It we're gonna get either a western-style breakfast or a japanese-style breakfast. I make it the Japanese style. I'm not sure. I'm really hungry

So let's go. I wanted to show you the backyard. It's so pretty

Oh, wow, this one bit cooking like a look at this backyard. This is what we have

but this is to ourselves right here, and then they said in the

Fall there's lots of red and yellow leaves on these trees

Oh, give us a little

next to like two cats and chuckle pie and biscuits and

Drinks and this Coca Cola drink is so cute. But we are getting ready to leave this beautiful place

I'm so that one night is not enough

But yeah, that's the door to the outside and it leads to the cutest little streets morning right now

It's almost 8:00 8:00 a.m. And it's so quiet

We have eggs and sauce a soy sauce natto

Lettuce or salad salmon miso soup and rice

And sausage and egg and I have my tiny coffee

So I'm excited to serve this for breakfast. So natto. It's fermented soybeans

It's really good for her like mostly women because it's good for your hormones. It's really healthy. You have a lot of protein

Smells really bad. A lot of foreigners can't eat natto, and then it comes with like sauce and

Like mustard hold this off. It's really sticky

So you have to get the stickiness, I hope you take the sauce and you put it inside

So you put the mustard inside and then you mix it like this and you wait till it gets kind of like foamy and white

Looks so good. Maybe not to you guys if you come and try natto, I get a lot of foreigners

Just don't like it because of the smell

So I'm going to try the western-style breakfast and it's like a pita bread with like lettuce and ham it looks really good

Very flaky

It's only day two and I already attached to Nagahama on so many levels the nostalgia from my past was so real

Going to high school in (Chiba?) and seeing the mountains. I used to wake up to every morning made me feel so emotional

Little did I know I was about to experience an art that was so beautiful. It takes skill patience and hard work to master

When I walked in they were making mochi. This was not what we're going to do today, but it was so enjoyable to watch

Walking into the main room. I was in awe because I saw something that really piqued my interest

This puppet theater is called boondock. Ooh, and this place I was taken to was a school for that

Not only Japanese but foreigners from all around the world come for a summer program to learn this art and practice the Japanese language

Not only that they can learn shamisen and other instruments here at the school as well

Performances are done in Japan and in other parts of the worlds including where I'm from Detroit

the students intensely learn and memorize a script at the same time as learning how to control the puppets if

If You're interested in immersing yourself in Japanese culture

This summer program is perfectly available to all of you as well. And all the information will be linked down below

They have to be like a good team

No fighting

It takes three people to control one puppet you have to be in sync with everyone else which I thought was impressive

Women the women character dolls, and the male character dolls have different movements in different ways of acting and

it takes three people to

Use these puppets. So it's a lot of teamwork

Some of these puppets go back 200 years ago and have been used for many years

Including the ones that turn into demon snakes like these ones you see here

Okay

Heavy it was my turn to try the puppets and I was surprised how heavy these puppets were

Okay

You have to really work together I

Think the hardest part was trying to control the head and syncing up with your partner

The hair on the puppets are real and each puppet is handmade and hand-painted

Wow so many puppet

Kilometer use male aggression suck seven eight

Really good boy, oh boy dangerous

for your safety

No recent criterias are from this was made from a wedding

The theater group offered to show us a bit of their performance having the female puppet climbed a ladder dramatically up a wall

We just finished everything and it's really the most amazing thing

I'm gonna link everything down below if you guys are interested in coming to Japan. They have a summer program

I think it's two months and you can practice this kind of art here in Nagahama

Which is a very countryside type place of Japan so you can experience Japan but also learn a new art

which is amazing getting emotional right now because like

Like this is like the Japan that I know

so this is like the traditional side of it is everything that I fell in love with and

It's just it's such an experience like I'm so happy right now

Okay, I can't cry here

Before leaving on to our next adventure I was able to try out the shamisen

Like I said before they teach shamisen and the Japanese koto here as well

It's snowing in Nagahama big snowflakes like

It's so pretty though

With all the temples and shrines and everything remote. Oh, geez

Owain temple is a temple known as the Buddha for healing eye diseases the six metre high statue of G

So is rarely shown to the public

The story has been handed down that the frogs living in the temple saw many people suffering eye diseases and chose to become

Scapegoats to the buddha by closing one eye by themselves so that everyone's valuable eyes can receive the protection of kinomoto. Chisel

So a lot of people come to this temp specific temple

You can see behind me a little bit

to pray for healthy eyes

If you're having trouble seeing or something like that people come to pray for that purpose and that's why the frogs over there

Have one eye winking and the other one is open

The winking frogs are available for purchase at the temple

We need this in America

Sake is a traditional alcoholic beverage in Japan it is made through fermentation like beer and wine

Sake is made from rice a staple food in Japan

It's an important part of Japanese lifestyle and culture. And today we're going to be doing some sake tasting here in Nagahama

So this is like the fourth or fifth

oldest sake Factory or liquor store in Japan

It's about five hundred years old

Okay, so I'm going to try my first sake so this one is dry and dry and fresh sake

Sake is very easy to go down. It's not so difficult easy to drink

This is pretty much the same thing that this one has a little bit of a thicker

Taste or a feeling?

