Silver Week officially ended on September 23rd,
but I had the 24th and 25th off from work so my coworkers
planned a trip to Yamanashi!
I had been to Fuji-Q Highland before, but I had never
actually traveled in Yamanashi so I was really excited to go. I was especially excited to travel with my
coworkers since they are awesome!
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| Good morning, time to get the party started |
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| Playing card games during the bus ride |
Since there were 19 of us, we rented a bus. It was much more convenient than going by
train since there were so many of us.
And it meant that we could drink and play games more easily! My principal had even prepared a quiz for
everyone to participate in, and I actually won!!
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| Here's what I won! A Japanese ukiyo-e drawing |
We arrived at
Chateau Katsunuma, our first stop on our
Yamanashi tour, at about 10 am. We went
on a tour of the winery, where we saw how they bottle the wine and where they
store it. After the tour, we
participated in a wine tasting. I’m not
a big wine fan, but I really liked the wine that I tried there! I even bought one along with their popular
scallop snacks. They also have many
kinds of grape juice, so people who don’t/ can’t drink can enjoy the tasting as
well.
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| Starting the tour |
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| Where they bottle the wine |
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| Wine tasting |
The next stop was
Ichikoen for grape picking and lunch. They had all-you-can-eat seedless Kyoho
grapes, but it was only for 30 minutes.
The grapes were really big and sweet, but I wish that we could have
stayed longer than 30 minutes. After
grape picking we went and had lunch!
Ichikoen offers grape picking as well as a barbecue lunch, where you
barbecue your own food under the grape vines!
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| Going to pick grapes (cut my head out on purpose muahaha) |
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| Under the grape vines |
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| Grapes as big as one's eyeball |
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| Lunch under the grape vines |
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| Time to barbecue |
After lunch, we went to
Kikyouya to try some of Yamanashi’s
famous Shingen-mochi! They do
all-you-can-pack Shingen-mochi for 210 yen, but they were sold out by the time
we had arrived! However, they did have
Shingen-mochi ice cream which was delicious!
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| Shingen-mochi ice cream at Kikyouya, 390 yen |
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| All the wasabi samples |
The next stop was
Fugaku Wind Cave. I think that we were running late by this
time though, so we sort of rushed through it so I didn’t get a chance to take a
good look inside the cave. It was pretty
cold inside, and the ceiling was very low, so everyone had to squat-walk
throughout most of the cave.
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| Descent to the cave (sorry for the blurry pic) |
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| Fugaku Wind Cave |
After we left the cave, I saw that they were selling corn
ice cream, so I decided to try it! It
tasted like corn, but it was still really good!
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| Corn ice cream, 360 yen |
The last stop of the day was at our hotel,
Kukuna. It had a Hawaiian-atmosphere, and it was
really nice! The bath was especially
nice! They have an outdoor bath too, so
guests can see Mt. Fuji from the bath on nice days! After a delicious dinner at Kukuna, we went
to bed to prepare for the next day of our trip.
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| Kukuna room |
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| View from our room |
The first stop of our last day in Yamanashi was
Oshinohakkai Village. It was raining pretty hard when
we went, so we weren’t able to see Mt. Fuji.
So sad. So I drowned my sadness
in ice cream! I got the lavender and peach
mix, but the lavender was so much more delicious than the peach.
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| Oshinohakkai Village |
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| Lavender and peach ice cream, 400 yen |
Our last stop in Yamanashi was at Gotemba Outlet. I guess Japanese people love outlet
malls? At least my coworkers do anyway J Overall, I had a really awesome time,
especially since I rarely get the chance to see my coworkers outside of
work!
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