Today it was a roomies trip to Gunma! We got up at around 6:30am on our only day off and were out the door at 7:30am!!! SUGOI!!!!!!!!!!!!! We took our beloved Keisei line to Ueno and then changed to Takasaki line to Takasaki. The train was kind of like the one that we took to Nikko; with the seats facing each other. It wasn’t busy (most of the people were coming to Tokyo not going the opposite direction) so we could just sit and relax having both of the pairs of seats for our use.
On the way there we listened to one of the podcasts I downloaded: In Our Time: Lysenko, which was about a crazy, self learned bioagriculturalist who attempted (an failed miserably) to change Russia. He actually thought that he could change the climate of Siberia by planting a forest. He promised Stalin he could do it in 4yrs….. of course that didn’t work at all. The rather interesting part about it was that everyone actually believed him and he was never denounced as a scientist. Even after the war…
Anyway, back to Gunma-
We arrived in Takasaki about 3 hours after leaving Tsudanuma, only to find we needed to wait another hour until the bus we needed would come. We didn’t despair, but took the chance to explore the area a little bit. Who would have guessed that we would find a jackpot!! There in the middle of nowhere was a sweets factory AND the factory store!!! So for 70 yen we both enjoyed a small like cake, mine was Strawberry cheesecake and Shi got Tiramisu. It was super yummy.
The bus ride to Gunma no mori was rather interesting. We took the most roundabout way to get there. I was sure we’d turned the wrong was down a one way street about 5 times… haha The cutest part was when this little old man got on the bus, he brought a drink to give to the driver--- you don’t see that in Tokyo. It was a scenic tour of the area, but kinda fun. There were a lot of Shell and Mobil gas stations, which was very surprising. There seemed to be more there in the country then in Tokyo.
The 3 of us: me, shi, and Ryo met up at the Gunma Modern Museum of Art. There was a really large lawn in front of the museum that many families were enjoying the nice weather. We had a small picnic, nothing too fancy just some onigiri, veggies, senbei, and ginger cookies.
The museum is really cool and the special exhibit right now was about different architecture of museums around the world. It showed the blueprints for the remodeling of museums in LA, Shanghai, Spain, Brooklyn, and many other places. It was really cool to see how they developed their ideas on paper, to the scale models, to the pictures of the finished products. The Indianapolis Museum of Art was just remodeled a few years ago, I kinda want to see the blueprints of the remodeling now…
The whole day was super fun and we got back home at around 9:30pm. Now I am watching Indiana Jones in Japanese…
The 1st kakigori of the year: blue hawaii flavor !
On the way there we listened to one of the podcasts I downloaded: In Our Time: Lysenko, which was about a crazy, self learned bioagriculturalist who attempted (an failed miserably) to change 
