Hey there everyone! I know it has been like ages since the last post. It is quite hard to keep up with the blog since there are million things to do around. Luckily most of those things involving eating super yummy foods, travelling to nice places around and having fun with friends here in Japan.
My seniors were serious when they literally commanded us to go have fun and explore Japan till drop on our spring break. The weather was quite nice, mild and not as cold as winter. Although sometimes rain pouring all day long, it was still nice. 😀
Anyways the girls from the dorm wanted so badly to visit this English village called the British Hills so we went there from March 10th to March 12th. The Hills was located in Fukushima, yes, the place where the quake destroyed the nuclear plant a year ago. It was a place designed as a model of Highlands of Scotland on Victorian period in Britain. For short, it looked like Britain in Middle Age. And it was super wonderful. I feel like staying there FOREVER.
It was still snowing – A LOT in Fukushima. When I stepped my feet there, I was like, “you called this spring??” xD xD
but it was really pretty, almost feel like going back to Hokkaido (i know, i know, i haven’t report anything about that, either) but with a slightly warmer temperature. This picture was taken soon after we arrived there (around 1 pm and we were walking around because the room would not be ready before 3 pm.) And luckily these girls I went to British Hills with was so excited with taking a lot of pictures, so we literally went here and there and take pictures at every place.
Okay, so we took 4 hours trip from Chiba to Fukushima, it involved changing the trains for around 3 times but was not that troublesome, because there were 7 of us and you can’t gather 7 girls without chit-chatting for hours. So the journey didn’t feel THAT long and it was quite fun. When we entered the Manor House, where the reception desk was located we were greeted by this statue (look to your left).
I’ll give you three guesses, go on and see if you recognize this person
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All the girls reaction was like:
“Who’s that?”
“It’s Snape.”
“Who?”
“Snape. You know, the character on that popular movie.”
“Oh, that guy.”
So we agreed (and laughing endlessly) that this guy is Snape from that popular movie and we went around for three days calling him the Snape until on the last day, I found out the harsh truth. He was, actually, ladies and gentlemen, is William Shakespeare. He was SHAKESPEARE, for crying out loud. I felt half amused, half embarrassed. Amused, because we went around for three amazing days with the joke of calling him professor Snape and half embarrased because how couldn’t we recognize Mr. Shakespeare?? lol
Anyways, this is how the front door looked like and we spent quite a long time taking pictures here.
The lobby was also had a breathtaking atmosphere because we were like “Woooow” and “Whoaaaaa” and “Wooooow” all the time. I don’t know if it was just me or what, but the rooms were quite…….. dark. No, not dark as in pitch black but it was dimly lit, with
red and brown sofas and small lamps and a grand staircase…. and although i seriously admired the design, it was sort of…..it feels like coming to a very oldish building where you can meet witch cooking some weird poision in a dark place with the fireplace also dimly lit and……..
well, it was not like it was scary, it was just ……old.
The chairs were empty when I took the picture below, but when we came in, a woman was sitting there, reading something. Thank goodness she was reading something normal like The Daily Yomiuri (English newspaper in Japan, one of my main source of knowing what is happening in the world since Japanese news and TV- AND commercials are subject to my low-level of understanding either maybe i am still too stupid to understand the language, or I simply don’t under
stand the concept, seriously.), and not something scary like Witch Daily or something.
Because————
British Hills was nothing like a ghost house, but, but, but, I couldn’t help to get that kind of impression on the very first time because they decided not to turn on brighter lights. But then again if it was not a deliberate action mainly to re-create the atmosphere of Middle Ages manors in Britain, then it probably have something to do with energy saving program. As I said earlier, British Hills was located in Fukushima, one of the area that suffered a great deal from the big earthquake last year. So they probably trying to use the electricity as efficient as they could.
