Tommy's Japan Journal 2005-2006

Kofu Orientation
Tuesday, August 16th, 2005 - Thursday, August 18th, 2005

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After passing through the entrance to Kuonji (see the return to Kuonji trip for a picture), you climb this gigantic flight of stairs. I felt sorry for the girls in heels.

Here's me in front of the main hall at Kuonji.

There were lots of these small gardens, but this is half of the only one I could take a picture of. The monks disprove of photos in the temple complex.

Here's the other half of this beautiful garden.

One table of us at the houtou restaurant. Marisa is to my left, and the girl 2 seats to my right is Amanda, one of the two Prefectural advisors in Yamanashi.

Here's a picture of the houtou at the Kofu restaurant. I've had it many times since, and it's always good! No meat houtou yet, though I hear it exists. Jason (check the Fujikyuu section) claims a place near his house sells Bear houtou. We'll see.

Chris, Marisa, Meriel and I ditched karaoke, had dinner by ourselves, then landed at Zawatamis for drinks.

On the night that we ditched karaoke with the other 50 people, we wandered around some after going to Zawatamis for drinks. We passed a movie theater, and Chris started imitating the poses. A random Japanese dude holding stage lighting (I know, seriously, who wanders the streets with stuff like that?) wanted us to pose with a random castle thingie so we did.

The conference in Kofu was much, much more fun than the Tokyo conference. Many of the talks were actually useful! I couldn't believe it. There was stuff on mold prevention (quite necessary, i promise!), team teaching, cooking, studying japanese, travel, driving, etc. All-in-all, a well-planned event. It just so happens that the nights were a lot of fun, too! I was rooming with a nice guy from England, Edward, and we had the room to ourselves. I didn't really hang out with them much, as his crowd went for the standard issue events of karaoke and gaijin bars and my little group opted for quieter and more local joints.

There are a couple of spots that stand out and are fit for print. There are plenty of other amusing stories that aren't fit for print, but oh well. They don't concern me anyway. :)

The first was the group excursion to Kuonji. Kuonji is in Minobu (about 35 minutes from my house in Hayakawa), and is the head of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism. Here's the handy encyclopedia link. Kuonji has a lot of temples on the complex, but we only walked up the gigantic stairs and went through the main temples (no pictures allowed inside, although we took some of the garden).

The second was my first experience with houtou, a delicious Japanese noodle dish that Yamanashi is famous for.
The last experience was a little quiet night on the town with Marisa, Meriel, and Chris. The 4 of us ditched the main events and hit up a small curry place for dinner. Then we wandered around until we found a really cool appetizer bar called Zawatami's. It had a great atmosphere, and we had a lot of fun. I drank a little too much sake, but not enough to get buzzed. Enough, though, to be highly amused when we brought a gigantic bottle of wine back to Meriel's hotel room (she had a single) where we made Chris drink almost all of it. We had bought the wine at a tiny shop near Zawatamis, where we stopped to chat with an elementary school girl who had fun telling us "My name is Harumi!" Lots of fun telling stories in the hotel room. Also at Zawatami's, I ordered us some chicken skewers that turned out to be cow tendon! Yum! No, just kidding, not yum. They were awful. Meriel, from Singapore, was able to identify them, though. She ate most of them.

It hardly seems worth the effort, but all material here is copyright Thomas Williams 2005, All Rights Reserved and nothing at all on this site may be used without my express written permission.