Hokkaido Life: Day 6

Lake Toya is pretty much heaven

Hello yet again from Lake Toya. Still trying to catch up on my blog posts! So today is the 6th day we have been in Japan and also the 3rd day we have spent in Toya. Todays agenda consisted of our final day of sight seeing and we were to be visiting local places in our district. Taka-san suggested the day before that if the weather was nice then we should take the bikes instead of the car to the places. Naturally we assumed all three of us would be on bikes but in reality me and my partner were on bikes and Taka-san was in the car. It was hilarious trying to follow him on the bikes and the whole thing was pointless but really fun.

Our first task however, was to introduce ourselves to our neighbors which is an important part of Japanese culture. Since I have good knowledge of Japanese culture I had prepared presents of little English sweets in origami bags to give to our neighbors which were greatly received and met with many thanks. It was interesting to meet everyone and everyone was really friendly towards us which makes me wonder what volunteers in the past had done to deserve cold welcomes as described in other blogs. 

Once we had greeted everyone and introduced ourselves in Japanese to them, (something which is becoming rather frequent) we proceeded with our tour of the town. Our first stop was the visitor center known as 'Mizu no Eki' which also acts as a mini market and bus station on the lake side. The building is really pretty and I will make another post as soon as possible with pictures of key places around the town. Inside there is a noodle bar where we had lunch and a dish called Butadon which is meat and noodles. I highly recommend if you ever visit Japan to try butadon as it is amazing. The staff at the noodle bar are lovely as well and even adjust the dishes to our preference by removing the red ginger which was really nice of them to do.

As well we visited the local shrine which will become a big part of our lives in the following days to come as soon there will be a festival. The shrine was up a huge set of stairs which was not good as we had to cycle up hill for about 10 minutes to get to the shrine as it's just outside the town but it was really pretty. Out of respect I chose not to take pictures inside the shrine but I will try and get permission and upload them at a later date. 

Afterwards we visited the local art gallery which contained a lot of traditional and modern Japanese art work which included sculptures and many interesting displays. The staff at the gallery were also really friendly and polite, one of them is actually a member of the English class as well so it was nice to know that my students are nice and friendly people! 

Other than that, the only other places we visited were mostly the shops where we would get our supplies from and the local post office/bank but there wasn't much that was strikingly interesting about that. Afterwards Taka-san left us on our own at about 2pm and my partner decided to head back to the house whereas I went down to the beach and went for a bike ride towards Toya-onsen which is 10 - 12km away. The route there is really beautiful and it was really relaxing as the ground is more or less flat meaning I didn't have to exert much energy and I was able to take lots of pictures of the lake. 

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful until the evening where me and my partner decided we would go to the mini temple in the evening and also watch the fire works that took place over in Toya Onsen. Whilst we were there we could also see a lightning storm going on over the hills in the distance but thankfully it missed us and left us with clear skies and warm cool summer temperatures at night with no rain so it was amazing to watch as Japan gets mostly bolt lightning. 

The moon, shrine and lightning storm all in one shot

Tomorrow will be the welcome party which I am hugely looking forward to! Until then, thanks for reading and I will try and get a YouTube video done once I am up to date with my blog posts which should be soon!