Aichi-Ken

Yesterday Satoko and I returned from our four and a half day Golden Week vacation to her hometown of Ichinomiya in the region of Aichi, near Nagoya City.

We stayed at Satoko's family's house with her parents and one of her sisters, Chikako. A big THANK YOU to Satoko's mom and dad for taking care of me and providing some delicious food. The house included an extensive Japanese garden which included nicely pruned trees, all kinds of flowers, a serious vegetable patch, and a couple bonsai trees.







We arrived late Wednesday and didn't do much before going to bed. The next day we all went to visit Satoko's grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousins and had a sort of tofu and miso bbq (putting tofu pieces on sticks, covering them in miso, and cooking them over a little fire).

We walked around Satoko's neigborhood, visited her old elementary school, stopped at a park, and checked out this neat shrine:



On Friday we went to Nagoya city, which resembled most other big Japanese cities I've seen. Here is a picture of Nagoya castle:



We had a few odd encounters in the city, the oddest at a stylish, expensive looking hat store which in retrospect I wish I had taken a picture of. We entered and started browsing through the hats. I found one I liked and tried it on, though I had no intention of spending any serious money on a hat that day. Though there was a small mirror on the wall for me to look at, the lone saleman urged me to try the large changing room, where I could admire myself in a full-length mirror. It didn't seem necessary to me, but he was quite insistent, so without quite thinking I went in and Satoko followed as well, and then the salesman closed the door.

Only at this point did I realize what I walked into, because the door he closed was no ordinary door, but a vault door, about 6 inches thick and with one of those big wheels you turn to close it from the outside. There was no handle on the inside. As soon as I realized I had been fooled, out went the lights.

Now, I was pretty sure that it was all just a lame joke, but you can't prevent thoughts such as "how long does the air in a room this size last?", "if I scream and knock on this 6 inch thick door, will anyone hear me?" and "if poison gas were to be pumped into the room, would I smell it?" from popping up. I used the light on my cell phone to look around the room while Satoko started banging on the door. I comforted myself with the thought that if I wasn't able to get out if I and ended up dying or being tortured by some sick hat enthusiast, at least I could enact some small revenge by thoroughly destroying the expensive hat I had in my hand.

Things didn't go that far as after about two minutes, the door opened, and the man apologized to us, saying that he "forgot." That is all we got out of him. He tried to strike up a "hey, what's your name, where are you from?" kind of conversation, but he had already lost my business and I just wanted to get out of there and buy a hat somewhere else as revenge.

The next day we visited a bunch of Satoko's friends, and at night made pizza at her friend Satomi's apartment. Here we are after finishing our meal (Satomi is the second from the left, next to her husband Makoto, and in the middle is another friend, Norie. The dog's name is Hanabi.):



And finally, here is a picture of me, Satoko, and her parents that we took just before we left.