The beginning of our very Japanese adventure. While my father stayed in Kyōto I joined the fellowship of the cha-no-kai clubs from three different art and design universities on a trip to the Shimane prefecture.

Our bus left Kyōto with round about 50 people at 6 am. Everyone tried to catch as much sleep as possible before we arrived in Izumo around noon. After eating Soba typical for the area we went to a museum to learn about the history of Japan and Shimame. There were also a couple of models to show, how the Izumo Taisha main shrine changed over the time. Appearently it stand on huuuge collums quite some time ago. Already the imaginated picture of that is amazing, isn’t it?

And of cause we visited the original too. A really beautiful and extremely famous shrine. I think, outside of Japan most people havn’t heared of this place, but all Japanese do know it somehow as it’s very important in the legend of the origin of Japan.

It was amazing, but we all were happy to than finally reach the Ryokan we were staying in. In front of the scenery of a lake we had a typical extended dinner and went to a beautiful and relaxing Onsen. Which just prepared us to stay awake for longer for Nomikai, a gathering for drinking, talking and enjoying the time, with our teacher. And man, it was really nice to play UNO most of us knew from our childhood with up to nearly 20 people. What a long fun day!

Oh, and it was sooo cold and ice flowers appeared.