Adventure To Make Kusadango! 草団子！

Alright~ On July 4, I went to all sorts of places having one main goal in mind: make and eat kusadango. Dango is a traditional Japanese treat where you put small balls of rice cakes all skewered on a stick. The rice cakes (dango) can have flavoring or coloring into them and some might have toppings on them. Type "dango" in Google Images and there you will find them. But kusadango has green tea flavoring in the rice cakes making it look green and taste like green tea. Then you put Japanese sweet black beans on top *Mouth starts to water...*

So we (my family) woke up early to meet all of my mom's students at a train station around 9am. This is when our adventure begins! (Check out the pictures to below to see what I did) :D

Haha! First thing that caught my eye in the train station! It's Kamen Rider!!! My favorite super hero in the whole wide world! They are making a movie with all the characters from the Kamen Rider series and the Power Rangers series with a hero versus villain plot in mind. Flipp'n cool :P

First place we visited was Iwasakite. This is the first huge western-style building built in Japan. It also happens to be the founder of Mitsubishi companies' house. This house is priceless, a national treasure to Japan.

Then we went to Ueno Park, walking distance from Iwasakite. Check out the green plants behind me in the picture! Ueno is such a cool place, huge park and famous for their tropical fruits.

In Ueno Park, we came to Pagota No Daibutsu. A little golden Buddha sits inside this funny-looking dome building. It reminds me of something from Dragonball :P

For lunch, we found an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant! Wha-What?? A buffet?! Yup, check out the menu and see how many I ordered? Two of each kind, lol.

Halfway through eating all the fish in this restaurant :P My favorite? Crab liver... so good, no joke!

After we met up after lunch, we head to a place called Shibamata. Shibamata is in Tokyo but far from the stereotypical tall buildings and hi-tech place. It is a traditional Edo period town famous for their dangos and a movie actor, Tora-san. Tora-san is famous for being in "Otoko Wa Tsuraiyo" ("It's hard living a life as a man"). He made over 40 movies for that movie series in his life time. The movies are about a man who goes on adventures almost always broke looking for love and other funny things. For more information, go here: http://www.japan-hopper.com/2007/08/04_221087.php

Lets check it out!

Me holding a plate of unfinished kusadango. Behind me is a picture of Tora-san.

First thing we checked out was how to make wakashi. Wakashi is a highly decorated Japanese sweet usually meant to be eaten during a tea ceremony. The teacher taught us different techniques and created seasonal wakashi flowers. It was a lot of fun, sort of like playing with Playdo but you can actually eat it! :D

Here is my wakashi of Kiku, Japan's national flower.

After we finished making wakashi, we went to another place to go make our own kusadango! Yes! Here's me standing in the streets of Shibamata with the finished product!

To the left is the kusadango (which was really tasty with green tea) and next to it is the wakashi.

After finishing our afternoon snack, we visited Taishakuten Temple. The details put into the buildings here are crazy!

Here's a shishi (guardion lion)

The details are mind-blowing! All done by hand!

Then we walked to the Edo River. A spacious and green place!

Some people playing baseball in the distance.

After hanging out at the river, we went on the train and arrived in Asakusa famous a HUGE temple called Sensouji. The picture shown here in only the entrance... O.o

And we finished the day by shopping in the souvenir shops right in front of the temple. What a day!