It is no secret that I love wine.  I discovered the awesomeness of wine about five years ago, when James and I visited the Chatteau Morrisette winery in Southwest Virginia with a group of friends.  It was our first wine tour, and I was hooked.  At about the same time, I met a great friend whose family grew grapes and who now have their own winery.  (If you are ever in Southwest Virginia, Stanburn Winery is a must stop! Check them out!) She helped my love for wine grow into what it is today!  Soon after meeting Tab, I began taking wine trips with my girlfriends, and wine became a part of my life.  Since then, I have visited 40 or 50 wineries across the country, so we decided it was finally time to visit a winery in Japan.  I kept my expectations low because I didn’t want to be disappointed.  We set off for L’Orient Winery in Yamanashi prefecture, part of Japan’s wine country.

Japanese Vinyards a video by WanderingHokies on Flickr.

The vineyards spanned as far as the eye could see, but the fields looked very different than western grapes, as the vines grow into a kind of ceiling instead of in straight lines.  I was intrigued.  Some of the vines were grown above driveways and houses!  The Japanese definitely know how to use space efficiently, that’s for sure. It was amazing watching these tiny women on huge ladders tend the vines far above their heads.  It was a beautiful drive to say the least.

We were greeted at the winery by a very excited tour guide who had dedicated much of his life to Japanese wine.  To begin the tour, we walked over to a diagram of the wine making process.

Our guide began an in depth discussion on the wine process using a picture.  For a long time, I thought this was going to be our tour.  Ha! But, thankfully, it wasn’t, and we did actually get a brief tour of the facility.  Much of the tour discussed the wineries use of the Koshu grape, a distinctively Japanese grape.  It’s supposed to have a very fruity flavor and aroma, and pairs well with Japanese seafood.  I didn’t much like it, but maybe it’s an acquired taste.  After the tour, we went to my favorite part….the tasting room!

Unlike most wineries in America, we didn’t taste with wine glasses.  (Very much to my disappointment…) Instead, we tasted with small plastic cups.  And rather than tasting at a bar, you walked around and poured your own tastes.  While this helps with large crowds, you miss the great interaction with the workers at the winery as they explain the wines to you, and you also don’t really learn anything at all about the wines.  There were some interesting wines, including the Sakura wine (a Koshu wine) and the cherry wine (another Koshu wine).  I liked these two because they had actual cherry blossoms and cherries inside the wine bottle.  The taste was okay, but the uniqueness of the Japanese flavors encouraged us to purchase a few bottles.  There is no doubt that the Sakura wine is beautiful!  Though I’m not sure one should buy wine based on how pretty it looks inside the bottle.  It was a very unique experience, and while I didn’t like their wines, I am very happy we made the trip.

Large rooms with few walls allow for defenders to respond to whichever side is imperiled by attackers.  We took our shoes off and took the obligatory tour up and down steep stair cases and vaguely following the poor English of our tour guide.  What was most impressive of this castle was the “daimyo’s” residence (translated as a palace).  The regional feudal lord, of the samurai class, would have lived in this really neat palace below the donjon.  Surrounding the palace was a Buddhist rock garden with carefully raked rows of pebbles.  Once inside, we took our shoes off and enjoyed the simple Japanese elegance of indoor design.

Sliding shoji doors separated large tatami floored rooms with few furniture items to be seen.  Indoor gardens were visible along inner secretive walk way, and I was most impressed with the gutter system carefully moving water into tiny indoor streams.  Oddly we discovered a room with the local kami (spirit gods?) costume for the local summer festival held every three years.  We enjoyed the town, only a two hour drive south, so much we intend to attend the festival in OCT 2012.

Over the past year, I have fallen in love with Japan, with its beauty, its people, its culture.  When I was in the states, a friend asked “what don’t you love about Japan?!”  Believe me, there are things that frustrate me and there are days when I want nothing but to be back in the states, but overall, I love Japan, and I love that we have such an awesome opportunity to live here!  I am very excited to be back and am looking forward to sharing this wonderful country with you through our blog.

We were driving through beautiful northern Japan, looking to find sea glass at shipwreck beach.  It was an enjoyable drive, and was perhaps the first enjoyable drive I have had since arriving in Japan.  In Tokyo, I am often gripping the steering wheel while trying not to hit things on the very narrow roads.  Here, the roads were wide, no cars were to be seen, and the roads opened up the world instead of trapping you. We had direcions to shipwreck beach, but the roads the directions led us to were unplowed, and since we had a small rental car, we decided not to risk getting stuck.  I wasn’t about to test out the Honda Fit in a few feet of snow in the middle of nowhere.  Eventually we found a parking lot near a wind farm that looked much more doable in terms of snow and ice.

The beach was a short walk, but we don’t think it was actually shipwreck beach.  I want to visit again during another season, as I have heard the shipwrecks are neat to see.  A bartender the night before told us the Japanese don’t like to visit shipwreck beach because it is eerie.  I am excited to go back and visit!  The car was nice and cozy, and from the car, it seemed like a great idea to go searching for sea glass in -2 degree weather.  Great idea indeed!  As we struggled across a field covered in snow, we began being pelted in the face with sea mist that was turning to ice. Having a hard time moving forward due to the strong wind, I momentarily rethought what a great idea we had had.  However, we continued on and when we finally made it to the water’s edge, the pain from the sea mist ice and wind was subdued as we discovered beautiful blues, whites, and greens scattered about.

It was breathtaking, and suddenly I was warm and my spirits were lifted.  Sea glass is formed by being tumbled, rounded, and shaped by the sea over many years.  It is beautiful and the pure joy that comes with finding a stunning piece in the sand is indescribable.  We walked up and down the beach until we couldn’t feel our hands or face.  We turned to walk back, and suddenly we heard a voice. There was a man standing right next to us!  I am still unsure how he creeped up on us so quietly.  I was startled, and kind of jumped when he started talking to us.  He asked us a question, so we showed him all of the sea glass we had collected.  This seemed to please him, as he smiled and laughed, and we had a brief conversation that included lots of smiling and laughing.  What we discussed James and I will never know, but it seemed to be a nice conversation.  Frozen, we began walking faster in anticipation of a warm car.  We scanned the landscape looking for where we had entered from the road, but it all looked the same.  I only panicked for a moment, as we were already freezing and not knowing where the car was could be potentially disastrous.  We consulted each other on where we each thought we had entered (which were surprisingly very different).  Thankfully, after only a few minutes of stumbling through icy puddles and frozen sea grass, we found the path leading to the road and our heated car.

This is how the guys felt about it.  We waited anyways.  It was an interesting experience to say the least.

This was the first I had heard of a car blessing, and Sumi from Host Nations Relations explained to us what was happening.  “This is very exciting for you to watch,” she said.  This particular temple is specifically for car blessings, as you can see the parking spaces painted at the entrance of the temple.  They perform a blessing about every 15 or 30 minutes, depending on the demand.  After the van ceremony was done, a motorcyclist drove up to receive his blessing.  After a bit of research, there are both Buddhist and Shinto car blessings in Japan, and they are becoming more and more popular.  Shinto blessings involve flower petals being sprinkled on the car, and they are performed by a Shinto priest called a kannushi.  Based on the crazy driving situations in Japan, I can understand why they feel the need to have the extra assurance.  I wonder if our car was blessed when it was brand new (in 1998!).