This will be a series of post of what I have done on the year 2006. Mostly it would be more of the new and not so new places that I have visited, people met and event that took places in year 2006.

First stop: Iga-Ueno: Ninja Village

Finally, Ono-san and me were able to set a schedule for our trip together. I’ve always wanted to visit the Ninja Village in Iga-Ueno Mie Prefecture and so there we went. Ono-san suggested to go by car, since we can save money and can go to places ( like onsen ) that is not accessible by public transportation. I was actually hesitant ’cause I don’t have a license, though I excited to travel by car, I can’t do the driving. It’s unfair really she will do all the driving and I will just watch huhuhuh . Seriously, Mie prefecture is almost 2 hours drive from Osaka and I can’t help. But with everything sorted out, finally set the when and where to met.

Day of the trip, we have a driver :D. Kakuta-san decided to join our trip and he became our driver while we chatted at the back. And of course that’s when I found out the real deal of this two, they are engage to be married :D. Was so happy with the news that I texted/emailed all our common Filipino friends, of course everybody was actually waiting for that to happen. On with the trip. We started around 11am and arrived in Iga-Ueno by 1230am, time for lunch. We ate the traditional food of the ninja, tofu, except for the rice, everything else was made of tofu. I am not actually a tofu fan, but it was suprisingly delicious though I was not able to finish my set… too big.

After the lunch, we tried to find the information center and saw people dressed in ninja costume, even dogs have cute ninja costumes with swords. And that’s when I blurted out, “Let’s get into a ninja costume before we tour around”. The female we’re like , yeah let’s do that. But the male was like “ah ok.. you girls dress-up, but not me”… But 2 girls against one? No way, everybody MUST be a ninja on this trip. . And so after asking around, we found the rental place. The costume cost 500yen and can be rented from 10am - 4pm. Staff are there to help people put on there ninja costumes. Even my ribbon-tying was corrected, ok I don’t have talent for that :D. Accdg to them both foreigners and Japanese alike have done outrageous poses in Ninja costumes, guess everybody wants to be a Ninja and climb walls and throw shuriken huh?

I became a red ninja ( black was only available for men and it’s too big for me ), Ono-san was the yellow-ninja and Kakuta-san was the black ninja. After we don our costumes, we proceeded to the ninja house and learn all the tricks of the ninja, and then saw their equipment in the museum. Also their lifestyle, proper diet , etc. We tried to see the ninja show, but it was already closed and on its last show for the day. So we went, looking for the “Shuriken Experience”, that is you got to throw shuriken , real shuriken. I got to throw real shuriken and I got the highest score of the day ( I forgot though it was more than a 100 ) :D.

We return our Ninja clothes and back to being a normal citizen. But the day did not finish there, next league of the trip is ONSEN. We found a very nice onsen house, it was also cheap only 700yen. The place was on top of the mountain ( I think ) , though it can only be accessed by car, and sorry I forgot the name of the place. Finally, we soaked our tired and stressed bodies into a very hot water.. so relaxing… then dinner, shabu-shabu.. very delicious…

It was such a fun , fun day and I am so thankful for having two hospitable, kind Japanese friends

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Japan Trips, Life In Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.