keri travels: Trip to Ito

Before I begin my post regarding the field trip IES took to Shizuoka prefecture I want to first want to highlight a small event that took place during this excursion.

Last Saturday on the 12th IES had taken us on a field trip to go tea leaf picking in Shizuoka prefecture. I had been sick the entire week up until the field trip, but since I was feeling better I thought it was fine if I went. Anyway, during our lunch which was at a small tendon restaurant I had a very interesting experience of...I guess Japanese hospitality. I had been sitting with my friends Stephyn and Veronica waiting to get our food when I had a small fit of sneezes. Thankfully I had packed along a small amount of kleenex and blew my nose. After that we all just were sitting and chatting, still waiting for our food. I feel some snot running out of my nose, and as gross as it is I went to wipe it with my hand because I didn't have any clean kleenex readily available. When I drew my hand back i was shocked to see that it was covered in blood! Turned out my runny nose was actually a nosebleed. What happened next happened so quickly I honestly hardly noticed it happening. My friend Veronica had pulled out a wad of kleenex and handed it to me and then the next thing I know I am surrounded by a whole Armada of Japanese women. One women was tossing me kleenex after kleenex, while another woman was holding my head back and gently patting the back of my neck while the other Japanese women were asking my friends if I was ok. I was so surprised that so many people would come to my rescue, and over something so small as a nose bleed. My bloody nose didn't last very long, only a couple minutes, but the sweet ladies kept coming to check on me. They brought me a vinegar covered napkin, which I guess is some form of Japanese remedy for nose bleed, as well as bringing me a giant box of tissues and cold water to drink. I made sure to thank these ladies with many arigato gozaimasu 's. Before leaving the restaurant I told them thank you one more time and got a photo with two of my rescuers.

The lady on my left was the one who had tilted back my head and given me a small neck massage. The other lady had brought me all of my post nosebleed supplies.

OK, so the rest of my Ito trip was much less action packed, here we go.
First thing you should know about Shizuoka prefecture is that it is FAR from Tokyo! We were on the bus for about 4 hours going there. I slept on the ride there for the most part, but it was a little challenging because well intentioned guide-o san was being annoying as hell telling us about every single thing that we passed during the 4 hour trip over a loud speaker. Anyway, after a very exciting lunch we had to hop on the bus for another 30 minutes to get to our tea leaf picking site.

After having to spend so much time on the bus we were all excited to get out and pick tea leafs until we realized how HOT it was outside! Even worse, we found out we needed to wear tea leaf picking outfits that consisted of long sleeves and many layers!!!! I'm not going to bother elaborating on our tea leaf picking experience, because honestly it's pretty self explanatory. See tea leaf, pick tea leaf, put in basket[period]. Although it was hot in the tea leaf outfits we really had a lot of fun wearing them. What was a little disappointing was that we only got to pick tea leaves for about 10 minutes. After driving for 4+ hours to get here you would think we would have more time to pick leaves. WRONG-O. We also found out that we wouldn't be able to make tea from our tea leaves because we wouldn't be doing the tea leaf drying there (takes about 3 hours) so we just have leaves that we can do nothing with. A little disappointing.

We then climbed back on the bus for another 3o minute drive to get to one of the local shrines in the area. The shrine was pretty similar to a lot of the smaller shrines around Japan. So it wasn't anything too special, but the town it was located in was very cute. We got to wander around it for awhile. I went to the small public foot onsen which is located right above the river. It was really nice, but very very very hot water!!!! Also wandered around the little shops. After this we got back on the bus, and the ride home took us over 4 hours.

Although this had been a fairly fun experience it really wasn't worth it. We spent about 9 hours of the day on a bus, and only about 1 hour of actual field trip excursions. There isn't much for me to write about because we were literally on the bus for the whole day.

Here are some photos.