Ibigawa with Rebecca: Host Family Day

Host Family Day

Breakfast: Could a day start better than having a strawberry milkshake and a donut with ice cream and maple syrup? We also had some toast and a hard-boiled egg. Rebecca took a risk and chose as her drink a milky mixed juice with ice which tasted delicious and made her feel just fine eating a donut with ice cream and maple syrup.

Breakfast strawberry milkshake and smoothie

Breakfast donut with ice cream and maple syrup

Lunch: We couldn’t believe there was a place that exists like where we ate lunch. It is called the Sweet Palace in English. It’s owned by a company that makes desserts and sweets. We walked through the gates of this enormous white castle with our mouths open, wondering if this was for real. If Eddie hadn’t shown me the night before the website I would have thought that Eddie was playing a joke on us. A few groups of girls dressed in beautiful gowns posed for pictures with the fountains and stairs as backdrops. We both looked at each other with questions in our eyes and a funny smile on our mouths. Really? Is this for real? The pictures speak for themselves. It is Yoko and Eddie’s 27^th anniversary this week but because they took work off for us they both are scheduled to work and Yoko has the night shift so we took their picture by the magic pumpkin carriage. I got Eddie to laugh by saying “ooh la la”, our joke. First we only saw girls dressed up and then saw a few couples. You can rent the clothes and take pictures. Iain is going to put the link to the YouTube here so you can get a “taste” of what it felt like. The same song looped the whole time. Iain said it was like “It’s a small world”. Yoko and Eddie didn’t know how to translate it but I wondered how people could stand it! I supposed with the buffet nothing else matters at the present. How many bowls of ice cream can you eat? And my new favorite is Saltines on the side for that sweet salty goodness. I also giggled and oohed and ahhed over these tiny crackers that looked like oyster crackers. Eddie and Yoko laughed, saying “Baby crackers”. I guess it was like eating Gerber baby crackers and they thought it funny. Coffee, either iced or hot, hot cocoa (yay!), coke zero, melon soda (yuck), Calpis soda, Calpis drink, orange soda, green tea ice cream, VERY chocolate ice cream, strawberry ice cream, crepes, and tiny slices of cakes.

The Sweet Palace buffet for lunch (Desserts only)

We went back a lot for more

The Sweet Palace mascot

The cake at the Sweet Palace

Dinner: We had the usual banquet for the last night. The food was a little different this year, but still very good. I was proud of Rebecca again for trying everything. We had oysters and shrimp. A lot of our group struggled with the lack of desire to try the oysters, but they were good and in a white cheese sauce that had good flavor. It was entertaining to see everyone getting up the nerve to eat the oysters. There were many courses of food. Rebecca liked the vegetable soup best. It was kind of like Campbell’s. I liked the shrimp and beef best. The one thing Rebecca refused to try was the fake potatoes. She is a true Idahoan. The pudding had some kind of alcoholic topping. We realized as soon as we tasted it and left the rest hoping we wouldn’t get a hangover. They mayor gave us one more present before we left. It included a course banner, a towel with mythical creatures from a river printed on it, some origami spinning tops, and some pins.

Inuyama Castle: There were many steps at the castle. At least one of us was quite a bit sore from the race, but handled it very well. The castle had been in a family for 500 years. Now, it is being passed on to the government as a national treasure. The scenery around it was beautiful. We had some good laughs with Yoko and Eddie as we walked around. Eddie would laugh at our nervousness of walking around the top of the castle looking at the view. He would tease Rebecca about going up and down the stairs.

Eddie offering to carry Rebecca up the steps

She did so well getting up and down with sore legs

The slow roller coaster. We thought the basket at the bottom is what we were going to ride up in. We chose to walk.

Inuyama Castle

Inuyama City: We looked around and old traditional city, which had modern shops in it. Eddie and Yoko bought us some rice balls and takoyaki (ours had beef instead of octopus in it). We looked in a kimono shop and walked by a radio station that was playing “Shake It Off”. The DJ was at the window visible to everyone. We danced outside his window which made him very happy.

Two special shrines: Eddie told us they wanted to take us to a very special shrine. Immediately we put on our reverent faces and prepared ourselves for the experience. Unlike some of the others this one we pulled into the parking lot and there it was. We didn't have to walk up hills or stairs to reach it. At the well where the small stone dragon spit out water we followed Yoko's example and poured water on our hands, put some in our mouths, spit it in the gutter, and bowed. This shrine was just as ornate as the others so I took a picture before stepping up closer. When Yoko saw me take the picture, she said, "It's okay, but no pictures inside" which made me feel more nervous about doing something wrong. Eddie told me to come closer and when I did, he said, "look left". I looked left, not knowing what to expect. Then "look right". Again I did and suddenly it dawned on me what I was looking at. He laughed and laughed at me when the shock of it hit me. Website of the shrine

The shrine isn't a joke. It even has a festival on mom and dad's anniversary. As Nov is the time to bring 3 and 7 year old girls and 3 and 5 year old boys to any shrine to ask and pray for them to have protection and health, we saw a little girl and boy both dressed in Kimonos there at this special shrine. Oh, we giggled and giggled about the special shrine. But Eddie and innocent Yoko had another one for us to see.

After enjoying this location, Eddie took us off to the next site. We asked where we were going next, but he never really responded. We made it to the other side of the city and walked up to another "special shrine". This one was a rock in the middle of the shrine. The rock represented the female version of the previous shrine. For the rest of the trip, we kept asking Eddie if we were on the way to another "special shrine".

Jyakoim: There were 300 stairs to climb to see the top of this Buddist. There was an option to take a little trolley up to the top, but it looked very scary (see the photo below). It would wobble side-to-side as it went. So we sang as we walked and walked and walked. Coming down was a little harder for one of us than the other. At the top, we got to ring a very large bell. We would go up to it, ring it loudly (see video below) say a prayer, bow, and leave.