Well what a weekend we had.  We set off early Sunday morning for Yamaguchi City with friends Bill, Tracy, and their daughter Pearl.  Instead of taking the train or driving on the expressway like last weekend we took the local highway.  After about an hour and a half of driving at 50 kph we turned off the highway and headed up into the mountains to an interesting place called Chogennosato.

As I understand it, this place belonged to Chogen Shounin, an adventurous Buddhist monk.

When the great Toudai Temple in Nara City was destroyed in the Genpei battle of 1180 he provided the massive Japanese Cedar and Cypress trees for the temple to be rebuilt.  These trees stood 20 – 40 meters tall and were one and a half meters around.

Instead of chopping them down, the men dug huge holes down into the ground around the tree’s root system until the tree could no longer hold itself upright.  Next, hundreds of men had to get the trees from up on the mountain down to the stream below using block and tackle and huge amounts of manpower.

Then they would dam up one side of the river in various spots to increase the flow on the other side to get the logs down stream and out into the Seto Sea where they floated the logs north to Osaka and then many miles upstream to the city of Nara where the temple was rebuilt.  All this occurred back in the 12 century!

This park had many recreated old buildings to explore, like the traditional Japanese house, a stone sauna for the workers, a wood shop, and other support buildings for the logging activities.

The thatched roofs were amazingly thick.

Time for a delicious Soba lunch break.

After lunch we got to make our own soba noodles.  First we combined a mixture of buckwheat and soba flour with a small amount of water.  We did this in a large bowl by swirling it around with our finger tips

until it became a smooth ball.

Then we flattened it and rolled it out

and the best part – chopping up the thin noodles with this massive noodle chopping knife.

Great fun.

As we continued to explore this area we came upon some massively huge bamboo.

And this 800 year old Camellia tree.

At the highest point in the park is a playground for the kiddies.  The highlight here was the 103 meter roller slide.  We’d never seen this before.  You slide down on a little foam pad with a rope handle on all these little rollers.

From here we headed off to try our hand at Indigo dying.  This, too, was really fun.

First you choose what you want to make.  I picked a scarf, Pearl chose a handkerchief, and Tracy a table topper.  Then you can tie knots in it and/or put marbles or little balls under the cloth and tie them in with rubber bands.

Then you dunk your scarf in the indigo dye and swish it around just a few times for a few seconds, like mine – 3 times for 15 seconds each time or for really dark indigo – 5 times for 1 1/2 minutes each time.  After each dunking you take it out and untangle it and spread out the cloth exposing it to the air.  It was amazing that after the first dunking the cloth turned a lime green and as it felt the air it settled in to blue.

Once this process was complete we rinsed and rinsed and rinsed our cloth under cold water until the water ran clear.  Then we set the color by doing a 2 minutes soak in vinegar water.  Then another good long rinse and voila – a new indigo scarf for me!

Believe it or not our day was not over yet.  There was more to come.  We drove on into Yamaguchi City to a ryokhan (a Japanese Inn with hot springs) called Matsudaya.  This is like a hotel with a hot springs bath and includes dinner and breakfast.

As you enter the hotel lobby the first thing you do is take off your shoes and put on the hotel’s slippers.

Then you check in.  After checking in to our rooms

we donned our yukata (robe) and hanten (winter jacket) and headed off to the furoo (bath) and rotenburou (outdoor bath) for a soak.  Dinner was at 1830 and what’s fun about staying at these places is that you just go straight from the bath to dinner wearing your yukata to dinner and breakfast.

Dinner was more than you can imagine.

The right hand picture shows 7 dishes with about 3 different things on each one – just from my place setting alone.  Plus 2 dipping sauces.

And then came the second course.  Just 3 different dishes.  Puffer fish was the specialty this night.

And dessert.  The little brown thing was really good with some gooey custardy stuff in the center.  The fruit was really good too.

When we got back to our room our table was moved to the side and two futons were laid out on the floor with big puffy comforters on top.

Wow, what a great day!

Oh, and another “interesting” observation – these pillows seem to be filled with beans or maybe buckwheat.  A little . . . different. . .

Oyasumi nasai