Good morning guys, welcome to day two of my Otsu adventure! I had a really nice sleep last night. My bed was so comfy! I didn't want to get up! And then I looked out the window and it was raining which I kind of expected, but that's okay! Cause today I'm gonna show you guys how you can enjoy a rainy day in Japan. We're gonna find some activities to do that'll be okay in the rain. So step one is to get a rain jacket, and you'll probably need that. I don't have an umbrella, but this has a hood, so we should be alright. So our first stop for the day is this cable car, which we're gonna ride up a mountain. I really love doing stuff like this. I can't wait for this. I was holding this pamphlet in the elevator, and a staff member saw it and they're like "oh you're gonna ride the cable car tomorrow", and I was like "yeah." And then I went back to my room and he came up to my room and gave me these cable car tickets. I thought that was so sweet of him! So now we've got a deal on the cable car. And then when we get to the top there's some stuff up there waiting for us. But I'll save that for a surprise. I think they have a really nice breakfast prepared for me! Let's go eat that first. My breakfast looks amazing! Look it how fancy this is. I'm so excited to try everything. This is green tea soba which I really love. They're gonna be bringing something to cook on the little fire pot here in a minute. And inside here apparently, there's a couple layers, so there's salad on top, and I think inside the second layer, there's some tofu. Inside here is miso soup, some pickled plums, orange, and this is the dressing for the salad fresh lemon salt and olive oil. Wow! Looks like we have some tofu and some konnyaku So pretty. It's like artwork. I feel so bad destroying it. Think of the little dragon boys, that was so cute! And they just brought me some steamed vegetables. I'm gonna let them cook here a little longer. After that absolutely delicious and a healthy breakfast at Biwako Hotel, I headed outside to start my second day of exploring in Otsu City. So this is where we are right now at Sakamoto Station, and we're gonna be walking up this road, which is called Hiyoshinobanba, and it's so pretty.
These rock walls and all these small villages here were all built in the Edo period and they're still in really good condition. You'll see as we walk around. And it only takes about 15 minutes to get up to this area where we're gonna catch the cable car. Even on a rainy day like today, I definitely recommend skipping the taxi and taking a stroll up Hiyoshinobanba Street. The street is lined with traditional buildings, gardens, shrines. The views is absolutely breathtaking. You don't want to miss it Across the street from us here is Kyu (Former) Chikurin-in And it's a Japanese garden where they serve matcha, so you can enjoy matcha while you're viewing the garden and we're going to be stopping by there later. It's got another 0.2 kilometers to the cable noriba (station) One side get I tickets. The car comes every half an hour. So we've got a little bit of time about 25 minutes, until the next one. Had to put my hair up. It was a little a little more humid than I was expecting today. Look where we're gonna be heading into the forest that looks sloggy. I'm so excited! The car's completely covered, so this is definitely something you could still enjoy on a rainy day like today. The cable car is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year actually. It's been around for quite a while, so it's the beginning of the Showa era. The cable car ride into the forest felt like something out of a TV movie. It was magical, but just wait until we get near the top. It's really cool guys. You're gonna like it. This is kind of fun on a rainy day, I like the fogginess. Wow. It’s so high up! This car will soon jolt a little. The door on the rear right side will open to inside automatically. Wow, we're on the top of the mountain now. You can't see anything. It's like we're in the middle of the clouds! It's kind of cool! Apparently they're supposed to be an amazing view from up here. But we can't see that today, but I kind of like it. It's...it's neat. It feels really cool to not be able to see anything it's like being on top of Mt. Fuji. Reminds me of that. So we're just walking up the mountain. Now about an eight minute walk and we're gonna arrive at Enryakuji Temple. And when we get up there we're either gonna be doing some Zen meditation which I've never done before, or learning some calligraphy, which I'm pretty bad at. But I love doing good, so I kind of hope we get to do the calligraphy. I haven't done that in a while, it'd be nice to get some practice and get a little better. There's Hiyoshi Taisha that we saw when we were walking up the street and the gate across the road now we're all the way up here, wow! This is the main building of Enryakuji and they're currently repairing it, so it's under construction right now. ju…jugo-oku (1.5 billion) so about 15 million dollars. They're spending on the construction, so these are the kind of details that they'll be fixing, repainting the paint that's come off. Oh wow! Here's before, and then after it was restored. We're gonna get a quick tour of the inside of the building, but unfortunately that's not allowed to be filmed so you guys are gonna have to come here and experience it for yourself. The inside was really amazing! I really recommend coming to see it and see what I couldn't show it to you guys. They have three lanterns inside. Oil lamps, where the fire has been burning inside there for 1,200 years, without ever going out. I thought