Day Trip to Inuyama

[Lunch = some absolutely MASSIVE toast. The only place that appeared to be open in Inuyama was a small cafe run by an older lady. The menu included toast, some 'interesting' sounding sandwiches and weiner coffee, oh wait, that was Viennese coffee (haha, Elspeth - say it out loud!)]

Adventure #1: Kiso River Rapids


After taking the 40 minute shuttle bus ride up river, we hopped in a boat with approx 20 other people and started down the river. After a couple minutes we started to get the sneaking suspicion that maybe they put the foreigners in the front for a reason. Poor Elspeth got the worst but they did have a tarp to wrap around your shoulders, which did help.




The guide was pointing out these rock formations that were supposed to look like objects (everything from glasses, to cats, to camels). I could only see the lion formation. It was just nice to see the countryside and shoot down some rapids, even though they were smaller than Becky and I wanted.


This is Inuyama-jo (from the boat), which according to my guidebook claims to be the oldest cast in Japan (built in 1537). We decided to leave the castle for another Inuyama trip because Becky is all castled-out!




Here is a short video of our boat ride, for your amusement.


Adventure #2: Uraku-en and Jo-an Teahouse (aka Becky's first matcha experience)



The day was absolutely gorgeous so we decided to end our Inuyama trip with a relaxing stroll around the garden and some tea at the tea house, which is a national treasure. It was built in 1618 by the tea ceremony master Oda Uraku (Oda Nobunaga's brother).


[has anyone else noticed my obsession with bamboo?!]






Tea - First we were given a chestnut tea sweet that was actually pretty good. My favourite part of this was the bamboo (surprise, surprise) knife-thing that you used to cut and eat it. Then we drank our matcha, which Becky described as a spinich-grass-smoothie. I on the other hand like matcha.



After hanging out near the river for a while, we headed back to the train station and to Inuyama Station (we had been near Inuyama yuen station). We were hoping to find something to eat but it appeared that the only thing on Inuyama's main street were hair salons. We decided we needed meat for dinner so that meant Outback's in Sakae. We spent the next couple hours eating large quantities of cheeseburger and watching all of the unfortunate foreign guys with their Japanese girlfriends (you know the ones...the creepy foreign guys whose reason they are in Japan is to get a girlfriend). We came back to my apartment, watched some Grey's Anatomy and then called it a night. After all that fresh air, river rapids and tea house-ing, we were all exhausted.