After having a nice breakfast at the hotel, at around 8.30 am, we departed from the hotel to do the business, which was a factory visit to MAKITA factory in Anjo. Our local guide was a nice Indonesian lady who had lived in Japan for about 30 years. When we arrived at the factory at around 10 am, we were guided to see the process of making the spare parts and machines. In the end, we were allowed to see the showroom and exhibition, and they served us with drinks. While having a drink, we conversed with the local guide to practise using our Japanese.
 |
| A nice breakfast |
At 11 am, we went from the factory for our lunch place, which was all-you-can-eat yakiniku! The name of the place was Stamina something (I couldn't read the kanji). There were a lot of varieties besides yakiniku there, for example, sushi, curry rice, noodles, pasta, gratin, ice-cream, waffle and a lot more. We had a very hearty and delicious meal over there. How I love the place!
After the stomach was full, we traveled to Nagano our next stop, at around 2 pm. It was a long journey, about 4-hours bus ride. At 6 pm, finally we arrived at Ikenotaira Shirakaba Resort Hotel. We were told that there would be a gala dinner starting at 7.30 pm. However, since the hotel is equipped with an onsen - open public bath, we thought of experiencing it first before dinner.
We were told before that we were supposed to be completely naked inside the onsen, so we did so. However, I was sad to see some fellow tour members still wearing their underwears inside the onsen. I guess they were too embarrassed to be naked, but I still think that we have to follow the rules though. Luckily there were only us there, so nobody complained.
At 7.30 pm, we had the gala dinner. The food was a buffet style and there were quite a lot of variation. However, because there were 12 groups eating at once, the queue became very crowded and I was really confused where to line up, so I just got whatever food I could get. During the dinner, we were entertained by a wadaiko - Japanese drums - performance which was really really nice (and there was a cute guy too! :p), and some dances performed by 2 professional dancers grandmas. The dances were a little bit... urgh.. boring (sorry >.<), but I was really impressed by the two grandmas who performed the dances. They were already old, in their 70s, but they could still perform well. Oh yeah, the okami - the lady owner of the hotel - even made a speech to greet us, maybe because we were a very large group and booked all the hotel for our group only ^^.
 |
| The Okami |
 |
| Dinner |
 |
| Wadaiko Performance |
After dinner, then we stopped by the souvenir shop to take a look, and phoned our parents using Skype in my sister's iPad (because the hotel is equipped with wi-fi). Then we went straight back to our room and had a rest.
No comments:
Post a Comment