Trip to Nagano Prefecture

On the weekend we participated in my laboratories trip to the Nagano-Prefecture. On the way to our destination we visited Matsumoto castle. This was the first castle we saw in Japan. The structure uses a lot of wood. The inside of the floors does not contain separate rooms. They were probably rearranged frequently, by placing paper walls or curtains, according to changing requirements and use/purpose of the floors. This castle is a bit more than 400 years old. We were told that very few buildings of this age remain in today’s Japan. This is also the impression we had from the architecture we saw in Tokyo and in the countryside.

In the evening we had a barbecue. Here the difference from what we are used to lies in the kind of food. A lot of clams and king prawns were grilled. The meat used for the barbecue was in very small slices. Chiara’s favourite were the Japanese pumpkins. This kind of pumpkin tastes like ours but you can also eat the skin, so they are very easy to handle and good for frying or cooking (or in this case grilling) of slices. On one grill an iron plate was put and the grill was used to bake some noodles (as shown in the picture).


During the trip we also experienced Onsen (Japanese hot spring bath) for the first time. The bathing follows some kind of ritual. First you sit down in front of a mirror on a stool that resembles an upside down plastic bucket. It has a hole in the seat so water doesn’t remain on top. Here you shower, wash your hairs etc. (everything while seated on the stool). You clean yourself thoroughly, because the actual bath is just for soaking. The Temperature of the water is very hot (in our case it was about 41 C). Therefore you stay in the water just a short time. Many people have most of the time just their legs in the water. Some water tubs were indoors, while a small pool also was outside the building. We were told that this is especially nice in the winter, when you can enjoy watching the snow flakes while sitting in the hot water.

In the bathroom in our Tokyo apartment we also have a mirror that is attached to the wall very low. Now we know that this meant to be used while taking a shower, sitting on one of those bucket-seats.