Day eight

We were invited to a local funfair at the school grounds of my gf’s hubby's alta mata. The school had since closed, but fundraisers are held every year to maintain this old historical heritage. Her father-in-law is a [volunteer] committee member for the event so we were given lots of coupons to spurge. heee....

We peddled on bicycles through streets lined with old wooden houses, local shrines, busy pedestrians walkways, and narrow back lanes to the school, making a pit stop at a small neighbouhood shrine to admire plum trees that were in full bloom. The flowers looked like little red lollies stuck on tress!

After 15 minutes of peddling, we arrived at the elementary school. I felt it was huge for it’s purpose and very grand.

We used our given coupons to buy food and played games. And I bought myself a chic chequered overcoat for just AU$10 from one of the odd goods stores. Cool.


Food we ate at the fare consisted of Japanese sausages, fried udon, sweet rice cakes, radish, white carrot and fish cake soup, and those ham and cheese balls. We were stuffed!

As we were amongst “friends”, we were given the VIP treatment. We were showered with gifts of complimentary food samples from almost every store! It was great as we got to sample everything! And in return of theur kind gestures, we allowed them to practise their English on us. haha.. it was so much fun.



We sat through a tea ceremony after all the eating and were served with traditional sweet cakes wrapped with salty Sakura leaf, followed by the famous thick rich green tea.

The extreme sweet and salty flavours from the rice cake blended perfectly well with the bitterness of the tea. It is pure genius that they could strike such a balance with such extreme flavours. Beautiful.





Outside in the courtyards were people playing chess on wooden planks hovered above a peaceful stream, above them swaying gently in the breeze are weeping cherry blossom trees. And when the wind blows, it brings along a string of soft petal rain that's so light and delicate, you couldn't feel them falling on your face.

And so it concludes half of my eighth day in the land of the beautiful rising sun.....

To be continued.....