Suzaka, Apple Orchard Farm

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We have been staying at the home of Eechi, a Chinese Businessman who owns this Orchard. We live in a seperate outhouse and its comfortable, with internet too! We arrived in Suzaka, close to Nagano, which hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics at 8pm on Sunday. We were whisked away to the farm and arrived to meet Daniel (from the Isle of Wight) and Johanna (Dans girlfriend, Swedish) They had been there a day already and had never met Eechi before (I think he was away on business) They're cool and we get on well. Immeadiately Eechi told us to get in his car after we'd dropped off our stuff and drove us to the supermarket for food supplies. Now Daniel and Johanna didn't even know we were coming, so it was well random for them. We got em in..including a 4 litre bottle of potato sprit! (Eechi likes drinking) We went back to the farm and had a meal while drinking this potao spirit. Now Eechi's english aint great, he talks very confidently but not very coherently, lots of misunderstandings! Eechi is a legend, I will put up photos of him soon.

Eechi had to go away on business to Kyoto for Monday and Tuesday so we've had 2 days off with no work! Wednesday we start work, not quite sure what we'll be doing but I'll report back later. Yesterday we went to Nagano to see the famous temple and we went in an underground passage in the dark to find the 'key to paradise.' First time we went through we couldn't find it, so we went through again and found it with the lights on our ipods, which probably annoyed the gods.

Today we went to Yukanaka to do a bit of hiking in the mountains and see the monkey onsen. The monkey onsen is where Japanese Makae live on the mountain and bathe in the hot baths that are natural there. Got some nice pics and unfortunately none attacked Dave like in Kyoto last month. We hitch-hiked there and back as the train was very expensive and Dave got up to more sledging on a bin bag on the ski slopes. (He will explain more in 'Dave's Blog' tomorrow)

There is family that live here but I haven't seen them as we live in a seperate house. However Dave and Dan saw their 18 year old daughter in 7-11 supermarket while I was in the toilet. Should be some good nailing material for Dave! Dave informed everyone while we were drinking last night that there are '3 types of Japanese girls'. He didn't explain any further so I will get him to write about this in his blog.

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