that was really cool! About 400 years ago, this temple was destroyed and had to be rebuilt. But at that time, they moved the fire to another place, and then brought it back when it was rebuilt. So the same lamp has been burning for over a thousand years. So cool! It’s better to sway once before pulling back. Yes, good. Wow! On a clear day, this is the view you would have of Biwako, Biwa Lake. So shoujin ryouri is the food that monks eat while they're training to be a monk. So they have a vegan diet while they're training, and we're gonna try that out today. See the kind of foods they're eating. But apparently the shoujin ryouri that they're serving to visitors is a little different than what the monks would actually eat. The monks meal would be a lot simpler, probably wouldn't have as many dishes as we're gonna eat today. It's like dried yuba, then you can add it into miso soup. And it becomes like a fresh yuba. You can taste all the omiyage (souvenir) here. It's awesome Wow this is the calligraphy practice that we might be doing. It's so tiny. I've never done such tiny calligraphy. So in this room is where they do the Zen meditation. And in this room is where they do the calligraphy. Oh wow! It's all set up here. So what they do is they trace the kanji through the paper, so underneath you can see the kanji through this paper, and I'm gonna be tracing these. I feel like after tracing this entire page, I'm gonna be really good at kanji. So the words that will be tracing here are a Buddhist sutra that were brought from India, and have been translated into Japanese. So put a little bit of water in your suzuri (ink stone). So once you've finished writing copying out the sutra, you write in a wish here on this line. This kanji is "tame". It means like purpose, so the purpose that you're tracing this out for is for your wish to come true. Apparently it would take a Japanese person about an hour and a half to trace this all out, so I don't think I'm going to be able to finish it today, but they said I'm allowed to bring it home. It's not easy. You have to hold it really politely, or the lines could be too thick. Could be worse. (laughter) I started off pretty bad. (more laughter) It takes a while to get used to the pressure that you should use, but I think I improved as I went along? So maybe my next row will look a little nicer. It took me 20 minutes to write these two lines. My second one isn't too bad! Zoom in so you can see all my mistakes. Well I think it looks decent. A couple of the characters are harder than others. I think that one turned out quite nice. It was hard work. I'm gonna take the rest of my sutra home, and buy one of those brush pens, and complete it. It might take a week or so, but I will finish it. The view from lunch. Very foggy, very cloudy, but normally you'd have like an amazing view of the city here. All right, I'll give you guys the tour, so here we have a tofu nabe. It's just starting to cook nabe. They lit the flame for me. In here we have ganmo which is made from soybeans. It's kind of like a squishy texture, some radish and I'm not sure what this is made out of. These are usually made out of fish, but it's probably tofu. Some more konnyaku. This is goma-dofu, It's a little bit of soy sauce on the bottom, so it's a sesame tofu and apparently there are people that really love this and people that really dislike it, and so I'm excited to try it. I've never had it before, so we'll see if I like it or not and over here. We have some pickles, and some sweet beans, some kombu and daikon, some white rice, and clear soup! Itadakimasu! Oh it's got a really bouncy texture! Oh oishii (yummy) mmm oishi Hmm, really strong sesame flavor. This is really good. This would be great with rice. So they use that dried yuba that we saw in the souvenir store in this soup, this is what it looks like. When you add it to soup it's so cool, so thin. The shoujin ryouri was really, really delicious! Even if you're a meat-eater, I think you would really enjoy the meal. It was really flavorful! I fell in love with the soup base from the nabe. I'm gonna try and recreate that myself. Apparently it's made with kombu dashi, and shiitake dashi, so I'll try my best. We've arrived back at the garden. Time for some matcha. How perfect is this scene you can drink a nice warm matcha? Inside under the roof, so it doesn't matter what the weather is, and you can enjoy this beautiful garden. That's delicious. Wow. It's got a perfect amount of froth on top, nice and creamy. Who came with some little sweets here that are made from sugar and kinako powder? I believe soybean powder. The sweetness of the cookies goes really well with the bitterness of the matcha. Gochisousama-deshita (Thanks for the food.) So peaceful up here. This is a naturally occurring river. They didn't add it in here for the garden. All right guys, I'm gonna say goodbye here. I'll be heading back home now. I'm gonna catch the Shinkansen. I really hope you enjoyed the two days of videos. I took here in Otsu. It was really, really beautiful and especially today. I hope I give you some ideas of things you can do when the weather isn't so nice in Japan. There's lots of activities. You can do inside and kind of enjoy the cloudy gloomy weather. I thought it was really cool when we were going up the mountain in the cable car, and drinking the matcha from inside and watching the garden was just perfect! Please give this video a like if you enjoyed it, and I will see you guys again soon. Bye! Finally the end! Click to subscribe to Sharla in Japan or see some previous videos! Subtitles made by Finnherostorm Ong. lol
