Time is definitely flying by quickly here in Japan! In two days, it will be two months since I have arrived in Japan. I’ve settled in quite well here and am enjoying life in Japan. A lot of that is due to the nice little adventures that I get to have. A couple weeks ago we had a long weekend due to a holiday on a Monday, so I decided to use part of that weekend to do a little bit of adventuring.
The first adventure was to go over to Ueda, another city in my prefecture, where I was invited by my friend Moni to come see a horseback archery demonstration at Ueda Castle. Archery is already cool enough, but add horses into that and it sounded like an awesome event to go see. I gathered a few other friends and we drove over to Ueda. The annoying thing about living up in the mountains is that even though the city is only 18 miles away from me it still took over an hour to get there because there are mountains you have to drive up and through. The speed limits on the roads here are also fairly low because the roads are more windy through the mountains. The drive wasn’t too bad though, and there were definitely some nice mountain views for my passengers on the way.
Once we got to Ueda we grabbed lunch, then headed over to the castle. It took us a bit of time to find the field that they were doing the demonstration on, so we ended up being a bit late. However, what we got to see was still pretty cool. The riders were wearing traditional garments and their horses were decked out as well. The bows they use are super long, probably over 6 feet at least. They had to gallop down a straight line and shoot at three targets to the side as they rode. It was pretty awesome.
After we watched the archery we packed into my car (luckily its a 5 passenger), and headed back to Matsumoto, where we met up with some other JETs at the mall. We meandered for a bit in the mall and happened to go past the pet shop there. One of the people I was with who could speak Japanese asked if she could hold one of the puppies, and I quickly tagged along. I got to hold this adorable mini schnauzer puppy and I about died it was so cute. We all had dinner at a really yummy Italian place that had unlimited bread if you bought that addition. I ate so much bread, but it was so worth it. Once we finished eating, we walked over to the castle, stopping by a cool ice cream shop that had just opened. The castle was open late until about 8:30 for moon viewing all weekend because of the recent full moon. I really like Matsumoto Castle, so it was even better to see it at night. It was a nice end to a good day.
The next day I headed over to Nagano City to meet up with another friend. Our first stop was to go to the really nice Buddhist temple there, called Zenkoji Temple, which I hadn’t been to yet. It was pretty awesome, and is located in a really cool district. We found charcoal ice cream, which was vanilla flavored and delicious. Check out these photos.
So delicious! 
Zenkoji Temple
My friends showed me these cool books called goshuincho, where you can get stamps that show that you visited the temple or shrine. They are done in calligraphy and are really beautiful, and sounded like a perfect souvenir to start collecting here.
Just look at how cool that is! 
After visiting the temple we headed over to a cat cafe, which I had really been looking forward to. I am super pet deprived here, so I was ready to see and pet some kitties. This place did not disappoint, although the kitties weren’t super cuddly, which was a bit sad. But they had some absolutely gorgeous cats (like this one here), and I really enjoyed going there, though it was a bit on the expensive side.
We ended the day with a dinner with some other JETs, then I headed back to my village. It was a very nice day, and an overall great weekend of hanging out with some friends. Stay tuned for my next post on my trip outside of my prefecture the following weekend!
Gitta Across the Globe 