Toeicho 東栄町

Last weekend, we went with some friends (part of JLA) ;) to Aichi-ken. When you talk about Aichi-ken, everybody thinks about Nagoya, but actually, we went to the border area between Aichi and Shizuoka, and Nagoya was pretty far away. The objective of our trip was to meet a friend who has just been mother and to meet her child too.

On Saturday, it was raining all day pretty heavily, but still we managed to do some sightseeing and see some color changing leaves (kouyou 紅葉) in Yuya onsen 湯谷温泉.

We got to our friend's house pretty early and we could enjoy a nice time with her and her family.

Her mother also prepared some of the local delicacies...

...including rice with bugs, which was actually delicious!!!

The house was really cool, with a large orchard and gardens.

After visiting her, we went to the place where we would spend the night, Star Forest. The place was really cool. It is like a little astronomical observatory in the middle of the mountains. They even have a planetarium and a 60-cm telescope to watch the beautiful sky in these isolated mountains. Unfortunately, because of the rain, we could not use the telescope and we could just go for the planetarium. We stayed in some pretty bungalows...

and had a nice nabe dinner after the planetarium session.

On Sunday, the weather was perfect, with blue skies, and we could enjoy our time in Aichi much more. In the morning, we went to a local festival (maybe the town did not even have 1000 inhabitants!!!) which consisted of some guys dressed up as demons and dancing to the songs the crowd was singing. 

Later on the day, we went to a famous color changing leaves spot, Assuke 足助, in Toyota (yes, the original place of the largest car marker in the world). The next photos show you how beautiful that place is in autumn. No further descriptions needed... :) Enjoy the weekend!