Going to Yamanashi

In the morning I did some cleaning. After I did some cleaning, I was watching one of the new DVD’s that I had bought recently. I got a good view of the special version of Independence Day. It’s a great movie from back in the day. I remember seeing that movie back in 1994 or so on Independence Day with my best friend back then. It brings back memories…It was a good movie and I guess it was the right time to see it too. I really like the speech that Bill Pullman or the President gives right before the big battle with the aliens near the end. It’s a great speech, very cheesy, but still great. EK came to my house a bit before this so he was able to see the end of the movie too.

Then I wanted to prepare for my trip to Hakone and Gotemba this weekend. So I got started with packing to go to Yamanashi with EK and his family. There are many things that I need to give to their family in thanks and just because. The packing didn’t take too long and hopefully I’ll have enough stuff for the whole time that I’m there. I’m not sure if it will be cold or hot, so I prepared for both. It looks like it’s going to be a great looking day and I’ll play tennis during this trip, so I’m excited about that. It’s actually starting to look like a vacation is going to happen on Golden Week. I’m glad these things turn out ok and I think I’ll enjoy it.

We left my house around 2pm and were headed to Yamanashi; well at least that’s what I thought. EK was having a bit of trouble getting out of Totsuka and we were just driving around and he didn’t know where he was going, and it was obvious. After about 30 minutes or so driving around my area, he hit the freeway and started going to Yamanashi. EK’s vacation house is about 3 hours away from my house, so it wasn’t too long of a trip since I’m used to long drives anyways. The road trip was fun I thought. We were able to talk about a lot of things and I got to see a lot of the countryside that I wasn’t able to see before. It was really neat to see and I’m glad I had the opportunity to see it. We took a pit stop about 2 hours into the trip and grabbed some food while we waited. Neither one of us had lunch and were starving at this point. The food was pretty good and the place that we were eating at had a Yamanashi style to their cooking. But I didn’t taste anything different.

We arrived to our destination shortly after. He had told me that where we were eating was about half way, but in actuality it was about ¾’s the way there. So I wasn’t hungry for dinner yet, which was happening as we arrived. Actually it wasn’t dinner; they were just drinking and enjoying some snacks. So EK and I went on a little hiking trip around his house. It’s a big cabin like place that’s in the middle of the woods. So this little hike became quite an excursion. We were looking for some editable plants around his place. We weren’t able to find any after walking for about an hour or so. But it was good to see the area we were around. We found that there was a little stream around his place, maybe about 30 minutes away through the thick of the woods and a little lake too. It was quite interesting and fun. I haven’t done something like this since I was in Junior High School with my best friend at the time when we used to go to Green Valley Falls. Those were the good ol’ days.

We finally made it back when it was all dark and stuff. It was beginning to get a bit chilly around this time so I’m glad that I brought a bigger jacket for the trip. But inside the house, it was a bit warm. We had dinner around this time since the walk worked up our appetites. It was just miscellaneous things that were just eating. They had a lot of food, which is something that I’m really surprised about. I think EK’s mom must have been cooking a long time; she only stayed in the kitchen the whole time. She came out only to eat for a little while. She was feeling sick too, which wasn’t very good for her.

After dinner, I learned how to play Japanese Chess. My first challenger was EK, but I ended up losing, one move away from checkmate. Everyone was expecting him to win since he has had more experience with the game than I have, but they were rooting me on saying that EK wasn’t a worthy opponent. I always had to ask him which piece did what. Since all the pieces are in Kanji and when they reach a certain point, they change into another piece and have different abilities. And you could recycle the pieces so if I took one of his pieces, I could use it again and place it anywhere on the board. The rules were confusing for me because I would always get things mixed up and move my pieces to the wrong place and then I would lose out on my opportunity to win. Plus I’m really slow at moving my pieces. It didn’t work out for me and we played this till 3am about. So we were going at it for about 4 hours.