After walking around the Hills complex, we went for some late lunch at the pub, which was not really lunch because I ordered this delicious cake set, and you don’t eat cake for lunch. 😀
But it was really really delicious and i really liked it. They let me chose what drink I would like to order, and they have selection of tea, coffee and juices and I ordered some warm tea – I forgot the name of the tea but it was indeed delicious. The cake has some sort of sweet and mint flavor, and I really liked it. Rini ordered the Chicken Basket and it came with two pieces of chicken breast and french fries. I didn’t take the picture of the Chicken Basket (was too hungry) but I did snapped a picture of the cake set!
After eating the so-called-lunch we decided to come back to the reception desk and ask for our keys. There were 7 of us and we booked 2 rooms, one for 4 persons and the other for 3 persons. We did a little lottery at the pub to determine who sleeps where and I join the other three girls in the room of 211. It was…….. a quite big room with a big closet which………… housed the winter coat that could be used freely by the guests. They looked more like robe than coat, in my opinion. Somehow we picture ourselves like witches from, again, that popular movie and couldn’t help but feel so happy about this.
Yep, yep. That is the robe I have been blabbering about. See how Rini’s look shorter than mine..? Exactly. Because she got the size of 72, whatever it meant, and mine is 110. But later I was kinda grateful for the length of the robe because when we went out for dinner, gee, the snow was uber thick. The robe helped save my leg! 😀
Speaking about dinner, they got this awesome refectory, or the dining hall, that has this four long table in a grand hall. Kind of reminds u, again, of that popular wizards’ movie, isn’t it?
And since you need to dressed properly (smart casual), Rini was real excited about everyone’s gonna dressed up nicely and why don’t put make up on everyone so the night would be a special night. So Estela and Marina ended up putting the make up on everyone else, since we were less experienced than they were on make up department and ta-raaaa… I seriously surprised with the results and was like, no waaay, this is not my face.
But it felt quite nice because everybody puts on the make up and everybody looked different because of those make ups and I do think that sometimes we do need the skill of doing the make up on our own. By the way they served us appetizer first before we headed to our private buffet section (long live KANDA, by being its student we got all the privileges!). The food was really really delicious, and complete with fruits and desserts.
I came from a tropical land where you can find fruits easily and of course, cheap in every street in the town. And upon coming to Japan I realized that fruit is a LUXURY. So I was real happy when they served pineapples and strawberries and other fruits and that is one major point why I would like to live there forever. 😀 😀 There were rice and pastas, beef, chicken, scrambled eggs and other delicious food. I was grateful for our two nights and three days stay, because it was like being in a COMPLETELY different world. Like, literally, I was not in Japan.
This is the full team of British Hills explorer. The nice waitress there caught our pleading eyes of PUHLEEASEE-take-our-picture-together and so she took the pictures for us. Behind us were senior high school students who apparently staying at the Hills for an English learning camp (since they don’t speak Japanese at all at the Hills, and which was the other reason why it was literally not Japan there). We then realized that actually the British Hills was an educational-based resort to learn English and while people are struggling learning we were playing and having fun there. 😛 But it was okay, since all we did here in Japan is learning Japanese and there were a lot of not so good things happening in the dorm, so it was nice because it feels like for just a moment you leave all the Japan world with all the struggling and hide in a perfectly fun place. Everyone did realize that it will be cruel jungle once we came back to our residence in Chiba and we better make it as fun as possible here in British Hills.
So after dinner we went for a little tour at the library. This library the British Hills had was amazing! There were a lot of nice and old books and I was happy. Although they seemed to provide little care to the books, which is too bad because some of the antiques are really starting to show that they need more appropriate care, but I did enjoy the library. They got a huge book on the Windsor Castle, the complete Shakespeare (laughing) and Edgar Allan Poe’s, all the classics and children books and everything. I was expecting those kinds of books in the library since we realized that the Hills was an educational based resort, but they
caught me off guard with these books. They had a complete series of cooking books from English cooking to Spain cooking, and Italian and everything and those books were quite old but I was really surprised. So I asked one of my beautiful friend to take a picture of me holding this Spain cooking’s book with the delicious Paella on its cover.No, I still don’t know how to cook Paella.. 😀
but Marina (the Spain girl) swore that before we get back to our own countries, she would cook us some Paella. (yaay!!) and we took A LOT of pictures in the library. The library was also quite spacious, so we did a little “fashion show” runway and recorded it. *giggles* but the girls are going to kill me if I dare posted it anywhere in the internet so I could only tell you that it was a fun moment with them.
