Yay for random Japanese Holidays!

So first, before I talk about fun times biking around Lake Biwa, I'd just like to say that I'm a bit stressed about the blogging situation here in Japan.  If I was in Korea, there would be lots of funny, well written, informative, timely blogs to read, like this one: http://askakorean.blogspot.com/ and others I've seen.  I mean, yeah, there's some that are good, such as the one in my sidebar, but I just haven't seen any that are as prolific and funny as various Korean blogs.  I suppose it would help if I was better about this blog.  Esp the timely part.  Oh well.

So on Thursday it was Culture Day, which means no school!  So I went biking with some other awesome peeps up at Lake Biwa - a pretty big lake up by Kyoto.  Now would be the time to post a map showing the route we took, but as I'm feeling particularly technologically challenged today, I shall refrain.  You can go Google it.  We started at Otsu and went right, all the way around that southern bit, across Rainbow Bridge and back to Otsu.  Like 40km/26 mi/6 hr.  Take your pick of measurements.

So the day started out with me going to the wrong place.  Basically, I'm an idiot, b/c I got on the train a couple stops ahead of everyone else and then stuck my head out at their stop to see if I could find them and the train left w/o me.  So I had to catch the next train which ended up taking a different branch of track, but I didn't realize it, so I had to back track and switch trains to finally get there 45 min after everyone else.

After that we took off. The following is a pictorial tour of our trip.  Also, if your interested and my Facebook friend, you can check my profile from some more pics/vids of me.  (Also bike rentals were 500 yen, which was surprising and exciting.)

So here's our first view of the small bit of lake we were biking.  Yes, we did eventually go by those buildings.  As I remember that was about the time my glutes just went numb.

Here's some of us, looking fresh and energetic. 

Here we have the Michigan.  Later on we saw the Lansing.  I don't know how they decided on these names, but it totally made my day.

Hey, see that tall tower?  That's more or less where we started.  Making good progress!

I love Japanese fishermen.  Why? Cause they fish everywhere.  Seriously, there was this one dude fishing in a ditch.  It was awesome.  I want to be a Japanese fisherman.

Circus tent!  That's what we decided anyway.

Here's us again, on a nice little path along the lake, enjoying the nature.

I heart windmills.  This one was in a botanical gardens, which would have been nice to see if we weren't busy biking.

Touristy place we stopped for lunch.

GIANT bowl of ramen.  It was spicy and peanut-y and  I ate a surprisingly large amount of it.  Super good.

I don't know how there was room for crepes after their giant bowls of ramen...

It was just a little hole in the ground, but we pretended it was a really deep well.  Good times.

These guys were the ones who were supposed to think that it was a really deep well.  They didn't even pay attention to our elaborate play acting.  Sad day.

Look!  Flat!  Fields!  There were even tractors at one point, but I didn't get a pic of them.  Sorry Dad.  Also, that bush in the foreground?  Really fun to stick out your hand and hit them.

Here we all are at the top of Rainbow Bridge.  While everything before this was lovely country-ish, the rest of the way was all town.  Some of it was really nice,  but other parts were a little sketch.

Various views from the top of the bridge.  Also, it's really amazing where you can go on bikes in Japan.  For example, you could never take a bike over Mackinac Bridge.

So I apparently didn't get any pics of the town part of our ride, but there were some really lovely Japanese style houses.  By that time we were all more or less in pain and kind of trying to just get done.  It was also more stressful b/c of tiny/no sidewalks, pedestrians, and so forth, so slightly less enjoyable that way.  But it was really funny going through all the sketch neighborhoods and seeing streets full of love hotels and Pachinko (sp?) parlors.

So let's skip all of that and get to the end, where we have some lovely pictures of the sun set.

Then we went to eat at a random place which was a certain type of restaurant, but I forget what it was called, but got to enjoy some different kinds of food, one of which came to the table and was set on fire (on purpose I mean).

Then I went home and sat in pain.  Then End.

PS-I want go again!!!!