today is the seventh day of my Japan holiday!! wow so fast and 1 week is gone.... well today was the last day in Shirakawa-go, and i tell ya 2 days there is just right, not too long, not too short. its more of the nature kind, no shopping, lots of exploring. so as usual, my bro was so quiet and he stuck to his PSP for the entire day.

today is Sunny!!

for the start of the morning, woke up feeling great after sleeping on the tatami mat! i was like the only person who was so awake. the rest of my family was complaining about the cold weather and how low the tatami was. yeah it was cold but for me i was alright, used to freezing conditions already.

in the m0rning, we were served breakfast! there were a group of students and a family of three seating with us in the same horseshoe formation.

hmm thats mountain vegie with some mushrooms, didnt really taste that nice, maybe im just not used to eating vegie.

oo you see the raw egg on the table? its supposed to be cracked, then mixed, then poured into the rice! i was like OMG when i saw the family of three doing it. haha! anyway the tenants offered to scramble our eggs!! i was so relieved, eating raw eggs and having a stomach ache out in the open without any toilet will be a very tough situation. you think?

thats the egg and....heres the miso soup! i notice jap always serve the miso soup piping hot and as usual i cant drink it as it is way too hot! i think the japanese are really concerned over the presentation as well as their quality of food. that is so good! compared to singapore's standards....

its like a usual thing to do, drink coffee, so we drank. lols their coffee was very blend, unlike the thick kind in singapore, theirs also has very little milk, not sweet, tastes slightly sweeter than water! no matter how, the coffee still had the distinct taste of coffee. strange huh?


oo look at all the icicles! i tried standing under them but they didnt drop. one droppped on my hand and it was a little painful..

oo see those strange white flaps sticking out of my shoe? those are plastic bags.... shoe was like wet yesterday so i decided to put on an extra layer of plastic bag over my socks!! MUHAHA!

believe it or not, my dad was like dancing with the 2 umbrellas, one in each hand, down the slope. X.X

look at the scenery....for the last time. we are going back to Takayama today!! my bro was like "finally....TV...." we packed our bags and carried all the belogings wherever we went. sounds really stupid but yeah. didnt have any other option.

mum was sooo busy taking photographs till i had enough time to make this snowman out of nowhere. its quite big, just that it looks super small in the photo la.....its butt is big enough for a normal sized chair. thats how big it is! i made two of em, just that the other one, i pushed too hard and it fell into the stream behind.

today we headed to the observatory, its like a freakin house located ALL THE WAY UP A HILL. so, we had to climb up the hill.... i took a seven minute video but due to some stupid electrical problems all my videos of the japan trip are missing. T.T mum was like fuming mad at me. oops. :-X

on the way there.....



thats the blind corner mirror just in case you cant see the shape of it. hehe you can see me covered with a hood just at the edge of the mirror!


as they used hot spring water for their growing of crops, the water didnt freeze even when the temperature hit a freezing minus 3 degrees.

this souvenir shop was the cause of my freezing... as well as my defrosting. later tell you more!

i spot FISH!!! and the water is not frozen too! wth. there were rainbow trouts.... all kinds of what blue trouts, super big fishes bigger than my arm. oh yeah there was koi fish too. what a a strange mix.

more icicles!! super cool la! some of them was in the curved shape!

thats the riceball stall i was talking about, it sells hot hot riceballs, anything that is made of rice. even the fish like thing was rice.


ok this is what happened....told all my friends about this story.
1. i bought riceballs
2. i was talking to my bro under the roof
3. snow melted, the whole chunk of snow that was at leat half an arms thick fell onto me.
4. i was buried in the snow obviously
5. i was OK!
6. walked about....riceball was still edible.
7. the snow on me melted....
8. i was FREEZING
9. the water in my legs FROZE!!
10. ran back to the souvenir shop
11. now you know the whole story le bah! super cool experience la! ps i noticed my nails were still pink, every since i went to deb's birthday party and she coloured em, its been over a month!

then, we carried on with our walking towards the observatory.



FINALLY, reached the entrance. the observatory is really far away and you can acutally see it in the photo above above. so thats the photo above the photo above. understand? the obersvatory looks big, but the climb up is long, as i took this picture far away, so the height seems to have shortened.

after reaching the top, i see practically the whole of Shirakawa-go! the walk was like approx 7mins of brisk walking, i was sweating when i reached the top! luckily my sweat didnt freeze on me!

after that, returned to level ground and walked to the bus station.... sob sob. actually not sad la, just that the place is good.....


couldnt resist the hot food in the freezing weather, so i bought more! oo heres the pic of it! just now was too busy to take a pic.

then, we ate at this udon stall that served OK udon but the SERVICE WAS BAD! the waitress was biased against the foreigners as we were served water while having to face the super black and elongated face of the waitress who looked as if her face just got banged by a trailer or what.

SERVICE WAS SUPER BAD, the locals had hot green tea and when we asked for the green tea, the waitress asked us to self service. it is very common in japan to have the people serving you green tea, even when you enter the shop! Kudos to all the shops in japan except this one!

my mum was so pissed off she took a picture of the woman who was sulking like mad as well as the shop in Shirakawa-go, strongly not advised to go there, although the prices are slightly lower, like a few ten cents lower, i am not going back to that shop. there are much better shops around that serve better food and better services, there are also food stalls located in the village along the main road. PS expect ALL the food there to be expensive, including that lousy shop.

need to ask my mum for their pics. gonna post em.


anway we took the bus back to Takayama, on the way to the hotel shoppped around, and went to supermarket AGAIN to buy more food....


we had a feast that night! had enough of mountain veige. i like shirakawa-go, everything there is beautiful, except for that woman with that got-banged-into-a-lorry face.



oo the highlight of Takayama! i found this super old model that was SOLD OUT YEARS AGO! that was becasue i went to all those all antiques shop and found lots of old models!! lucky me! :D

Labels: 21 days, folk village, Holiday 2008, Japan, model, seventh day, Shirakawa-go, takayama