Shimo-suwa and Matsumoto

So after our adventures in Osaka and Nara, we were ready to meet our couch surfing hosts.

But first a few words about them: We contacted them a few weeks ago, when we were still in Australia. They looked like a cool couple and they also have a blog about their adventures in Japan! Actually that's how we decided to visit them.
Their blog is about how a couple from Minnesota is teaching English and living in a small town in Japan and their view on Japanese culture. It's very interesting and we learned a few things about living in Japan as foreigners.
Their blog was so instructive and interesting that Rony kept reading it even after they accepted us as couch surfers.
Employing English speaking foreigners as assistant teachers is a big industry in Japan and there are around 60,000 ELTs in Japan!

Shimo-suwa at night

So we arrived in this small town called Shimo-suwa and we were greeted with music on the street, as in Uchiko. It was a bit late already, around 8, so there was no one on the streets and everything was dark. But we knew the short way to our hosts and we were greeted with a warm welcome.

The communication was very easy and we spent the whole evening talking about a lot of things: Their life, our trip, our views on Japan, their views on Japan, and so on...

The next day we planned to visit Matsumoto, a city known for its castle, and to buy a few groceries there for the dinner we planned to prepare.

Matsumoto castle

Matsumoto castle is one of the few original castles that remains as it was 400 years ago,when it was built.

The visit to the castle is very interesting and less freezing than the one in Matsuyama. But with steeper stairs than the previous one. And English explanations everywhere.

There is also a small weapon museum in it.

And the view is great in all directions.

It is believed that a local goddess has protected the castle since its construction, and that explains its longevity.

And we tried the local vending machines and bought ice cream! Just for your information, it was 10 degrees Celsius.

After that, we went to the local city museum, which is located in front of the castle entrance. Why would we go to a small local museum? Because the entrance fee was included in the castle ticket.

The place is a former school building, and it displays old items from Matsumoto and explains the history of the city. Everything is in English too, so we could learn a few things.

We then walked around Matsumoto a bit, and saw a nice shopping street with lots of frog sculptures.

Apparently, the frog is somehow the symbol of the city.

And we saw a huge sculpture of a frog fighting a lizard!

And we saw this awesome clock:

which has some puppet show at every hour. See our video page for the show.

After that, we went to shop for the dinner we were going to prepare in the evening for our hosts.

The plan was to prepare some Israeli-French food and since our hosts were vegetarian we planned on preparing  falafel, hummus, tahini, halva, and a vegetarian quiche.

Well, it was 50% successful: After hours of preparations (we prepared everything from scratch) the quiche was good, as usual, the hummus was great, and easy to prepare too, but the tahini, made from sesame seeds we bought, and the falafel, made from chickpeas we bought in Kyoto 10 days earlier, were a flop: The tahini was just a sesame paste and the falafel looked good until we started to fry them: They all fell apart! But our host wanted to try them anyway so we ate flat and oily falafels, humus and quiche. And had lots of sake to drown our sorrows. :-)

The humus

"And the halva?" You probably ask. Well, since the tahini was not really a tahini, it ended up as sesame butter: Peanut butter but with sesame instead. Our host wanted to keep it anyway, since it tasted good. But it was no halva.

We finished our dinner by discussing music and books and French and Israeli politics for hours. It appears that Rony and John have the same taste in books and music and it was a great evening, discussing everything with people we felt were friends and could stay in contact even after we leave them.

More photos of Shimo-suwa:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=17025495&l=eaf3da5944&id=906005363