Study trip

Yesterday we started our trip early in the morning by taking a train up north to the mountains, where the snow is.

Some of us spent the one and a half hour train trip by sleeping, some facebooking and some by takin photos.

Well actually we went first to see a museum of a company called Gunze, But since I was alrady so hungry I jumped straight to the food pictures. Our lunch boxes were very nice. A bit fishy but good!

After that we continued to a building that used to be a primery school, but nowdays it is used for making washi, japanese paper. We all made some sheets of paper and had a tour around the building showing the proces of making paper step by step.

In the other rooms of the school there were exhibitions about papers and also few cool parasols.

The next stop was our hotel. After settling down we headed outdoors to play in the snow. Some of the other students weren't so familiar with snow so we had to teach them how it work (in the other words wash their faces with snow while stuffing it into the necklanes). In the hotel there were also a hotspring aka onsen. Being all wet and frozen after the snow fight it was a great pleasure to soak in the outdoor pool. After that we had a big nabe dinner with everyone. 

On the next morning we contined to a building that used to be a temple 200 years ago. There we were teached how to make a straw thingy (in the picture but the name was too difficult to remember haha).

This item is for protection and for good harvest aka happines. 

After we had a big lunch with fire baked rice and miso soup, eggrolls and deer meat.

The last part of the trip was to visit a village that is famous for its special style of houses with big hight roofs. Unfortunately from those i don't have that good pictures because the tirednes was a bit too much :)

But over all it was such a great trip with such a great people. Of course we were following the Japanese tight timetable and we could have had more "free time" (but if we needed it we took it). And actually it was great to see some snow! It felt so cosy and familiar to see all that whiteness. There is no winter without snow.