konnichi wa

Yep, Japan again.

I'll quickly skip over the long flight (11:00 hours) and the jetlag (yes, I have it), to come to the good bits.

A) The weather: Since I've arrived here it's been sunny and comfortable. Yes it's sort of cold (after all, it's winter here, too) but not too bad really, and almost no wind.

B) Food: Yummy. One example lunch today

First, though, you have to tackle the menue.

Many restaurants in Japan have picture menues and also often have some sort of examples of what they have to offer in form of a plastic model. Sad to say, this restaurant didn't. Luckily one of my collegues is bi-lingual (English / Japanese), so he helped us to get what we wanted.

I wanted Udon soup (with tempura)




C) History: We went to visit Matsumoto, which is famous for its castle.


400 years old and in an excellent condition (it never saw a battle, though, even though it was as a fortress originally). To protect the indoor floors, every visitor gets a pair of slippers and they have to carry their outdoor shoes in a plastic bag with them. I don't know why we got nicer slippers then the rest, but well, we did. Maybe because we were obviously foreigners.



D) Knitting: This time I opted for not taking any cross stitch, but concentrate instead on some knitting. So I took a skein of Rowan kidsilk haze and started on a fancy little scarf.


I already pretty much doubled the length from the one in this pictures on the (long) train ride back.

So, tomorrow I'll go to Tokyo for some shopping (electronics, maybe another lens for my camera and, if I can find it, some yarn)