Kayaking in Takamatsu City

So, on Sept. 17th, Kansai Univ. took us on a trip to Takamatsu City in the Shiga Prefecture which is know for having the biggest lake in Japan. Takamatsu City is a little farther than Kyoto and very much reminded me of Chesterfield. It took little over an hour to get there on our charter bus.

A picture of the Freeway

Osaka is pretty much surrounded by mountains, so we had to go through a few tunnels to get to the other side.

Sayaka! Our awesome Nihonzin with a British accent!

Everybody wants to know why we stopped: potty break!

Jamie is having a hard time staying awake! Goofball!

The land around Osaka is all mountains and they're very pretty to look at. I always wanted to live in a place where you could see the mountains in the distance, so I'm very happy. Since the weather was somewhat overcast, the clouds kept touching the mountains. It made for some really pretty pictures.

The town was also really similar to St. Charles. There were houses and farmland right next to each other. It made me really homesick! I almost wanted to check out the land prices!

We then went to this fan making artist who's quite famous. We all got to make our own fans!

Kansai Univ. then treated us to some awesome Bento boxes. You could tell they were expensive because they had grapes in them and grapes are super expensive here!

 

The house itself was very traditional; the mood inside was very Japanese.

 

 

Then it was time to go kayaking!

We were supposed to go kayaking on the lake, but the water was too choppy for our small boats. Instead, we went kayaking on the rivers in between the rice fields.

Hello, Dinner!

 

 The rice fields were everywhere and they looked a little like wheat.

This is my kayaking partner Isobel, who got her bum a little wet! But we succeeded in flipping another kayak and those girls got completely soaked!

This is one of our victims, Auget! She sought revenge! (and she's French so it's extra scary!)

 When we finished kayaking, we had some time to kill and decided to play around in the rice fields. There were crickets everywhere and we decided to make a movie called 'The Children of the Rice'

 

There's Sayaka!

 

We then had to go home and we were all tired. This is a small portion of the lake and as you can see, the water was very choppy that day.

But Jamie was still a goofball!

 On the way back there was this pretty shrine in the water. These are called ginga (sounds like 'ginger but without the 'r'). If you've read the Genji Monogatari (Tale of Genji) he makes a trip to one of these.

 

And so, after our long day, we went back to Osaka and back to our beds.

Sayonara!