Not to be confused with this one.

So to explain my absence from the posting scheme of things, here’s a ridiculously non-anime related picture heavy post on my 2 day study trip a few days back (Unfortunately, I had to spend the days after the trip doing everything but posting on this blog, including spamming Anime Nano with some of my recent posts that I chose to republish – major apology for that one, wasn’t intended – and failing further still in beautifying this place. Well whatever, live with it for now, I know I’ll have to -_-”)

Oh and I lied about the non-anime related part in case you suddenly became uninterested (not that I can blame you)

So the study trip covered a couple of places of interest in the nearby prefectures of Shiga and Gifu (which were and still are mostly unfamiliar to my Japanese Geography resistant mind, except perhaps Gifu which I know was mentioned in the Yakitate 9 arc of Yakitate! Japan. I probably should go rewatch that entire arc and pay attention to all the locations they featured and hope to hell those are the ones I get tested on in 2 weeks -_-”).

Our first actual stop after passing through Kyoto and and then Shiga prefecture’s Lake Biwa was, well, Lake Biwa itself (It’s huge. Btw, the torii in the top pic is on the lake itself). Specifically we had to get off the bus and board a boat for Chikubu Island, which is supposedly only roughly 40 square kilometres. So I had to wonder a while what exactly we were going to see there (okay so maybe I should have been doing research or something instead of wasting the night before playing mah jong -_-”).

It didn’t help that the rock we were approaching seem to be sparsely covered in rather scary looking trees and swarming with sea birds (or is it lake birds?). I wish I noticed that my camera had already died on me then so that I actually had picture to show (it took me a while to notice that all my ‘pictures’ I took with my camera turned out a very bright white ORZ. All pictures from now on will be fuzzy-ish handphone products unfortunately)

Fortunately once the boat rounded the craggy bird shrieky side of the island, it was quickly revealed that the island does have a human inhabited tourist trap side to it after all. It’s not too big a place though, so we were given slightly less than an hour to go wild explore the several temples on the island. It’s a pretty pretty place really, unfortunately this and the one of the red tower on top are the only pictures I can publish here that are not totally white or contain faces of friends that I’m too lazy to censor off currently. Go here for the pretty pictures, then I’ll move on.

The next tourist trap location we headed to after leaving the island was Nagahama City closeby the shores of the lake. Here we were given more time to explore the streets/buy overpriced omiyage and whatnot. Places of interest include a glass factory place that sold perrty but fragile things that I couldn’t afford anyways, and…

*Like ZOMG inner weaboo comes out*

Well, that was an unexpected find (again, no research done, but the surprise factor did make the trip that much more memorable :P ). Who needs glass when you have plastic and resin!

Any Fist of the North Star fans reading? (Sorry, haven’t watched it)

Even in chibi form, Golgo 13 still kinda bugs me…

Most of us only spent time on the first floor of the place, which was where they the figures displayed were purchasable merchandise. The figure museum portion was upstairs, but there was enough to see as it was already. It was after realizing that I was probably spending more time than I should in there that I remember thinking “Err… wasn’t this supposed to be a study trip?”

Ramune – The drink of weaboos :P I just bought it for the marble popping fun. Wish they had a more palatable drink to go with the bottle though…

So we paid a visit to yet another temple in the city. Here I was too busy trying to avoid pigeon droppings on the ground and from the sky. At least I got a passably cool snapshot of them birds in flight (stop scoffing, you expert shutterbugs)

Back on the bus and time to head for our lodging for the night in Gifu. Since we only paid half of what our seniors did for this trip back in their time a couple of years back, we didn’t get a traditional style ryokan to put up the night in. We stayed the night at a modern hotel that did provide us with as much of traditional Japanese lodging experience as they could, which thankfully fulfilled all my expectations. So yea, we got to put on yukatas, have two lavish Japanese course meals, soak in an onsen (hey, a 6th floor open air bath is kinda cool, even if it isn’t au naturale), and sleep in futons, etc. Almost all the anime school trip cliches covered minus the scandalous confessions and whatnot.

