Two weeks ago, my language class took a trip to Asuke village. Asuke village is further into the mountains, about forty-five minutes from Nagoya. Asuke is famous for the changing leaves in autumn. However, there weren't that many leaves left by the time we went there--our teachers heard that it was taking people six hours to reach Asuke because of the crowds, so they moved our trip back so we could... wait out the rush, I guess. Or miss the rush.

We went to a village-within-the-village, where a bunch of shops are set up with people practicing traditional crafts like bamboo weaving, paper-making, umbrella-making, blacksmith...ery, and a few others. We had to choose one craft to do a speech in Japanese over as our final exam of the semester. I went with the woman who does traditional fabric dying. She basically tie-dyes stuff to make designs on the fabric, dipping into big ol' vats of dye on the floor. Fascinating? Perhaps not. But I got a good grade talking about it in Japanese!

There were also a bunch of little kids having a class trip to Asuke. It appeared they also had an assignment to ask the craftspeople about what they do. I was kind of jealous. They could ask way more complicated questions than me. I was basically stuck at "What is this?" over and over again ("Kore wa nan desu ka?"). But I suppose it's better than nothing.

We had way more time to do our project in the village than we needed, so myself and two others went and climbed to the top of a mountain... At least, I'm told it's a mountain, but it's certainly a very low one, from my experience with the Rocky Mountains. More like a respectable hill. It took us about twenty minutes, and left me incredibly winded. The trail went up from a shrine, so part of the way was marked by Shinto toriis, on the left. It was pretty cool. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of memory, but if I can get some pictures off of the guys I went up with, I'll post them later.

Asuke is a pretty little town, though kind of tourist-y. But it's scenic and nicer to walk around in than Nagoya. Eventually we got to eat at a little restaurant, too. (I had rice with eggs and chicken on.) Also, the Japanese souveniers were cheaper there than I'd seen other places, so right on!

posted by No_Fluff_Reviewer @ 1:48 AM