Out of the two though, I think I like the first one better like it's good, but this one is my favorite.

After tasting all the sake I definitely felt tipsy and 100% needed a bathroom

So the manager took me to the back and showed me where they made the sake

I'm glad I had asked for a bathroom because that was really cool to see

This was definitely a fun

Experience and I encourage any of you who love drinking to try out some sake tasting

the shops link is down below

So I tried to sake it today and it was really good

I've never done sake tasting before so that was interesting and each one had a very distinct flavor and a distinct taste and

aftertaste and everything the way that it's made is very particular and

It sounds like they take a lot of time to make it's very tedious and it's still snowing. Oh my gosh

So we're at a sort of camp place, I guess people go camping here

So maybe not now but I think in the summer, it's very popular

So we needed a place to escape from the cold and warm up. So we headed to a place called woody pal

yoga a great place for skiing snowboarding camping and fishing

This place also specializes in boar hotpot and deer meat if

You're vegan or vegetarian. This may not be the best place for you to eat, but you can still enjoy the other activities

Okay, so we're gonna have a nabe a hotpot hotpot are not my favorite. I love nothing. I

Love it, and it's made with boar this hoe. This is not for vegetarians

The nabhi comes in your own little individual hot pot filled with vegetables boar meat and kimchi. Miso type soup broth served hot

the fat on the boar meat was actually pretty soft and sweet tasting I was surprised and

Of course, Japan also has its side dishes to go along with your meal. Okay, so I'm gonna try the first dish which is the

Deer this is like deer soup

Yeah, it tastes like, um any other meat

in between like tough and soft?

This is hot pot boar. I'm going to try some of the boar meat, and it comes with vegetables and soup, sort of broth.

Look at this mushroom! It's so beautiful.

It's very tender

There's so much flavor in one little pot

So we just finished our meal and it was so good and

Now I guess I'm going fishing.

I Haven't fished in a long time, but I was really excited to relive my childhood and try again at yoga Lake. Okay, so I changed

Into this leg ski jacket and I'm going fishing

We were introduced to a professional fishermen who would help us catch the fish today

I'm excited

We'll be they catch the fish and then you eat it as tempura so you can cook it as tempura

Hopefully I catch lots of food

They're counting on me, oh no

The pressure was on I needed to catch us some dinner for tonight

But the best thing about this experience was the scenery and nature you're surrounded by despite the rainy weather

It was a gorgeous sight to see

And we're gonna start fishing soon.

Lots of kids and adults going fishing so it's fun for the whole family

Fishing in Japan is still very popular today and a lot of families do this as a pastime

But you have to have so much patience. Just putting the bait on the hooks took such a long time

So many hooks on this

Okay

Will I catch anything?

I hope

It took me about 45 minutes before I started to catch anything and we had to move around the dock to find the best spots

To catch the fish

I'm too impatient for this

After the first fish I caught I started to catch a lot more am I an expert Fisher yet?

We just finished fishing and we caught a lot of fish and I was saying that the fishing poles that they have are so

Long for such tiny fish in each season. They have different types of fish in this season

They have the small ones. And so now we're gonna make tempura out of this

We were greeted at a small mom-and-pop shop that specialized in turning of the fish that we caught into tempura to eat

We caught this fish

Really good

We headed back to the station in the evening and we were so grateful to have been given this opportunity

To see all that Nagahama had to offer this was a trip. This was a trip I didn't know I needed.

I am so lucky to have been able to immerse myself in the culture of Nagahama within (Chiba?) prefecture

The thing I love about this country is at each place. You see has its own separate culture within the Japanese culture

I find it so intriguing and it keeps me wanting more

This is why I fell in love with Japan and I can't wait to explore more of this beautiful country with you guys

Thank you for watching the very first installment of girl abroad missions

If you haven't seen the girl abroad series be sure to do so and subscribe for more videos about Japan and my life living overseas

Like this video and comment below what your favorite Quest was and I will see you guys in the next video