Making Wine, Who'da thunk it....

Today was almost like every other day here in Japan. Yes, that's right. Freaking awesome...

I tried to sleep in as late as I could and eventually rolled out of bed around 10 AM. I had yet another hardy breakfast of Corn Flakes, and then joined Steve for a morning shot of Vitamin N (nicotine). We were told by Jeremy that the new Weekly Shounen Jump magazine is released on Saturday so we decided to head out so I could get some money out of the ATM and pick it up (it's a whopping 2.40 for about 500 pages of manga. Weekly Shounen Jump is more geared towards kids ages 10-20. Yes it's under me as far as some material, but it's easier for me to read with all of the furigana above the kanji.

So we hit up the closest 7/11 and I got some money out of the ATM there. I've never seen them carry Weekly Shounen Jump so I kinda browsed just in case but no luck. So we decided to roll down the street from there and hit up the Daily Yamazaki (yet another conbini). This is where I bought my first issue of Jump, but no such luck. At this point we kind of assumed our friend was wrong so I did some more research online when I got back. To my dismay Weekly Shounen Jump comes out every Monday and not on Saturdays. At least I have something to look forward to. After that we headed back to the dorm where I had very little time to finish getting ready to leave for a field trip the school had organized. They had planned an excursion to a local winery where we got to do all kinds of things.

Steve sat this one out and went to a local festival that celebrates a man from Kentucky that helped with agriculture World War II. Lots of people from all over come to this big festival including from Kentucky. However, I came to Japan to get away from America, and if I had wanted to embrace it further I would have just stayed in the States. Anyway, Pat and I hopped on our bikes around 12:25 and rode down to the station. We were the first to get there and met our teacher, Esaki-sensei, as we were trying to find the meeting area. After joining up with him we walked over to the correct bus stop and waited for the bus. After a short wait the three Australian girls (Emma, Emily, and Melissa) as well as the girl from the UK (Lydia) showed up to join us on our journey. Another student (one from Germany) told our teacher he would be coming but he never showed so we ended up leaving without him.

After a short bus ride over to the next town we hopped off and walked a short distance to our destination. This is the table we were greeted with as we walked in:


I tried a few of these, and while I usually don't like white wine there was one that really suited my tastes. The red wines weren't very dry and still had too much sweetness for me. Shortly after Esaki-sensei talked to someone at the main counter near the entrance we were lead outside where we had to hop in a van that would drive us to the vineyard. There were seven of us total so Esaki-sensei and myself hopped in the very back where they had two park benches to sit on. Another couple joined us on the ride there just as we were leaving, so needless to say it was kind of cramped.

However, it was a short ride to the vineyard and the cramping didn't last for very long. After getting out the guide explained to us what we were going to be doing and how we were going to do it. We were given scissors to cut grapes down, but we could only cut the ones that were marked with white paper. We could only cut down a full bushel of grapes and not only half or part of one. Here are a couple of good pics of us chomping down as well as a group pic:







This was probably the first time I had purple grapes to eat as well as ones that had seeds (for those of you who don't know I'm very sheltered when it comes to eating new things). They were freaking delicious though and Esaki-sensei and I couldn't seem to get enough of them. Pat had the find of the day though and we had to take a pic of it. As you can see this grape looks like an alien (uchyuujin in Japanese)! Pretty weird, eh? Plus here are a few more good ones:




After we picked grapes for a few minutes and ate our fill we headed back towards the winery where we got to smash a few of the grapes we picked. Here's Pat and me kicking some grape ass:


After smashing the grapes up we got to taste the juice from the as it was run through a filter and came out the bottom:


After having some of that tasty fresh grape juice we headed inside to make our lables. I'm no artist so mine looks like a kindergarten student did it, Pat did a really good job on his I thought. Here's a pic of the group drawing it up, as well as the room we did it, and my horrible artistry:





Shortly after we went to the gift shop where I was the only one that bought a bottle of wine. The others didn't pick one up mainly because in December the grapes we smashed will become apart of a wine that we will receive around Christmas with our handmade labels and a group picture on it! I'm not going to say exactly what I got because it's going to be a present for my big sister's B-day that's coming up. Only thing is...not sure how much it'll cost to ship back and it will more than likely take a while. I'll no doubt end up sending Lil K's (Kelsey) 1st B-day present back with my sister's present so I can save on shipping (sorry it's gonna be lil late sis!!!).

That's pretty much the extent of my day, and as I was writing this blog I got invited to dinner at Ueya-sensei's house with Steve. I'm gonna try some new things hopefully but I will have to unfortunately make it clear I'm bad at trying new things to these people, but Steve said they'll understand because most EKU students they invite over don't eat much. Hey, I love rice though so I'm going to eat that up at the least!

It'll probably be a while before I get to write about anything extremely exciting with my first full week of school starting next week, and my lack of cash to travel a whole lot. I got invited to Tokyo Disney with the Aussie's but had to pass due to lack of cash and the fact I'd been to Disney World a lot as a child. Besides while there is indeed a child living inside my body it has grown past Disney for the most part.

Hope everyone enjoys my entry this time around!