小布施　Obuse

Had a great weekend trip to Obuse and Shibu Onsen in Nagano prefecture, with some of the other JETs from my area. Obuse is a really pretty, traditional, and culturally-rich town that is famous for chestnuts (called kuri in Japanese). It took us about 2.5 hrs to drive there.

(L-R): Martin's Japanese girlfriend Keiko, Martin (UK), Lopaka (Hawaii), Myhanh (Canada), Erik (US), and Nate (US).
In Obuse, many families maintain beautiful Japanese gardens and have what they call Open Garden Homes. These houses are registered with the Town Office and are given a sign with a number to be hung at the entrance of their homes. Visitors are allowed to walk freely through the gardens of these homes and take photographs.

Obuse is known for being the birthplace of Hokusai, the renowned Japanese artist who created the famous wave painting. We visited the Hokusai Museum.

We also visited the place where Hokusai lived.

Keiko showing Erik how to play a traditional Japanese musical instrument in Hokusai's house.

Lunchtime!

Since Obuse is known for chestnuts, I ordered the chestnut lunch set. Rather misleading, the only chestnuts in the set were chestnuts cooked with rice.

Open chestnut found lying on the ground

Chestnuts growing on a tree

Eating chestnut ice-cream! Doesn't really taste like chestnuts though, tastes more like honey.

We also visited the Lamp Museum, which wasn't very exciting.

Chilling out in the Obuse Museum, which has many cool art pieces.

Sculptures on display at the entrance of the Obuse Museum

After the Obuse Museum, we bade farewell to Erik and Nate and drove off to Shibu Onsen for an overnight stay.