Sukura City~Glass Art Class~

It was nice to see the place where my hubby works in Japan. Of course we were not allowed to go inside the gates but close enough to see the buildings. This place is guarded and if you don't have the proper paperwork you will not get in. I understand they are working on future Honda Models.

Traveling down the road to Sukura City for our Glass Class we wanted to stop for something to drink.  Some beverage machines were sitting out and we spotted them.  Teresa pulled over and all of us were in awwwww as we laughed at the location we had found.  It was a covered drive thru where you can get out of your car and buy condoms, beverages, sandwiches, tobacco and snacks.  This is the first time I have seen a drive thru in Japan.

We passed some rice fields in various stages of completion, I am amazed at the number of steps that have to happen for the fields to be completely done.  This field is in final stage and all it needs is to be  burned and it will be completed.

The rice field has been harvested and put into stacks reminds of corn stalks tied together. 

                                                                    Rice hulls in a pile
Time for lunch so we headed for Bell Mall, as soon as we got in the mall we were shopping so funny. Got some really cute rubber bands that had girlie decorations on them. Bought different colors for BB my grand daughter.  She will love them I'm sure about that. I bought a hair pin that has a fur ball on it; fur is popular here in Japan for this winter.

 Moved on to another store where Sue and Deb were trying on hats..so cute on both of them!!! We are having so much fun today. We did alot of laughing and truly enjoying this cool rainy day. So glad to have these ladies to spend my time with in Japan.

 

 We had fun in this store playing with some little hats that alot of the Japanese girls wear.  We each took turns trying them on. I seen many girls wearing what I'm going to call a fox tail hanging from their belt loops. Not something I would wear at any age but its ok on them. Its now time for lunch there are so many places to choose from here we all decided to eat spaghetti at a place called Italian  Tomato Cafe. I have not seen this in US its a liquid sweetener and lemon for tea and coffee works especially well in cold drinks.

 We are in Sukura City where our glass art class will be held.  I am excited as I truly don't know what to expect from this class.  Teresa's Japanese Sensei met us at the art building so she can translate instructions for us. We got started by choosing which piece of class that we wanted to do the art on.  We all chose the hanging lanterns.  3 of us then chose cherry blossom design to put on ours while Sue chose fall leaves.  You start out by sticking the design to the glass in the locations you want your design to be. You are then given a sharp knife to cut out the design.  I tried but the flowers were small and hard to cut design.  Ended up removing the stickers that needed to be cut with stamped out designs that all you had to do was peel and stick no knife required. LOL

Next step is taping up all areas that do not get sand blasted.

We are ready now to go and sandblast our lanterns...

 removing the tape

 Cleaning the glass after stickers and tape have been removed

 Deb's having a hard time removing the tape from her lantern, but she is determined to get it removed.

 Finished product.............

 Glass Sensei with our class~L to R~Teresa, Sue, Deb, Donna and Glass sensei

This was an experience which would take lots of time to master the skill of cutting and blasting.  Here are some that skilled people had been working on.

 It has been raining all day and its now 2pm and cool outside. Starting to feel like fall around here; high of 72 and steady rain. Class is over and we are heading back to Utsunomiyia, before we go home we are stopping for dessert and coffee at the castle which the inside looks like a funeral home.

The mountains are pretty what I can see of them through the fog/rain....

Found this really cool bakery that was fully decorated for Halloween. There was a basket sitting out that had packages with 2 cookies in them, one was a ghost and one was a pumpkin.  We each bought a ceramic pumpkin that was filled with pumpkin custard and topped with whipped cream.