Day 2 Nagano

We had breakfast at the hotel. Then Ying Jie and me when out to take photos around the the Yokoya Onsen Ryokan. We took some pictures of the surrounding areas which had some beautiful sights around.

We were then treated to a Japanese Culture Experience, in which a lady played a tradition music instrument but first she shown us how flower arrangement was done.

After the show, we left Yokoya Onsen Ryokan and we went to the Ryokan. There we learned to how soba was made and we even made our own soba. Personally i felt that it was an amazing experience to make my own soba but honestly speaking I am sick of soba right now and i don't think i would want to touch soba for another 2 months.

We then visited the Ueda City multimedia Information Centre. The Ueda City Multimedia Information Centre specializes in doing animation and we were shown an anime movie that contain places in Ueda by the name of Summer Wars. After the video, we were allowed into the area where they did animation projects. We were also told that anime movies are released faster because they are sub contracted to many firms to do the anime movie.

We then proceed to meet the host family for the home-stay segment of our trip.

We were introduced to our host who was Sato-San and his wife. The first thing we did when we went there was to go to an Onsen (Hot Spring). After that, we went back to the host's house for a Mega dinner which was not only delicious but also sumptuous.

After that I showed some magic trick with a card deck to Moe(she was a neighbour's daughter that Sato-San was looking after). After that we played Uno while Sato-san was watching baseball. Moe then showed us some traditional Japanese games that was played. One of them was a spinning top then looked really simple to play until we tried them. Moe tried it a few times but it did not work. In the end Sato-San took over and showed us how it was done. I took this picture of Moe before she showed me how to play the top

Afterwards Sato-San's wife was showing us a traditional Shinto wedding. As you can see from the picture that there are a lot of photo album

I was quite impress with the photos. Hanif later showed her how a Malay tradition wedding would look like. Talking about cultural exchange. After that we decided to turn in at around 1030pm (Tokyo time). This was the sleeping area.

This was what i wore before sleeping