Catching Up...

I've been a little slack with updating the blog lately...sorry. I'll do my best to give you a quick summary of what we've been up to...

For Labor Day, we had a few friends over and had a potluck. Our Japanese friends brought fixings for sushi and I got a chance to see how it's made. Apparently, when you're serving sushi at home, there's not one person who rolls it all for you (much to our dismay). All the vegetables and fish are sliced and put on a platter, the sushi rice is in a bowl, the seaweed wrapper on a plate, and you put it together yourself. Kind of like a taco bar. It took a couple tries to get it right, but I feel like I'm a sushi pro now!

The following weekend, we took a tour to see some really cool waterfalls- Joren Waterfall and the 7 Waterfalls of Nanadaru. Thank goodness the heat and humidity of summer has begun to pass so the day was really pleasant, despite the hiking. (I'm not fond of outdoor physical exertion during really hot weather that'll make me all sweaty and gross)

The first waterfall we visited was Joren. This one's famous for all the wasabi that are planted near it. Because the water's so cold, the wasabi plants really thrive. The picture of Mike below shows him pointing to the wasabi crop. They even had wasabi ice cream there. Our friend, Yuki, got some and she let me try it, but it's definitely an acquired taste.










If you're the kind of person who thinks of wasabi as a blob of green paste on the side of a sushi plate, it actually looks like this- before it becomes your sushi condiment.


Next up on the tour was Nanadaru's 7 waterfalls and onsens (hot springs)...














Here we are in front of my favorite waterfall. It looked so romantic! I just wanted to dive in and go swimming (if I knew how to swim).















Here we are in the middle of our hike. Doesn't it look like we're in the middle of a jungle? Sometimes it felt like that...crossing rickety bridges, climbling crumbling steps...very Indiana Jones-ish...











We ended the day with a relaxing dip in the onsen (hot spring) with a beautiful waterfall in the background.



There were even some onsens that were in caves...kinda creepy, but kinda cool too. By the way, normally in Japanese onsens, you would have to go naked, but THANKFULLY, bathing suits were allowed at this one.


By the end of the day, I was exhausted, and the next day, my calves were so sore from all the hiking. But it was worth it.