Ninja wasabi in Tokyo... or something like that

Proving my ninja skills outside of the castle

Todays first adventure was visiting Matsumoto Castle. This wasn't very far from our hotel we had just checked out of, so everything started pretty quickly. The Castles outward aesthetics reminded me quite a bit of Osaka Castle, but I knew this was far different from my general favorite as soon as I walked inside. Have you ever walked up stairs with a 60% incline? I have. going up isn't so bad. Going down you can't see the next stair below you and you feel like you will probably die. The view from the top was incredible, you just couldn't think about the fact that you were about to walk back down the 6 raging staircases of death. There is a large moat visible from the top floor of the castle. Between the outer gardens and the water feature, this castles views were superb. You could even take part in a tea ceremony out in the courtyard for a small fee.

Next was an hour drive to the Daioh Wasabi Farm.  Many of the plants were covered to prevent scorching in the summer heat, but you could still see them in certain places and the rest of the farm contained beautiful scenery and a fantastic stream in the midst of which were many beautiful fish. At the top of the hill was an overlook of the farm, as well as a shop selling some very unconventional Wasabi infused foodstuffs and drinks. Quite a few CIEE students tried the Wasabi ice cream. I would have, but to be quite honest Wasabi isn't one of my favorite flavors. I opted to wait and pick up a blueberry ice cream on the ride to Tokyo.

The ride to Tokyo was around 4 1/2 hours. Not because we were THAT far from Tokyo so much as because we ran into the infamous Tokyo rush hour traffic. It really is crazy! Fortunately for you, I'm not going to sit here and complain about traffic. I'm going to focus on awesomeness. I am in the hotel I will be staying at for the remainder of the trip and it is both very nice AND in an extremely convenient location.  As soon as we arrived (around 5:30pm) we received our room keys, breakfast tickets, and Suica Card for the JR Trains. I filmed a quick video tour of my room so you could all see it!


After settling in, I met up with several other girls in the lobby and we headed out to find something for dinner. After walking down the street for a little while to explore, we chose a small ramen shop. It was beyond delicious! Places like this are the reason I can't eat instant ramen anymore; I've been too spoiled by perfection of flavor.
We also visited a little grocery store that is literally across the street from our hotel (well... the street under the train station that's across from our hotel). I only bought a couple of drinks and some little grapes to put in my mini fridge. I need to settle in further before I determine what sorts of foods to really keep around. We were all so excited, you would think we had never seen food before!
Now that I'm back in the hotel for the night, I'm gong to unpack a few things and start prepping for tomorrow. Soon we will start staying out later, but tonight is definitely a 'get some sleep' type night. Sorry the entry is so short, but let's just say I already know I'll be more than making up for it with tomorrows ;-)

Peace, Love, and Hairspray!

~Jenn

P.S.- I've been told that there's some difficulty with how to follow my blog since the whole Google takeover of Blogger has changed settings. I'm pretty sure the thing to do is to click on the arrow next to where it says "posts" directly above the top-most entry. So far that's the best I can figure out.