Days 5 and 6

Konbonwa! Konbonwa is good evening in Japanese. The team sends greetings from Japan. We are in Tokyo this evening. I hear that back home in Oklahoma we have some serious ice storms.

Yesterday, January 28th, was an exciting and cultural day. We left Tokyo for a city North of Tokyo called Nikko. Nikko is a mountainous and beautiful city. The first part of our day was spent at TASHI-FOOD INC. TASHI is a Tofu plant. We toured the plant and sampled just about every type of Tofu you can imagine!

Tofu is made from soybeans. TASHI imports the soybeans from other countries and does all of the processing there in the plant. We sampled everything from regular Tofu, to Tofu with soy sauce, to a Tofu whipped-mousse-cream-yogurt mixture and even Tofu doughnuts! We also tasted very fresh soymilk as well.

All of the employees at TASHI were so warm and welcoming. They embodied the Japanese culture and continued the excellent hospitality that the Japanese people have showed to us this far.

The TASHI-FOOD plant was a hands on learning experience about the many uses of the soybean for the team. Following that, we made our way to the Toshogu Shrine. The Toshogu Shrine was built in honor of a Japanese Samurai named Tokugawa. The Shrines in Japan have been amazingly beautiful. Every single detail in and on each of the buildings has such significant meaning. The Toshogu Shrine is very big and beautiful. The colors were so vibrant.

After we left the Toshogu Shrine we headed to a Ryokan, a Japanese style hotel, there in Nikko. The hotel is called Okuno-in Tokugawa. The hotel was awesome to stay at! The traditional Japanese style was throughout the entire hotel. There were Kimonos, Japanese style dresses, waiting for us in our hotel rooms. All the meals were very traditional Japanese meals. Our guide for the entire trip, Chiecko, gave us Origami and calligraphy lessons as well. This hotel allowed us to see how traditional Japanese people live.






Today, January 29th, began at the Kegon and Ryuzu waterfalls, Mount Nantai, and Lake Chuzenji. The waterfalls were the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever seen! Chiecko guided us throughout the mountains to find the best spots to view the waterfalls and take pictures. After we visited the second waterfall I had to just take a second and soak in the beautiful nature that surrounded us. Mount Nantai used to be an active volcano and now it is filled with beautiful water. That body of water is now known as Lake Chuzenji.

We then drove to Utsunomiya city. At Utsunomiya city, we visited Utsunomiya Hakuyo High School. We finally got to hang out with some FFJ members! We toured the high school and checked out the facilities. They had about 10 green houses, a Japanese Pear Orchard, biotechnology lab class buildings, an equine facility and a riding arena. It was crazy!!! I was blown away with the opportunities that the students at this high school had! There was a ceremony that we took part in. It was a banquet that was followed by very traditional Japanese shows. Three girls played traditional Japanese music on a Japanese instrument and one boy did a Japanese samurai sword ritual. It was cool! The FFJ members were so nice. They did not speak a whole lot of English and we do not speak Japanese; however, we were still able to communicate through hand gestures, smiles and laughs!