Day 8 Hot Spring and Ainu Culture Center

June 14 Blog:

Today, we had breakfast at the ryokan and attended our final Japanese classes from 9-11:30. We present haikus that we wrote in Japanese recalling our experiences in Sapporo and received certificates for finishing the course. From there, we took a bus to Koganeyu hot spring. We enjoyed foods such as cold soba and katsu-don (pork cutlet and egg over rice) before going to the onsen. For many of us, it was our first Japanese hot spring experience and it was very relaxing. After the bath, we went to the Ainu cultural center and learned about the lives of the indigenous Ainu people native to Hokkaido. We received a tour of traditional Ainu housing and explored their clothing, tools, instruments, and games in the museum. The Ainu clothing was woven with specific patterns that had spiritual meanings related to the gods they worship, and we were especially impressed with their salmon skin shoes. We then cooked traditional Ainu dishes for dinner such as deer meat, kabocha (japanese pumpkin) and potato pancakes, fish and vegetable soup, and dango (rice cake) with konbu (seaweed) and ikura (salmon eggs), usually only eaten during special ceremonies. We then returned back to the hotel to get a good night’s rest before the flight back to Tokyo the next day.

by Maya and Christin