The library also had several nice sofas and chess game, which no one played because we couldn’t find the chess pieces anywhere. The library also had this little folding ladder that looked as old as the other things in the library and we had some photo shoot using that ladder. Now that I think about it, it was strange because you got the impression of antique, and Middle Ages, and oldish atmosphere but I can guarantee you that all the properties (sofas, tables, flowers, lamp decorations, ladder) and everything is……. fairly new, I think. These people at the Hills are uber smart on shaping the look and setting the lamps because we did feel like we were in the old times of Britain.
From the library we strolled to the Queen and King’s room, with this “Her Majesty” writings on top of the door. It was said to be the duplicate of the Queen’s and King’s room but I am not 100% sure that it was. Nevertheless, the room was beautiful and the bed and the sofas are nice and actually I liked it. Even if it was not really the room I would like to be my own room, it was beautiful in its own ways. The girls were also quite excited at this place because the room was big enough and had a lot of things to be looked at. I opened one of the closet in the Queen’s room and find a wedding dress inside. Why, exactly, a wedding dress is stuffed at the closet, I really can’t think of the reason. One of the girls asked if we could try it on but later realized it will be too much of a trouble trying to put that beautiful white thing on and then put it off and arrange it at the closet again so she didn’t try it on.
The Queen’s room had all the feminine side of a room. The crystal glass, the grand lamps and fireplace, the big mirror, flowers – like, everywhere, and sofas and feminine bed and everything. The King’s room is definitely more masculine, with big work desk and simple sofas. There were not much of flowers inside but it had a decoration of a bear skin on top of the bed. And I was like, Uh-huh. Like anyone would sleep on a bed like that. I’m a kind of strict animal pro and if i have to look at the bear skin on top of my bed every night I will definitely never sleep there. I wonder if the King really DID use that bear skin as a decoration on top of his bed.
Anyway did I tell you that the King and the Queen’s room is united as one? They had this door that connects the King and the Queen’s room. The funniest thing happened when one of the girls asked, “So the King and the Queen sleep in a separate bed?”
This could not be the real duplicate of King and Queen’s room. 😛
So then after looking on those beautiful rooms, everyone was already in this photo-shoot-mood and Estela (the Brazilian) made me posed like this:
Which supposed to be a sexy pose and turns out to be not sexy at all. xD
It WAS a sexy pose when Estela did it though, but when I did it it is nowhere near sexy. Maybe it was because I smiled too wide. You dont smile that wide when you’re trying to be sexy… lol.
But it was quite fun and I enjoyed every seconds with those girls, from eating to doing this photo-shoot thing, from trying to read the books in the library and discuss the possibility of the King and the Queen’s sleeping in separate beds and everything. It was a moment to remember, the British Hills trip. 🙂
Oh, and before I forgot! The outside view was as amazing as the Houses and the Manors view! There was this famous England’s red box public telephone and the girls happened to took a picture of me and Rini with that little red box.
This picture is one of my favorite because it was just funny, looking at Rini’s expression and me being locked down in the box. I guess even if we had certain troubles before finally arrived there at the British Hills, it really did worth it to visit. And I wonder how the place would look like in summer, when there were no snow and the colors are not merely white. Because in the end, at night it was too cold to stay outside longer and we decided to come back to our rooms and take this sweet picture.
So guys, if you happened to visit Japan someday, please do give this place a visit. It is amazing, and I assure you will get that “England” feeling upon your arrival here. You can easily access the information here:
Thanks for visiting the blog even when I’m on hiatus for some time. Hug your loved ones tonight, I’ll see you soon!
araramse 