I was excited about our schedule for Wednesday, April 7th. Things got a bit jumbled due to weather, but we were still able to visit both Boso-No-Mura (a traditional Japanese village) and the National Museum of Japanese History.
Boso-No-Mura was an incredible experience. We saw the layout of a traditional Japanese farmer’s home as well as the traditional children’s toys. More impressive was that we witnessed a 90-year-old man hop onto bamboo stilts with more success than most of the younger legs of the group. We also saw a samurai home complete with traditional weapons including a katana (long sword), tenkan (short sword), and two different spears.
After a lunch surrounded by cherry blossom trees, we made our way to the Japanese History Museum. The museum covered everything from the origins of Japanese civilization to post WWII history. (Side note: The dioramas were amazing!) It was quite an experience to walk alongside Japanese natives while we perused pictures of American and Japanese soldiers, war scenes, and weaponry. It was not so long ago that our countries’ citizens were killing one another. It’s hard to believe it’s possible based on the incredible hospitality we’ve been shown during our stay.
Thursday started with a trip to the Ushika Great Buddha, which was the largest statue in the world at the time of construction. (It is now the third largest in the world, and still the largest bronze statue.) The statue was surrounded by a beautiful garden and large carp pond. The inside of the Buddha had a museum of the progression of construction as well as a gift shop. After exiting the Buddha we were happy to find an animal park of sorts—rabbits and squirrels that were tame enough to pet and a few peacocks, one of which was flashing his feathers the entire time we were there.
Afterwards we took a quick tour of a winery and then had one of our best meals yet since arriving—Japanese-style barbeque. Each table of four had its own gas burner and plates of vegetables, meats, and seafood to cook for ourselves. It was delicious!
After lunch we went to a training facility for racehorses. It was fun to see horses swimming as part of their training. They also had a water massage to loosen muscles after workouts. From there we visited Osugi Jinja, a Shinto shrine that provided safe travels to its worshipers. I was especially thankful that each of us received a charm for safe travels as it was only a few short minutes before our bus was nearly hit by a car after our driver pulled out too soon.
Thursday was an early night since we all had to take off from the hotel by 3:45 AM to make it to the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo for the Friday morning auction.
