i ♥ numazu
by mikka
The Numazu harbor, as seen from the Byuo tsunami gate.
Last Saturday, Yuka, the secretary at our school, and Satoshi, a student of Iain's, took us out for a full day of sightseeing in Numazu. It turned out to be an amazing day - not are Yuka and Satoshi the nicest people ever to drive us all around town showing us around, but it turns out we have lucked out, immensely, in our new home for the next year.
Yuka and Satoshi in the background, Iain in the front.
Our first stop was the Byuo (literally, Fish View) tsunami gate, whose mechanical workings I'm still a bit unclear on. At any rate, you can go inside for 100 yen and get a panoramic view of the harbor and the sea.
The Byuo gate from across the harbor.
Fishing!
The gate itself towers above the Numazu fish market, which is usually packed with hungry locals on the weekends (some of my students have already given me a map, marked with their personal recommendations); Yuka had won a coupon to one of the many restaurants, which she very sweetly shared with all of us.
My tuna sashimi was probably the best sashimi I've ever had, though maybe it wasn't quite as fresh as Iain's aji (horse mackerel, a local specialty), which came to the table freshly chopped up, and still moving, much to our surprise. The aji tasted pretty good (I waited till it had stopped blinking at us for a taste), but I was secretly relieved that tuna is too big to make its way to your table head still attached.
Iain likes it here too.
After lunch, we walked around the pier and the beach some more - there is a huge stretch of pebbly beach, complete with a bike path, that I am completely in love with now: beach on one side, forest with running paths on the other, Mt. Fuji overhead on clear days.
So this is where we live, apparently: neither of us can believe our good luck at ending up so close to the beach and the mountains and the woods, but we definitely can't wait to start exploring more.
