this trip was 5,000 yen for me, 20,000 for my wife since she's not a student at my school. long story short my end opinion is "it was boring as hell" but i still did SOME fun stuff. it felt more like 20, 30% fun, 50% riding in the stupid bus and trying not to fall asleep or get blinded from the sunlight, and the rest were various worries like 1. not being able to get any food to eat, 2. someone coming in the hot springs when i'm in there or something; that or boring stuff like listening to a speech in japanese (using a lot of words/terms i don't know and mentioning a lot of famous people/places/events i don't know, while pointing to things i can't see) about how to brew rice wine, and then watching other people taste various types of rice wine.

i "can" drink even though it makes me unable to sleep and i get hot immediately after drinking (i don't get nightmares, i just can't sleep) but even if we're not staying in the same hotel room, if my wife sees me take a sip or know i'm hanging out with people who're drinking, or smells alcohol on me and so on then she freaks out. So of course i can't drink any. and by the way i've already been in a rice wine museum which was a lot cooler and more detailed than this one. so then we're just standing in this cold factory watching 9 of our classmates (and some teachers) try out various kinds of rice wine while ignoring us.

similarly we went to a castle/museum where, as is usual in japanese museums, i couldn't read anything since the font was too small AND it was all boring shit anyway (3 floors of "so-and-so who fought so-and-so" in "such-and-such war"). the teachers had decided ALL the activities and restaurants and our meals without asking any of us what we wanted to do, so for example we all ended up eating at a ramen buffet where 4 out of 12 people in our group could ONLY eat white rice, carrots, oranges and grapefruit. We couldn't even get tea or coffee as that wasn't included with the buffet.

( Read more... )