The highlight for me as definitely dinner (sometimes I think I think with my stomach -_-”). It was amazing to behold all the individual portions of food prepared for each of the 70-odd of us laid out just waiting for *brain shuts off, busy drooling* – and they just kept piling us with more and more courses as the meal progressed. Strangely rice only came towards the end of the meal – after we had gorged ourselves on sashimi, chawanmushi, nabemono, tempura, soba… Basically everything but dessert – unless specifically ordered (but that’s apparently how the order goes). Towards the end saw the appearance of the much awaited/dreaded karaoke machine for us gaijin to strut our singing stuff… On the otaku front, we were ’serenaded’ with a rendition of the Slayers OP that was probably abysmal enough to the point of being utterly amusing to watch (though not so much to listen to) XD

@blissmo: How bout boiled bunnies? :P

Naturally, no onsen photos, so have some bunny-service instead. My very first Japanese onsen experience was literally a blur – I’m practically blind without my glasses, so I managed to go through the bathing rituals without having to see anything I’d rather not see, which also saved me from the obligatory embarrassment of one’s first time being in the buff with a huge crowd of people *swt*

Breakfast. Was too busy stuffing my face to take pictures during dinner.

The next day’s breakfast was only half as elaborate as dinner (which was still much anyhow), and I thoroughly enjoyed it despite feeling incredibly groggy after yet another night of continuous mahjong playing… Thankfully a lot of time to catch up on lost sleep on the bus in between locations. Next stop, a pharmateutical museum! …i.e. the actual study portion of the trip ORZ

Cool medicine grinding contraption – think a hamster wheel that fits humans instead.

We were first ‘treated’ to a video lecture on the Ezai foundation’s efforts in pharmaceuticals and how the museum and factory we were visiting is part of… *snores* JK. Amazingly enough, even in my sleep deprived state, I managed to stay awake through the whole thing, probably due to the cheesy English dub they employed for the video XD (If it was in Engrish, that would’ve been pretty epic)

The factory was pretty much automated in a lot of aspects and gave me the impression that us clumsy human beings wouldn’t be needed in a couple of years time -_-” What was cool was that behind the place lies a garden where they channel the treated water from the factory to. It was again, perrty, and thankfully devoid of any mutated vegetation or koi that I could see.

The museum was okay I guess, speaking as someone who isn’t too keen on historical artifacts even when they’re not medicinally related. Had to put my mind into Mushishi mode to appreciate some of the stuff: “Ah, so this is what Ginko would’ve done if he wasn’t busy extracting random Mushi from villagers” etc.

Teeny pic this time because I had to crop an unfortunate friend out :P

Final location before the bus trip back was Hikone Castle, which if I remember right was where Tokugawa Shogunate ruled from back in… Okay, thankfully Japanese History isn’t one of my required subjects right now. At any rate, it’s a National Treasure so is worth a look, even if it is only 3 floors (I think it was part of a larger castle that was moved here) and a hassle to climb since the ’stairs’ are more like ladders that really inconvenience the many elderly visitors, but all for the sake of preserving the authentic state of the place I guess.

An old sakura tree that needs the Hatsunejima touch.

View of Hikone Castle from one of the surrounding gardens.

And well, that’s pretty much it, minus the rest stops we took. All in all, an enjoyable trip all round despite (or rather because) we didn’t do much ’studying’ :P And for only 2000yen for the two days, I wouldn’t complain even if I didn’t have as much fun as I did. Now as for my continued absence from the blogosphere since the trip, that can be attributed to things like more late night karaoke sessions, followed by long periods of catching up to sleep and that ever increasing pile of backlogged anime homework, that and the horrible inconvenience of internet only until 10 at night, so whatever little time I had online was spent reading blog posts and more tinkering with tondemonothing (still far from done). Now, if you excuse me, I’ve got to go collapse on my bed before I fully turn nocturnal just as classes start again…