About a week ago, my host mother asked me if I'd like to participate in a cooking class. I am completely devoid of all feminine talents, culinary included, so I said yeah that would be fun. So she went ahead and found some cooking class and asked me to invite a friend. I opted for Rachel, a Hawaii girl who likes to cook, perfect. So Sunday rolls around and I get out of bed at 7:00 and psych my mind to get ready to cook. The little girl, Ayaka, came over again and was joining us for our cooking class. So all 3 of us rolled out in my host family's yellow toy car to the train station to pick up Rachel.
We park and wait for Rachel in at the local community center. When Rachel comes in, instead of going upstairs in the community center for the cooking class as I had anticipated, we head for the door and to the car. So we're driving and I figure, okay, the cooking class is somewhere else, somewhere, maybe closer to our home. I was wrong. We ended up in the mountains and even got lost on a windy road. Luckily they patrol men on duty in anticipation of clueless vehicles like ours.
We finally get to the cooking class place and I'm a bit surprised, because it looks like we're going for a hike. I looked at Rachel and gave her an "I don't really know what's going on look", because I really didn't. I swear my Japanese isn't that bad and that I totally heard my host mother say cooking class. But who knows, maybe there is some kind of word for 'hiking' that sounds like the word for 'cooking'. I was very much confused.
We catch up to the rest of the group and I see the group leader crouched on the ground near some weeds. He's pulling them out and showing them to everyone. Goody. A weed pulling class!!" was basically what I was thinking, but come to find out instead of a regular cooking class, we had what I like to call an adventure cooking class. We basically walked around the Japanese countryside picking dandelions and other things that most people consider weeds to turn them into something delicious by deep frying them in batter. Yes, we were going to tempura the weeds.
And the weeds were delicious.
As if adventure cooking wasn't cool enough, there was a park there that put Waimea park to shame. It was AWESOME. Big wooden platforms and obstacle course like things with ropes and nets and pure awesomeness everywhere. Rachel, Ayaka, and I played on the playground for a bit. Oh, and the slide. The slide was so sweet. You basically had to climb up through obstacles to get to the slide, but boy was it worth it. The slide had rollers instead of a flat bottom, and was curvy and pretty long. And because of all the lovely friction between your but and the rollers, your butt feels kind of warm and tingly standing up afterwards. Too much information? I think Rachel and I had more fun than Ayaka, we both rode the slide twice, while she went back to my host mother after the first ride down.
After our adventure cooking and play time in the park, my host mother dropped Rachel and I off at the station where we met and Rachel and I walked around town a bit. We walked along a the riverside crossed some lovely bridges, and concluded our exploration by buying some giant apples and eating them in an alleyway like hobos. An awesome end to an awesome day.
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