Kaiwo Maru and so much fish






Saturday morning, my supervisor Nishibuchi sensei and I took a trip on the tram. My Kyoto sensei gave me a pack of tickets for the Manyosen (fun red tram thingie) that goes from the Takaoka eki to the sea at Shiminato. We had talked about doing it doing it a few months ago, but finally managed to get around to it. The tram took about 1/2 an hour to get all the way to Kaiwo Maru park where we explored a cutter built in 1930.





Nishibuchi cracked me up pushing all the buttons, trying to open all the locked doors, and knocking the compass and radar systems around. She has the curiosity of a little kid, which is really refreshing to see, since the majority of Japanese I have run into are so straight-laced and conformist about such things.


After a few Titanic reenactments, we headed to a little market to pick up some omiyage for our co-worker who's house we were invited to for lunch.




They had some great metallic fish decorating the ceiling, and a whole case full of random medicines.





Sorry for the excessive photos of the medicine, but they reminded me of the seed packets you could buy for your gardens back home, at the flowershops. Behind the counter, they also had a bag of dried rattlesnake, which I was told is very healthy for us. ???!?!?!?!


Lunch was good, rice, soy sauce, sashimi, sprouts, seaweed, and mystery Japanese herb (that's their name, not mine), with miso. After the main course, they busted out mad sushi. It was trout flavored, which Toyama is apparently famous for... it was ok. And another mystery herb wrapped silvery looking fish. I preferred the trout. We watched a friendly Japan vs. USA soccer match on tv, and her husband (who is a JTE in Toyama-shi) and I found out that we both play the same position, yeah new friend! She pulled out photobooks of their family's recent trip to New York, DC, and Florida, and we talked about what Japanese and Americans thought of one another. All in all, it was a great afternoon and I am really glad we went. Oh, nearly forgot. When we left, our host generously gave us each a huge plate of kani and trout sushi to take home! So much food!