Voyage Junkie

Lovely French-inspired desserts, from L-R: egg pudding, strawberry-pistachio meringues, maple bar, hazelnut meringues.  All GF but the maple bar.    I'll definitely post more on French things soon... I'm amassing quite a collection of French signage that needs to be documented.  For now, have fun with this lovely spread of treats we purchased from a French-themed pâtisserie and chocolatier that is down the street from our house.  Everything is incredibly delicious and artfully made.  At the shop you can watch the bakers while you eat fresh croissants and drink coffee, if you like.  It's pretty intense. If you can't read the wrappers, here's what they say. Le Cerisier d'amour, depuis 1976, La pâtisserie que profite de la matiere delicieuse. The Cherry tree of love, since 1976, The pastry that takes advantage of the delicious matter. They probably mean to say, "The pastry that benefits from delicious ingredients."  As for "cherry tree of ...

My friends, L-R around the circle: Rachael, me, Matt, Sayaka, Laura, Mari, Asami, Kacey, and Saya. On January 29th I celebrated my first Japanese birthday!  It was a great time.  I went out with a bunch of friends to our favorite Izakaya (Japanese-style bar).  We ordered delicious food, including pizza chicken skewers and ice cream with warm sweet potato and caramel sauce.  I tried some strawberry plum wine and light plum wine, the latter of which I enjoyed a bit more.  After dinner we went and sang a ton of bad karaoke, including American, Japanese, and Korean pop songs.  What can I say?  We're a multi-cultural crowd, which apparently means we're equal-opportunity for awful music. Here's Matt with Sayaka, an English teacher at his main school (Nagamori Minami).  It was her birthday on January 21st, so the party was 1/4 for her! To the right, Rachael and I begin to look like sisters!  Her birthday was January 10th, so 1/4 of the par...

Apparently Panasonic got a facebook post from a girl who in Bahrain who wanted her brother to see snow.  So they wrapped a 70-quart snowman in a new insulation called U-Vacua, and shipped it!  It traveled 5,314 miles and 40 hours and arrived in mint condition.  Check the video!  And check the link  for a more descriptive article on the kids and the process.

It's been awhile since we've posted, since nothing typically goes down in Gifu.  Tomorrow, it's back to school for us in a snowy land!  But today, it is fun to see that there should be no bikes and no smoking on the streets of downtown Nagoya... ferris wheels, however, are fine.

Today we went to Okazaki, where Matt lived about four years ago for a summer.  We visited Okazaki Castle, a wonderful little castle with a lot of history.  Placed strategically in the center of Japan, Okazaki, Nagoya and Gifu Castles all featured prominently in the battles for unification that took place in the early 1600's.  However, Okazaki castle had been an important stronghold since its first construction around 1455.  It is in a wonderfully defensible location, situated on a river bank where many rivulets run in different directions.  The castle changed hands several times and may have been moved in 1531 to its present site.  In 1590 it was made more defensible with a series of precincts surrounded by moats (now gardens).  The castle is most famous as the birthplace of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who later went on to unify Japan. From the train station, we took a scenic walk into the castle grounds.  Although Matt...

For our first trip of the New Year, we went to Nagoya.  This mid-sized city (Matt refers to it as the Philadelphia of Japan) is about a half-hour train ride away from Gifu, making it a perfect day-trip destination.  Besides the allure of proximity, the city has a wide array of sights to see and shopping to do, so it's also interesting!     We planned to see Nagoya Castle, which is one of four castles in the chuubu (middle) of the country that featured prominently in the uniting of Japan under one warlord in the early 1600s.  Because Nagoya is small, we went one stop beyond the castle on the subway, in order to take a leisurely stroll through some flower gardens leading up to castle grounds.  To the left is a windmill in the park, presumably commemorating Japan's friendship with the Dutch people.  This particular windmill, while cute, may have been built as early as 1988, so it's not incredibly historic. There were also, even in January, fl...