August 3rd

Today we went to a place called Genki Mura. Japanese translation means "Happy Forest". After driving up a super steep road there is a park with a really long roller slide and some other cool things to play on.

 Cassy near the bottom of the slide! You can actually get a lot of speed coming down but it gets to the point where it starts to hurt so you have to slow yourself down.

Then there is this giant rope jungle gym. Its pretty huge and extremely dangerous in my opinion lol. I remember as a little kid when I would come here to play this was my favorite thing ever. What 8 yr old boy wouldn't like a giant rope thing to climb on??

 A picture of me from the top of the jungle gym. There was a pretty awesome view from up there.

 Another view from the top of the rope thing over looking lake Biwa.

 The real reason we came up to Genki Mura though was for the water fall that is there. You climb up into the mountains a bit and hiding in the woods is this beautiful waterfall with extremely cold water.

Here's a group shot at the bottom of the Taki aka waterfall.

 Im just going to post a few pics. Enjoy!

After messing around in the water for awhile we went back into town and had lunch! Its my dad's favorite place since 20 yrs ago. Its a fast food Chinese family place and its so good.

FOOD!

Sorry this post is pretty long...
After dinner we all had to get ready for the local town festival. It happens every year on August 3rd and local vendors and live music mixed with a lot of Japanese people make this a really fun time.
Enjoy the pics!

My friend Nakagawa joined us. I haven't seen him since 2002 so it was really good to hang out with him.

Cassy had to take a picture of this guy.

One of the vendors gave the girls free drinks because they were American lol.

Group shot with a group of people that work at a Mochi factory across the street from my aunts house. They invited us over a few days ago while they were having a BBQ so they had a stand at the festival and invited us into their tent.

The night sky.















Heidi and Cassy together!










We all had a great time and couldn't wait to sleep. We had a non stop day from 10am till 9pm so we were pretty exhausted. The worst part was that I had to wake up at 4am to take my dad to the airport the next day. Ill post about that later.

Our time here is slowing winding down but were trying to enjoy each day as it comes. Cassy and I are having a blast and cant wait to live here soon. I hope you enjoyed the pictures!