Gokayama & Sunshot - Toyama at Night

On Wednesday morning, we were driving 30 miles South to a small village of Gokayama. It's a small traditional village regarded as a UNESCO World Heritage site. We briefly pulled in to Eric's local Combini to get some breakfast, this was usually some sort of sandwich in a packet but in the shop I saw Kit Kats. When Philip came home in the summer of 2009, he brought with him strawberry and melon flavoured Kit Kats which were a unique treat. In this combini I saw the strawberry flavoured ones again but there were also cheese flavoured Kit Kats. The flavour was called Peitit Cheese so I had to buy it to impress my French half. It was a small box with 6 small individually wrapped Kit Kats. They truly were disgusting but I ate 4 of them and decided to bring the other 2 back to Ireland. The drive to Gokayama was a drive with incredible scenery. We were driving along the Showgawa River and stopped to enjoy the view at one point and Eric relieved himself.

We found the car park, paid our entry fee to the village at quite a modern building and while Philip was on the phone to Kay, I amused myself by doing wheelies on wheelchairs that were left for people.

We strolled down to the village, there wasn't much there but the area was very nice, the houses were all thatched. There were a few souvenir shops which we browsed around and a shrine. We then walked to the other side which were similar thatched houses but were accommodation for tourists.

It was an extremely nice remote area surrounded by mountains and a river. Going back up to the car, Eric told me to go in to the toilets and look at the sign with the badly translated English, when I came out, in typical Eric fashion, he was pretending to drive away on me, when I ran in front of the car, we played chicken. I won but not because he stopped for my health but for the health of his black Subaru.

When we went back to Toyama, Eric drove us up to a viewing point where you could see Toyama city which looked very nice at night time. There was another jeep with a couple in it so maybe that was a place to have a romantic moment. Too bad for them 3 loud guys disturbed their mood for a while.

On the morning of the 23rd, We got up early and it was absolutely pouring down. We put all the bags in Eric's car and he drove us to the Koreha train station and left us with the bags, drove home and walked back in the rain. It was late enough when we got back to Fukusaki and we went to eat some hot hot ramen which was delicious. One of my favourite meals in Japan. I had it 3 times in that resteraunt while in Fukusaki. Christmas Eve was a day of preparation. We bought Christmas presents for our secret Santa thing. I had Philip's friend Kozue. I bought her a book that Philip advised me she'd like and some other bits and pieces.

We went out for dinner with some of Philip and Valerie's Eikaiwa class, their supervisor and Valerie's parents and sister in a nearby resteraunt. It was great food. The table was a fire pit and we were all sat around it. I was talking to Philip's friend Michiyo about going to Europe and would it be safe for a Japanese person. I told her that for Japanese people, they would have to be more aware of their wallets as something I noticed in Japan was that being pickpocketed is something that just wouldn't happen and I saw some people with their wallets hanging out of their back pocket. She told me she heard in places like Rome that they would target Japanese because they wouldn't be aware of these things. I aimed to make her not fear travelling to Europe but just to be more aware of her bags etc. We went back home and I couldn't sleep so was on Philip's laptop until the early hours listening to Philip & Eric snore at an impressively loud level and Eric sleep talking proving he was having very weird dreams.