We woke today to a hard frost and the lake frozen. I have never seen pine trees look so lovely as they are here, below they are ‘training’ a tree. They also wrap parts or whole trees to protect them in the winter.

We then went to the Doll Museum of Yuki Atae, these were incredible dolls, he captured the figure so well, we were unable to take photos inside the museum so the picture below is from one of his catalogues. Absolutely amazing and intricate work.

We were allowed to take a photo of this one in the gift shop. The figures stood between 30-50 cms high and there were probably over 100 of them, all different ages, some fantasy some everyday.

We then took the bus to a nearby city and caught the bullet train. But before we boarded we had to purchase a bento box or similar for lunch, this was a laugh as we generally didn’t have much idea what was in them. I ended up getting a fish sushi, which was quite good. In the meal there was real wasabi and a little wasabi grater, it tasted fantastic and wasn’t green or like the toothpaste wasabi we get at home.

The train was comfortable with heaps of leg room, it wasn’t the fastest one, apparently we go on that one next week when we go back to Tokyo.

We arrived at Nagoya and proceed straight to the historical area of Arimatsu where shibori dates back to the 17th century. Street was very authentic and quaint and being winter was quite quiet. We had a tie-dying workshop with some Japanese experts (all women), the oldest of whom was 86, they were lovely and eager to share their knowledge albeit with hand signals and lots of laughing. We did all our stitching and tying and they will dye the fabric and have it sent to our hotel in Tokyo waiting for us to arrive there.

We then went to a very famous Kimono designer’s shop (I can’t remember his name) it was in a beautiful old house, complete with zen garden and beautifully dressed men and women in traditional kimono. The prices were steep, but the fabrics beautiful and hand done, so I guess were one-offs. I need to find out more about it, but from what I can gather, when you are 21 you go and get a kimono, some people get more than one but most people only get one, because of the cost. They can graduate in it, get married in it etc.

The picture below is created by tie-dying, lots and lots of tiny knots to create this one.

See the price on these ones, that’s about $50,000 (NZD) but they were mostly a lot less than this – even some sale ones for around 200,000 yen, which is around $2,500 NZD.

Tonight we went to a Japanese Brazilian restaurant, it was a meat-eaters paradise with lots and lots of dishes of meat brought out and a small salad bar you could help yourself to.

At the hotel we were given a little voucher that we take with us to breakfast, lots of hilarity after we read the bit about what to wear to breakfast. Especially after we wore our ‘dressing gowns’ to dinner last night!