Enoshima and weird ice cream

Recently we went to Enoshima. It is about an hour away by car from our house. Enoshima is a small island connected by a bridge that you can walk across. After we walked across the bridge we went up a hill and there was a big shrine. We went up lots of steps to the top of the island where there was a garden which a British person made. Normally Japanese gardens have wood in them but this one had bricks. Also At the top of the island is a light house called Enoshima Tower, which we went up.  It isn't so high, but because it was very windy the building was moving and you couldn't use the stairs.  Because Enoshima is a hill and the tower is at the top you could see quite far away. On a clear day you can see Mount Fuji, but we couldn't, but be could see Landmark tower in Yokohama.

There is also a cave on the island. We held some candles so we could see in front of us. Inside the cave there was a dragon and drum, you wish for something and hit the drum twice, if a light flashed twice then your wish would come true. If the light flashed once then half your wish would come true, but if the light doesn't flash or you beat the drum more than twice then your dream wouldn't come true.

When we got out of the cave we had weird flavour ice cream. I chose Black vanilla with bamboo charcoal in. You can see in the picture other weird flavours like wasabi, or whitebait!  

Here’s a list of the flavours they had.

•  Black Vanilla
• White coffee
• Banana Chocolate milk]
• Corn Pottage (corn soup)
• Jelly Fish Ice
• Japanese Sake Ice
• Tofu Milk
• Soya Bean Milk and Black Soya Bean Flour
• Wasabi Ice cream
• Mont Blanc (Chestnut)
• Whitebait (tiny fish)

We went back to the beach and there were lots of Sea Hawks looking for food to snatch off people.

Skiing

Japan in a very mountainous country and in the winter the mountains get lots of snow.  The snow stays around fro a long time. This meant we could go Skiing in the spring holidays at the beginning of April. We went to Yuzawa in the Nigata prefecture.A prefecture is like an English county.
We had to get up at 5:00am to catch a train to Tokyo.

Tokyo Station

In Tokyo we got a bullet train called MAX. MAX has 2 floors and is designed for going to snowy places.

Bullet Train MAX

Yuzawa had about 5m of snow when we went there. The weather was sunny. It is surrounded by mountains. To get up the mountains we had to use a gondola type of cable car. Going up on the ski lift we could see a small avalanche had happened.

In Yuzawa we went to a ski school as it was our first time skiing. The ski boots were heavy and stiff. It was OK to go up stairs in them but very hard to go down.

Ski School

We also had to wear weird Sponge Bob vests which we didn't particularly like to do the ski lessons, but despite the fact that we had to wear the vests we got good and so the parts which my dad went slow, we went fast.  The ski teachers weren't that strict, they even let us throw snowballs at them.
We also tried snowboarding but we mostly fell over. There were lots of other people who had fallen over and they were sitting down more than snowboarding. Almost every snowboarder had a wet bottom from sitting in the snow.  From the chair lift we saw a snowboarder in a stretcher.
After 2 ski lessons we could go down a long ski route over 1km. Here is a video of some of the things we learnt.

We could do parallel turns and go into the tuck position for steep hills. Skiing was excellent fun! We saw good views, and has nice weather.

It was also good as we found a restaurant which did cheese fondue which is unusual to have in Japan and one of my favourite foods.