Morioka and Kakunodate, Japan - Another snow festival

After Hakodate, we left the island of Hokkaido and went back to the main island to Morioka. Before we go, though, we would like to share this marvelous song with you. It is officially our favorite:

We weren't really planning on seeing anything in Morioka itself, but it was a good base for a few snow festivals in tiny towns nearby.

We got into town in the afternoon, settled in to our hotel, and left for Shizukuishi for a snow festival. When we arrived in Shuzukuishi, we went to the tourist information center at the train station (if you can call a person who doesn't know a single word of English "information"), and were informed that there was no public transportation to the festival, which is stupid, especially since this festival is heavily promoted in Morioka and surrounding areas.

After literally 10 minutes that it took us to understand what the guy was signing (after the blood drained out of his face upon seeing us arrive), we understood that we could only arrive in a taxi, and that it would cost us about 2700 Yen in each direction - $32 - so we decided to forego it, even though it totally pissed us off, since we were really looking forward to it.

A couple days later, by the way, when we were at tourist information in Morioka to ask about a different town, Rony casually remarked that it's a shame there was no public transportation to an event that was so heavily publicized, to which the tourist information lady (who spoke great English) replied, "If you would have come to us when you got into town, we would have told you that there was transportation from here." Conclusion: Between all the coupons and free gifts, and important festival information, be sure to stop at every single tourist information center you come across.

We went back to Morioka, sulking, and asked at reception where we should have dinner. They referred us to the main road, which was close to us, and we ate at Hot Ja Ja, one of the restaurants they recommended, and OMIGOODNESS it was delicious!!!

First of all, you know you're in an awesome restaurant when you are given directions about how to prepare and eat your food:

Our dinner's instruction manual :-)

Basically, there was only one dish there, an udon (noodle)-based dish, this time not based in a soup, which it usually is. You receive the noodles with some leek and cucumbers and a splotch of miso and are supposed to mix it up. Then you add seasoning of your choice and mix it again. When you are just about done eating, you break an egg in your plate and call for the wait staff.

They then take away your plates and bring them back with egg drop soup - yummy!!! We were REALLY full at this point, but we ate some of it anyway since it was so delicious. All in all, if there was a battle between us and the food, the food won. We just couldn't finish it all.

It was one of our favorite meals in Japan.

We went back to the hotel, updated the blog for your guys, and turned on the TV, where we were surprised to discover TV in ENGLISH! We watched like 3 or 4 episodes of Law and Order, which is either 3 or 4 more than Talia had ever watched, but it was so exciting! We could understand what was on TV! And we went to sleep happy. The following day, by the way, these English stations weren't working anymore, so it was just the one night, but what a glorious night it was!

We had free "breakfast"  at the hotel, if you can call it that, and went over to the train station to catch a train to Kakunodate. We went to tourist information to get a map (usually the larger cities have maps of the smaller towns in the area), and to ask them if there's something special to see. It was then that we were told about the transportation to the festival that we missed the night before (it was the last evening).

Kakunodate is a cute town that has a main street that is full of old samurai houses, which is the main attraction of the town. We arrived in town and the first thing we saw was that the streets were lined with snow "sculptures," though in this case they were all street lamps. It was so awesome!

After a slight detour, where Talia decided to fulfill yet another childhood event that she missed, where she slid down a snow slide, we arrived at the samurai street. The street itself is beautiful, and we were told that it is lined with cherry trees that are just beautiful in the spring. Marvelous, we were told that every place we went, but we don't care, we loved everything we saw anyway.

As we walked up the street with our trusty map, we realized 2 things:

1) Everything was written only in Japanese
2) Every house we were passing was closed.

Total bummer.

As we made our way up the street, Talia fulfilled yet another long-time dream of hers: Making a snow angel! Well, technically the dream remained partially unfulfilled, seeing as the snow was so deep that once she dove backwards into the snow (weeeeeee!!!!!) she couldn't move to make the snow angel.

A dead snow angel

She also couldn't get up - she was stuck. Rony, forever the loving and helpful boyfriend, made sure her attempt to get up was photographed for your viewing pleasure, while laughing in the background - but that you can't see.

We slept in separate rooms that night.

Not really.

We finally reached a samurai house that was open! But we were asked not to enter yet since there were so many people inside already. So as we waited in the minus-bazillion degree weather, we saw an older man shoveling and moving snow around. Rony decided to help him out, and started shoveling it for him so he could rest! The man was shocked. He was really funny, too - when he had enough snow on the wheelbarrow, he would run up the little snow hill to dump it!

Such a gentleman!

