Daio Wasabi Farm

One of the highlights of the trip was the Daio Wasabi Farm.  We stayed the night in Matsumoto at a ryokan run by an old man, his wife, and their daughter.  The daughter picked us up from the train station and on the way, she told us about a wasabi farm in the nearby town of Azumino.  We had planned to go to Nara the next day, but then decided to call an audible and venture over.

The way to Azumino is a gorgeous 30 minute train ride through the Japanese Alps, with the mountains stretching from one side of the windows to the other.  The town itself has its own quirks.  It has a healthy density of shrines for a small sleepy town.  There's also the Spoon Art Cafe.  I don't even know how to tell you about it.  I'd have to explain in person.

The Daio Wasbi Farm is a reminder of how enthusiastic the Japanese can be of whatever it is they do.  Even if it's farming roots.  Everything is relentlessly wasabi-themed.  There's wasabi beer, wasabi ice cream, wasabi burgers, and barely any food that doesn't have wasabi in it.  In the gift shop are plush wasabi toys, wasabi keychains, and wasabi snacks.  If you don't like wasabi, what are you doing on a wasabi farm, anyway?

The rest of the farm was a very nice walk with cherry blossoms in full bloom.  You get to see wasabi in various stages of growth, from seedling to full plant, with workers tending row by row.  The plants apparently thrive in the crystal clear water flowing from the nearby mountains, and before planting, the workers walk around with flamethrowers to sterilize the gravel.

At the end of the day, we got on a train to Kyoto, glad we had discovered this little town hiding in the mountains.  It was probably more fun than getting attacked by deer.

Matsumoto

I have decided that I am not very good at developing color film.  Everything has a blue cast to it that I can't quite work out.

Anyway, Matsumoto is a nice little town in the Japanese Alps.  Its main attraction is Matsumoto Castle.  The castle is painted black with white accents, which makes for a cool contrast, and brings out the colors in the nearby trees.

You can go inside and have a look for  a fee.  There are artifacts on display, and you can still make out the chisel marks on the wood beams (had they not invented the wood plane by then?).   It's pretty neat inside and you get nice views from the windows, but the thing was, it ate up over an hour of time because some of the stairs are tall and awkward, and people (particularly kids and old people) get bottlenecked on them.

The castle grounds are pretty nice, if a bit crowded with tourists for the cherry blossom season.  Definitely a nice place for a stroll though.

Hey check it out, it says "bokeh"

Trains

As I mentioned before, we did a lot of traveling during our week in Japan.  The itinerary was: Matsumoto, Kyoto, Osaka, and back to Tokyo.  For that, we would be riding a lot of trains.

For the long hauls between the major cities, we bought a JR pass.  It's an all-you-can-ride pass that would last a week, only sold overseas to visitors.  It also comes with a small guidebook with sample itineraries and brief bits of information and landmarks near each stop along each route.

The ride is smooth and quiet, and you get to enjoy your beer and ekiben.  Eki means "station", and ben is short for bento, which means "boxed meal".  Bento are usually designed for grabbing and going, usually with bite-sized items with minimal liquids or sauces to slosh around.  They're also compact and designed to be edible on your lap or on the small tray tables on a train. The ekiben shops also sell beer to wash it all down, though if you find yourself thirsty again during the trip, there will be snack and souvenir carts regularly pushed through the train that will sell cold soft drinks and beer.

Each station will have its own selection of ekiben, which usually feature things local to the town that they're in. In line with Japan's obsession with fancy packaging, some of then come in fun shaped containers.  For more on ekiben, here's a 40 minute video about it.

One of the most alien things to me in Japanese movies has always been the sound of the chimes at the railroad crossings.  It's usually placed strategically to mount tension before a major battle or monster attack.  I can't tell if it's the purposely discordant tones in the chimes, or an actual Pavlovian response from watching too much anime, but they really do grab my attention.  There's nothing in the world like the sound of a railroad crossing cutting through the silence of a sleepy town in the Japanese Alps.

On Vacation

The plan was: one week in Japan, then one week in Maui on the way home.  This was very much a vacation of contrasts.  Our week in Japan was packed solid with schedules, landmarks, and express trains.  After that, our week in Maui was a blank slate; we rented one rental condo across the road from the beach, and only decided what we would do when we woke up in the morning and assessed our desire to do anything at all.

On our way out to Japan, we stopped for a night in Oahu to have a break from flying, which turned out to be quite nice.  We had come from a long, dreary New York winter that was still getting its last frigid swipes in as we got on the plane.  The blue skies and warm Pacific breeze were a welcome sight.  It set the stage for a very vacationy vacation.  Probably the vacationest vacation we've ever taken.

I had the Leica M3 with me.  I love it because it feels like there's "less camera" between you and the things that are happening around you.  There's an aperture ring, a shutter speed dial, and a shutter button.  There's not much in the viewfinder, either -- just framelines and a rangefinder patch.  You see a photo, you take a photo, and you put the camera back down and move on.  

There's only one problem with the Leica M3 -- using it is work, and I was on vacation.

You have to be in photographer mode to use the M3 -- constantly hunting, predicting, adjusting.  Normally this is great because you take everything in, asking questions and answering them yourself, learning about this new place you've gone.  Our trip to Iceland basically necessitated photographer mode.  It was a constant parade of details and hidden secrets to dig up and examine.

On this trip though, I wanted to cut loose.  The places we would go were places of relaxation and not-worrying.

Of course, that's not to say that there will be no photos of this vacation -- I did manage to shoot 9 rolls of film.  This was all just a disclaimer that what you'll see is far from a comprehensive list of all the things we did and saw on this trip, because switching in and out of photographer mode got really tiring and there were times I just stowed the camera in my backpack, only stopping to take it back out for when there was something really worth documenting.