伊吹山 (Ibuki Yama) and Picnicing

So Saturday night when Alex and I returned to the house, we were surprised to see two young kids in pjs sitting on the floor playing a strange old looking board game. Okaasan and Otousan have two kids and 5 grandkids, and two of them were here to visit. One kid was a girl, Hazuki, who is in 6th grade, and her little brother Haruyuki was in 2nd grade. We were told we could call them Ha-chan and Haru-chan! At first they were very quiet and didn't want to talk to the strange gaijin girls. I wanted to give them some space at first, so I just went and took a shower after that long day of walking. By the time I was finished it was 9 oclock and I was worried the kids would already be in bed. But they weren't- they were playing that strange board game with Okaasan and Alex. Ok, I just wikipediaed this, and apparently it's a game known as Carrom, and there are different variations of the game around South East Asia. The game lost popularity in other parts of Japan, but according to wikipedia, the game is still played in Hikone (yes, is specifically mentions Hikone), and that many households still have their own boards for it. Essentially the rules we used for it were you have teams and you flick one of your teams oval chips across the board to land in a corner pocket and then after you have pocketed all your team's pieces you can get the main piece in- it's a lot like 8 ball, or so I like to think XD.

Hazuki, Haruyuki, Okaasan, and me playing Karomu

After playing a few rounds of that, we attempted making some origami. I am terrible at it. The only thing I can successfully make is a cootie catcher. I wrote numbers on mine and wrote yes and no on the inside flaps, and I asked the kids to ask it questions. They were absolutely fascinated by that, or at least Haru-chan, the little boy, was XD. Alex and I were getting tired, but Ha-chan and Haru-chan would not go to bed, and finally at 11, Alex and I gave in and told them WE wanted to go to bed :P. 

We were waken up in the morning by Haru-chan scampering in and out of our room with a cootie catcher. He kept telling me to ask if questions about what I would eat that morning, but every time, I would just go back to sleep. About the 4th time of coming in, he told us Okaasan wanted us to get up and have breakfast. 

At 10 oclock Okaasan, Ha-chan, Haru-chan, Alex, and I headed out to go for our picnic. We drove to Maibara, which is very close to JCMU. The kids were still a little afraid to talk to us much even though it's rather easy for us to communicate with kids since they use really easy Japanese. Because of the drizzle we'd had the day before, there were low clouds in the sky covering up the mountain we wanted to see. We stopped though at some touristy spot where we could view the mountain through telescopes and you can buy food and other things. 

Haru-chan and Alex in the car

Japan's scenery is so perdy :)

 

Me, Alex, Haruyuki, Hazuki, and Hiroko (aka Okaasan)!

The mountain we were looking at is Mt. Ibuki, aka Ibuki Yama. It's the tallest mountain in Shiga, Japan, and it basically is just looming in the distance wherever we go in Nagahama. But here in Maibara, we were much closer to it. Mt. Ibuki is actually quite famous as far as mountains in Japan go, which is saying something, since Japan is 70% mountains. That is not a made up statistic. The land of Japan is literally 70% mountains. In Shiga and the neighboring Gifu prefecture, there is the Ibuki mountain chain, which is why basically every picture I have of the outdoors has mountains in the background. Unfortunately, because of the clouds we couldn't see the top of the mountain, but I can usually see if from the train, so I will try to take a picture in the near future.

After looking up there for a while, Okaasan treated us all to icecream! :D I had coffee flavor, and Macha-obsessed-Alex of course had the Macha ice cream (green tea), I forgot what Ha-chan had, but both Haru-chan and Okaasan had caramel. Even though they were in cones, they still use spoons to scoop the ice cream out of the cones, so we all just kept sharing ice cream ^_^.

Afterwards, we drove to a lake in Maibara that had beautiful nature and Japan's oldest surviving stone lantern (ishi-dōrō) , or so Okaasan told me. When the weather is perfect, you can see Mt. Ibuki reflected in the lake, but we weren't that lucky. It still was gorgeous, though.

Ha-chan and Okaasan had made us bento, or packed lunch, that consisted of sushi and an egg roll things, but the stray cats around the area kept begging for food, so they basically ate half of my meal (Japan has a rather large stray cat problem). In the water there were the biggest freakiest ugliest coy fish I have ever seen, flopping over each other to get what food people tossed them, and even jumping on the lowest step of the stairs to the pond which was submerged in water. Alex made a video of me feeding them, but she hasn't put it on the computer yet. I'll put that somewhere when I do a picture update. But speaking of pictures...

The pond

caterpillar

My bento

the tōrō, or lantern

Stray kitty

There were so many beautiful flowers around. I can't even imagine what it would be like in spring!

Okaasan's friend came over with bread for us to feed the fish

Me and Okaasan♥

It's hard to tell with pictures just how big and freaky these things were

The Little Ones

Can you see the fish in comparison to the bird? They were head butting the bird for food >_<

Japanese ducks! Kamo :D

My favorite of the kitties who ate with us

SO CUTE!

The fish made HUGE splashes in the process of getting the bread from Haru-chan's stick

Kitteh :D

We just stayed there like that for several hours. Haru-chan really liked to take people's cameras and play with them- especially mine. I was not that fond of that, but he actually was surprisingly good with it for a 7 year old. He also figured out what the different functions are, despite not knowing how to read English. But he did say a few English things to us at various times. It was sooooo adorable! He said "No thank you!" when Okaasan tried to give him more tea, and he said things like "Sorry" and "See you later" XD. Even the seemingly emo Ha-chan warmed up to us. In the car ride home, Haru-chan fell asleep on me and it was the most precious thing ever! ^_^ Once we got back, Ha-chan tried to teach us more origami, and then she went to playing some video game while Alex and I played with Haru-chan. At one point he touched my legs and became obsessed with petting them! It's a good thing I shaved my legs XD He also liked sitting in my lap and taking goofy pictures, and it was so much fun!

Okaasan and Otousan's grandkids

Alex, Otousan, and Haruyuki

our family of origami cranes. I made the yellow! :D

Haru-chan decorated me with origami

silly pictures

Haru-chan not only likes to take weird pictures, but he likes putting things on people's heads

And around 4 oclock, Okaasan and Otousan took the kids to the station! Luckily we have plans to see them again this upcoming weekend when we visit them in their town, Moriyama :) So...yeah. Just saying, don't be surprised if I've kidnapped one of them before coming back home :P

Mary

Location: Don't you know by now?

Mood: Sore. Played tennis today. Is there an emoticon for that?

Listening to: Rakuen (Paradise) - Trigun OST. It's pretty, so you should listen.

Japanese for the day: とてもおいしいですが、今おなかがいっぱいです！totemo oishii desu ga, ima onaka ga ippai desu! - It's really delicious, but now I'm really full!