We visited a couple places together.
We went to Tochio with Sophie and Chris & Chris' friend who's name is also Chris.
Tochio is a small town, it's famous for aburage (fried tofu). Not much sight-seeing there, but we were lucky to see a warrior festival.
People in Tochio are all very friendly. Since they knew we are foreign, they would come talk us and suggest to us where to go/what to see.
There was this ojisan who worked in the Civic Centre, he kept on suggesting us to try aburage. He volunteered to make phone calls to aburage shop, so we could try the aburage. He phoned a couple, the the shops were out of aburage. Finally there was this one shop that was still selling aburage and was willing to cook some aburage for us, foreigners, to try.
The shop owner brought out tables and forks, then she cooked aburage for us. We sat outside the shop and ate aburage like kids do. Foreigners eating aburage side by side... we must look hilarious. People were staring at us >.<
We also drop by some shops. When we went into a sweet shop, people offered us sweets' when we went into a tea shop, ppl offered us tea. I don't think they were trying to make money out of us, but they were so eager to show us Japanese things. At the end, we didn't want to be freeloaders, so we still end up buying things from them.
While we were wondering around the streets, one old woman came up to us, pointed at the other direction and said "come try matcha" (powdered green tea). We thought maybe she has a matcha store, so we said "no no".
But later we found out that we have misunderstood her kindness.
As we walked towards a temple, another woman came to us and said that there is a tea ceremony going on in the temple and told us to hurry to the temple.
So then... we went to the temple and tried tea ceremony. Drinked matcha and had sweets.
It just happened that the day we went there, they have a warrior festival where people dressed up as samurais from the past and parade along the streets in town.
At night we came back to Nagaoka and had dinner together in an izakaya.
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