collection of Matsui's pictures and stuff. You ever wonder what these guys do with all of their MVP and golden glove trophies and so on? Apparently Matsui's brother went and built an entire museum to store Hideki's stuff. It's pretty cool though, I saw a lot of really neat things in there, including a lot of his old stuff from high school. Ended up buying a few souvenirs to bring back and yet another omiyage box (yes, I have three boxes of omiyage now -- one is of reverse-mochi from Kenrokuen, one is of ame candy from the station, and one is of wafer cookies from the Matsui Museum. Dammit these better be enough for all of my students).
I noticed that the bus to Terai was leaving at 4:09pm, so even though the taxi driver had given me his company's number to call for a ride back, I said "screw that" and took the 20-minute bus ride through Neagari for 100 yen. As a result I had to catch the train back at 4:44pm and didn't get to Kanazawa until 5:10, but oh well.
We went out to Mitsuya to go to the Maegawa family house. This was Oren's host family when he and Carl were studying in Kanazawa for the summer of 1999, and he still keeps in touch with them and sees them every time he ends up back in the country. I met them once, in 2001, on my first ever trip to Japan. Anyway, apparently their youngest son (who was like 13 back then?) is now in Tokyo in college, and their oldest son (who I think is my age) is now married and has two kids. As it turns out, he and his wife met when he was playing on a baseball team and she was a team manager, and it ALSO turns out they are huge fans of the Ishikawa Million Stars, and so I got to talk to them about that a bit, and they said I should come out this summer and go to a game with them! Maybe I will! That would be fun.
Anyway, we had a lot of food for dinner and sat around talking entirely in Japanese for like 4 hours straight. It made my brain hurt, but they kept saying how "wow, we remember when we met you 6 years ago you couldn't speak at ALL and now you sound really good", despite that I kept coming to a complete blank several times on words and having to ask a lot of questions. Amusingly, every time I started talking about baseball I would get a LOT more coherent. Go figure. We got a ride home to the ryokan after that, wow, and that's where I am now, writing this. In the morning we're going to check out and skip town. Whee.
Oh, the family also has a dog so my clothes are kind of covered in dog hair. Argh.
no subject
I'll hopefully have my pictures to put online soon (or I'll just send you some via IM one of these days)
dude I took a picture of my Doala keychain in front of a sign that says "竜石" in Kenrokuen :)