Japan Day 8 Lake Haruna (Part 1)

So we woke up to our last day in Tatebayashi and got to have breakfast with Mami and my old supervisor, Aoki, which was super nice!

Ben and I with Aoki!

The breakfast itself was quite strange even by Japanese standards, not to say that Japanese breakfast's are weird, just different.  This particular breakfast was the Japanese version of a Western breakfast, I think...

Eggs, croissants, pastries, all pretty standard but then...Japanese curry and yakisoba (fried noodles) which altogether, just didn't sit right in our stomachs, plus more, non-milk, milk beverages

After Breakfast we said goodbye to Aoki, who had crept away from her School duties to join us, thanks Aoki! Mami, Ben and I headed off to the acrade for puricula!

Big Eyed Puricula makes a return, he he!

Then we said our final goodbyes to Mami :( And we're off to see Teruko, my favourite teacher I use to work with back in the day.   The last time I saw Teruko she had a tiny baby, named Haruna, in her arms, Haruna is now the oldest of three! Time flies, eek!

It's really fun to play with kids because they don't understand/care that you can't understand what they're saying, so they just keep repeating the word, usually slowly, loudly and more frequently :P Its amazing how much you can communicate without an understanding of words too. I think we lose that when we get older and instead gain an embarrassment of not understanding, which really only limits us in the end.

Teruko is the loveliest lady and she said, although she doesn't think her English is 100% she is all for just giving it a go, brilliant, I should be inspired to do the same with Japanese!

Because we had not long eaten, Teruko was kind enough, to pack up her amazingly delicious lunch into the cutest bento boxes for us! She also made sure we would be on the right train to catch the last bus to Lake Haruna, where we were headed for the night.  I asked, if her daughter Haruna was named after the lake, but I think it's just a pretty name :)

So our visit went quickly and next thing, there were more goodbyes and we're on the train bound north for Lake Haruna!

Well train than bus! Turns out we had 10 minutes to hop off the train, locate the bus terminal and then find our bus. Which is normally pretty simple, but when you can't speak/read Japanese it can be a bit more tricky. Since I sort of knew my way around, we found the bus depot pretty quickly but then we needed to know what number bus to hop on. We went to the desk and had a very intense conversation. Ben finally worked out the lady was worried for us, because that was the last bus and we couldn't get back home, until the morning. So after lots of 'no worries' were exchanged (dai jo bo!) She pointed to the bus and we jumped on, smiling that the travel gods had smiled upon us again!

My plan when we got to Lake Haruna was to camp but when we actually got to lake Haruna,

Ben and I muttered something like this..

"OH my, isn't it beautiful...lets find a hotel!"

They couple of hotels that we could work out were hotels, further up street, looked mighty pricey. Using my deductive skills, I suggested we go for the hotel that was slightly behind the place, right on the lake, I thought it might be a bit cheaper for having slightly tainted views :P Ben was in agreeance and we rocked up.

Again the communication issues emerged but Ben, by this stage had perfected the dodgey, Westerner sign language moves and we somehow  managed to get ourselves a room at what we thought was a steal at 80 bucks for the night, for the two of us!

Stay tuned for our room!