We were then told we could go in (who knew we had to work for entry?). We removed our shoes, which made Talia think twice about entering, and the lady tried to explain something to us. We aren't sure what she was saying, but suddenly we heard a voice, by another (Japanese) tourist, saying that she speaks English and she can translate.

We were all lead into a small room and invited to sit on the (padded) floor. There were 2 guides there, and one was roasting chestnuts (on an open fire...)The people who were already in the room moved back to let us sit in front of the fire - they were already warm, we were still freezing from outside.

The guides were talking about the history of the house and the samurai era, and we were very lucky that the Japanese English speaker was there, because she translated just about everything that he said, so it was even more interesting than it would have been. When the chestnuts were done roasting, they passed them around for us to eat.

Mmmm... chestnuts!

They also explained about how the samurai wives would dry freeze and smoke many vegetables so that they would have food for the winter, and everything was pickled, since it was the best way to preserve them - and then we were given some pickled vegetables, too, which was also delicious.


As they were wrapping up (well, the one guy was wrapping up, the other guy kept falling asleep and making funny faces,) they pulled out a couple of posters to let us know about a local festival that they were having that day. It was a 2-day festival and today was the second day, and we were surprised that tourist information didn't tell us about it. We weren't sure yet if we were going to stay, because we had a lot more to see and we were tired, so we decided to play it by ear.

We had a really great lunch, which in all honesty could have fed 4 hungry, large people, and started walking back toward the train station. Since we had about 40 minutes before our train, we made a stop at a cute store that we hoped to find presents for our families at, and ended up missing our train.

Once we saw what the time was, and when the next train was, we decided to stay. After all, it was already 16:00, and the festival started at 18:00, so we stopped at the tourist information center, just to make sure it was worth staying for, and then, after resting a bit at the center (which was really heated, so it was really nice), we started our walk back to the samuari area, which is where the main part of the festival was going to happen.

On the way, we stopped at a really cute bakery and bought some really delicious small cakes. They were SO yum!! At this point, the sun was already setting so the snow lanterns now had candles in them that were already lit, so the whole town looked different. We were already happy that we stayed, and we hadn't even reached the festival site yet!

We still had about half an hour left, so we stepped into another store and saw the funniest and oddest things there, such as this:

Mobile ashtray (it's called "the ground" everywhere else)

Fake security system stickers - BTW check out the scared face in the drawing!

We finally arrived at the main site and there was a big bonfire going on - it was like Lag Ba'omer - but not! We didn't know what to expect, but soon enough we saw the festival begin. Basically, they had these woven basket-type things that are tied to a rope, and people are supposed to light them on fire (for real) and then swing them around their bodies (for real). We thought that these were professionals that were doing this (we saw the pictures on the posters), but then someone walked up to us and gave one to Rony and told him to do it. Of course, we were the only tourists, again, so we did receive a lot of attention.
Not one to be frightened by fire, or anything for that matter, Rony accepted the challenge. While most people were given a try without any fire, they lit Rony's on fire right away, though luckily the fire was small. So small, that they stopped him and lit it again. And this time, Rony got tons of oohs and ahhs and stuff in Japanese that we couldn't understand (sugoii!) There were TV crews there and everything! Rony may have made his Japanese TV debut, we don't know. But here's our recording of the event:



When Rony was done and turned around to come back, everyone started clapping - around 25-30 people. It was really cool. They then offered Talia a chance, but she ran away and ducked beneath the table in fear. Sorta. Actually, we DO know the word for scary in Japanese - kowai - so she just kept saying that until they realized it wasn't going to happen.

It was then that people started offering us free soup and sports drinks and sake and beer - it was hilarious! Everywhere we go here, people offer us free food and drinks. There was also another drink, a rice-based liquor, that we were given, and it was nice.

About half an hour later, after we continued to marvel at the people playing with fire, including some weirdos (a lady who was still holding on to her completely-flammable purse) and fearless parents (who held their little children with one arm and threw fire around themselves with the other,) we started walking to some of the other stations to see if there would be something different there.

We arrived at the place where Talia slid earlier, and they also had a bonfire going on, though a smaller one, and the fire thingy, too. Rony decided to have another go, and he says the second tim isn't as scary as the first. Just so y'all know.

Of course, we were the only foreigners there, too, so we again attracted much attention, especially when Rony did the fire thing again. And again, we were offered soup and sake, and they just wouldn't take no for an answer, so after more soup and more shots of sake with a few funny drunk Japanese men, we headed back to the train station to go back to the hotel and get some sleep.

All in all, this was an awesome day, especially since it was completely unexpected.
But it's not over! Another snow festival is coming soon: Kamakura Snow Festival in Yokote.
Stay tuned!

Pics from Morioka and Kakunodate