We went Okurata area for Okutama Art Festival, hiking and Onsen!!
Our friend Photographer Yoshimura`s house, Gallery "Naka". He is always welcome and his house is very quiet and peaceful.
We had lunch at Earth Garden. They have nice food made from vege and fish which is from local farm.
We walk from Shiromaru to Okutama!
And we found beetle on the way. (It was already dry..)
And also we found Wasabi farm! Wasabi grow only by pure water.
And then, we went to Onsen call "Moegino-yu".
It was almost first time for our guest to go into Onsen, so they are happy even it was bit crowded with people.
We were very relaxed and skin became very smooth!!
We are planning to have tour to Okutama area time by time for our guests to show we have nature landscape even in Tokyo. We would like people who come from abroad to have more chance to have experience of local Japan!
2009年9月アーカイブ
We are going to the Okutama area on the 21st of September!
The Okutama art festival is now open. So we will go and visit some artist`s exhibitions and also have a nice walk in the forest! And also we are going to Onsen at the end of tour!
Please contact YADOYA guesthouse office to join this event!
On the 25th of July, we took some of our guests to the outskirts of Tokyo for so much needed countryside fresh air and some exciting cultural events.
Bon is a traditional event of Japan in summer. It is a time when people make offerings to their ancestors and pray for the happiness of their ancestors' souls in the next world. During this time the folk dance, Bon Odori, can be seen in cities, towns and villages all over Japan.
To celebrate the Bon season, our friend Yoshimura san, invited us to join in a local Bon dance festival in Mitake, the town he lives in. It is about 2 hours west of Tokyo.
We got to Mitake station a little after noon and met Yoshimura san in his house, a big and beautiful Japanese style house said to be over 100 years old, looking over the beautiful mountains of the Mitake area.
The beautiful view from Yoshimura san's house
He than took us on a tour to the local senior’s citizen house. There we got to see the facilities available for the elderly guests, and enjoys some small talk with many seniors. We even got to try out an motorized wheelchair!
From there we went to the local shrine where many people had gathered for that nights Obon festival. All the locals were so nice to us; they even let our 2 girls in the group borrow some yukatas to use for the festival.
An Australian girl and a Finnish girl looking good and ready for the festival
There was a lot of food, drink and of course dancing.
We all had a go to dance, at first it was hard to follow all the steps in each dance but we quickly got the hang of it. It was so much fun!
Eating good food and talking with the locals
The stage, or Yagura tower where people can dance
Our guest joined in the dancing too!
And some more dancing
Later, after the festival we went back to Yoshimura’s place and had some more food and drinks and talk about many things.
Yoshimura san(far left) our wonderful host and our guests enjoy eating and drinking in his house.
Some of the delicious food our fabulous host prepared for us.
Even though it was the middle of summer, inside the house it was really cool and so we could enjoy drinking and looking at the night sky and mountains very comfortably. As it got very late Yoshimura san set up the futons and we slept very well.
In the morning, Yoshimura san prepared for us a nice breakfast and then he took us to a small shrine nearby which had a Shishimai festival.
Shishimai (lion dance)
Shishimai (lion dance) is a type of dance where people dress up as lions and perform a dance. The costumes they wore were very colorful and there was some kind of story being told through their dances as the lions performed the dance.
The dancers had some beautiful and elaborate costumes
However it was really hot and soon it was time to go or die from the heat.
The dancers taking a break from the heat and dancing
We said our good byes to Yoshimura san and came back to Tokyo. It was funny because we had left Nakano only for 2 days but it felt like it was more like a week.
On the 21st of July we organized a trip to see the Katsushika fireworks, one of the biggest fireworks in the Tokyo Edo river area. Unfortunately the weather was horrible on that day and it was thought that is was going to be canceled due to the rain, however the organizers of the festival decided to go on despite the rain. So, only 2 brave souls set out from YadoCafe to go and see the fireworks.
We went to our friend’s beautiful house which is located near the Edo River and had a clear view of the fireworks from the rooftop.
But, due to the rain, it was hard to see the fireworks display and soon it stated raining hard again, so we all went inside and had a nice BBQ dinner with our friend's family and friends.
We had our fill of delicious food and drinks and had a relaxing time talking about many interesting things.
So it ended being quite a nice night after all despite of the bad weather and no fireworks.
