A Day in my Life in the Japanese Countryside 🌾

Hey guys, good morning! Today I'm in Yamagata Prefecture in Shonai Town, which is pretty close to the coast on the Japan seaside of northern Japan. This has actually become one of my favourite spots in northern Japan this year. I've been out here a couple times to visit my friend Natsuki, who is from this area, and I just fell in love with it. It's so gorgeous. Today I'm actually joining a cycling tour of the area. We're going to cycle through the countryside and make some stops at different sightseeing spots along the way, and basically just get to know the area a little more. We're starting off somewhere where I'm going to make a present for my grandma actually, so let's go do that. After the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800s, the samurai of the Shonai area had to give up their sword fighting days and find a new way to live. The two major exports at the time were raw silk and tea, so they decided to transform the Shonai area into what has now become one of the most famous silk producers in all of Japan. So I have to choose a colour now, and it's really hard. If you only use the natural sakura colour, this is what you will end up with, golden yellowy colour. But if you add some other dyes to it, you can kind of make it more slightly on the pink side, which I think my grandma would like. I really hope my grandma likes it, which she wears a lot, so I think it's perfect. All right, now for the best part, we're picking up our bikes. These are electric bikes that we're using today. I absolutely love these. If you get kind of tired riding throughout the day, you just turn the electric boost on and it's super easy. Honestly, joining a cycling trip for the day is not only the perfect way to experience the Japanese countryside, it's also a really great way to meet new people and make some new friends. Our next stop is Hanabusa Soy Sauce Brewery, which was founded in 1823 and has been passed down for 15 generations. What makes this brewery so special is how committed they are to continuing the traditional manufacturing methods. Ramen restaurants in the area proudly display made with Hanabusa soy sauce on their shop signs as it's known for being especially delicious. It's over a hundred years old. It's really cool. It's so different than the other soy sauce factories I've been to. So yeah, we're going to get a little tour of the place and then we're going to do some tasting and I can't wait because it smells amazing in here. Okay, so the first thing we're going to try is the Hanabusa soy sauce. It's this konnyaku that's been stewed in soy sauce. Itadakimasu. Mmm, oishii. We're about to eat the famous shonai persimmons. They're dried, and this is my favorite way to eat them because they become so sweet. Itadakimasu. Gochisosamadeshita. That was delicious. Everything was so good, and I'm definitely gonna come back here and buy a bottle of soy sauce because I don't wanna go back to using my usual soy sauce. This is so much better. Ah, she's going to give me some hoshigaki to hang up on my porch and dry them myself in Morioka. Arigatou gozaimasu. Yeah, urushidesu. E, iindesu ka? Meccha urushii. Arigatou gozaimasu. All right, next stop is lunch. I'm getting hungry after all this bike riding. It looks so good. I love hummus, and it doesn't really exist in Japan, except for when you go to specialty cafes. We're gonna eat this super quick. That was one of the best meals I've had in Japan, actually. That was amazing. The vegetables tasted so fresh. I'm really excited about that. I feel good and healthy now, and we're about to cycle for seven kilometers, so. Check out that view! It's so pretty! So this is Sokoji Temple. It's so nice. It feels so refreshing, because it's in the shade, and it's just surrounded by streams, little fountains. It's beautiful here. I've never been here before. We're gonna have a little tea break here, have some matcha, and we're going to do a Buddhist meditation activity called shakkyo. You guys will see a little bit more about that when we do it. So today we are trying out shakkyo, the mindful tracing of the Buddhist sutras using a calligraphy pen. Originally started as a way of spreading the teachings of Buddha, nowadays shakkyo is practiced as a way of relaxing and purifying oneself, both mentally and physically, regardless of your beliefs. Many Buddhist temples in Japan offer this experience for their visitors. All right, it's matcha time. I've been looking forward to this. I love matcha so much, and the view of this garden is just perfect. Couldn't ask for anything else, and they've given us these cute little sweets to eat along with the tea. I've never had these before. I think they're like a powdered sugar. Yeah, they're like a powdered sugar candy that balances out the bitterness of the green tea. They're a really good combination. That was so nice and relaxing. I really recommend dropping into a Buddhist temple if there's one in the area that you're visiting. You can just pop in, have some matcha, enjoy the beautiful views in their gardens. It's really common for them to have little activities like that that you can enjoy here. We're off to watch a maiko performance now, which I've actually never seen before. So back during the Edo period, Sakata City, this area here, it was a famous shipping port. So because of that, they had a really thriving entertainment industry, including geisha and maiko performances, and some of those establishments are still around today, and that's where we're going now. We're going to a place called Somaro, and we're going to see a maiko performance. This is a sencha-fuda, and you put it up at shrines. So if you say you're a fan of Chizuru-chan, you put it up and say, Go Chizuru-chan! At shrines? Yes, you put it up. But recently, people have been getting mad at me, so I don't want to put it up. Oh, you don't want to put it up. But since I'm a maiko, I put it up on my wallet and say, Maikomu, maikomu, and it's a really good performance. It's a really popular joke. If you take a look from here, you can see our practice room. And that concludes our tour for the day. That was so cool to see the maiko performance. I'd never seen one before, and I expected it to be more subtle, but apparently the style of dance that they use up here in Sakata is a little more lively. And yeah, it was amazing. It was really beautiful to watch. Their singing was just like, I was blown away by that. If you guys are interested in doing a similar bike tour to what I did today, I'll have the information down below in the description box. So please do check it out. Thanks so much for watching, guys. I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you again very soon.