tour number two, day two

(a continuation of this post!)

So the next we dragged ourselves out of bed bright and early to help haul in a fish net on the beach! Although it was like 8 in the morning, the sun was already out and blazing - but the beach did look gorgeous. We weren't the only ones there to try pulling in the net - it takes a lot of people, evidently - so there were lots of families and children running about. After a brief explanation, we started pulling! At first it was easy, but the closer the net got, the heavier the rope became. And then we got to see our catch - at first it didn't seem like much, but since it ended up being breakfast for all the people there, it was actually plenty. We listened to an explanation about what kind of fish we had brought in (which I promptly forgot) and then watched them prepare them right there into tempura and sashimi before digging in! I will say, sashimi from fish you caught literally less than an hour ago is pretty fabulous. :)

After packing up all our stuff, we were off to our next destination, the Biwa Club, a roadside station famous for loquats (props to you if you know what those are without looking them up) to try our hand at making traditional fans! Round fans, or uchiwa, are pretty common in Japan (a lot of companies give them out in the summer as advertisements), but apparently Chiba is one of the places that is famous for making these traditional ones. Our teachers were an elderly couple who had clearly done this many times, and who commented on how we were much more careful about it than the elementary schoolers they usually teach, haha. We made the fans using what I think was glue made from rice and designs that they let us pick (which was the hardest part), and I think they turned out well! After that we wandered around looking at loquat souvenirs and trying loquat ice cream (which was tasty), before heading to lunch.

Lunch was at a little restaurant called Hyakushou Yashiki Restaurant Jiroemu, which is also apparently entirely reservation-only. It was a very quaint farmhouse-like place, and I think all the food was made from local stuff (or possibly stuff grown there?) - and was delicious, naturally. It really had a cozy, old-fashioned atmosphere, including a set of really old Japanese encyclopedias! A cool experience.

After lunch we headed to our final destination for the tour, Nokogiri-yama! I've been there before so I probably won't go on about it too much here, but it was just as cool to ride the cablecar, see the Buddhist statues and giant Buddha, and go to 'Hell's overlook' again the second time! We also had another guide there to explain things to us, which was cool. It did rain while we were up there for a bit, but we managed to take shelter and climb back down the mountain without any problems.

And then it was just a four-hour trip back that was only supposed to have taken about two (due to lots of unexpected traffic on the Sunday of a three-day weekend), and that was the end of day two of tour two! Like I said, this was definitely the most fun trip we've had so far, and I'm also really glad to know of some more places down in southern Chiba that I can recommend to people. It's a little bit inconvenient to get down there without a car, but I'd say the beautiful views of the ocean are definitely worth it. :)

Also, if you want to get a better sense of what the tour was like, you can see the hard work of the local TV crew that followed us around all weekend here! It is all in Japanese, but if you look closely you can see me in the background quite a few times in the second clip. :)

- Biwa Club: (http://www.biwakurabu.jp/)
- Nokogiri-yama: (http://www.mt-nokogiri.co.jp/pc/p130000.php)