Wednesday 9 July 2014

Samurai Girl


In March I had a really cool experience being able to do a special tour guided day around Kurayoshi. A friend of mine advertised a cool event, basically $20 for an all day traditional Japanese ‘experiences’ tour. To start the day we went to an old shrine and were dressed in traditional samurai wear. It was pretty epic, we also walked around town dressed in the armor so we got a lot of stares. It is not common to dress like that, and we were 95% foreign, so it was a sight! Next we went into the mountains and made fresh soba noodles from scratch. It was a lot of work, and was fairly delicious. I probably wouldn’t roll out noodles again tho, I’m too lazy. Next we headed to a tatami shop and made small tatami mats. It was a cool memento of the whole day, and it’s in my apartment now with a candle and picture frame on it, it’s pretty cute actually.

Lastly we headed to an outdoor mixed onsen. Oh my goodness this onsen was stunning! The outdoor pools looked out onto the sea, amazing!! Thankfully this onsen was mixed so bathing suits were necessary, and since NHK was filming us the entire day this was a good thing!! Apparently the special aired all over southern Japan for about 20 minutes, it was meant to promote tourism in Tottori. I had teachers talk to me about it after, so I was definitely on TV J #Famous
I am pretty thankful for experiences like this, it is hard to believe that I live in this country sometimes. As hard as it can be to live in a completely foreign culture it is so special to think about the way I am getting a real taste of this culture. This is a really cool chapter of life, as I am starting my ESL career and fulfilling my wanderlust desires in part. 





 <--I made that!!



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