The next day, we went to a small town called Yamanaka. We met a man who makes lacquer ware -- wooden bowls, plates and cups that are glazed so you can see the patterns in the wood. The first thing the man showed us was his workplace, where he carves the wood. From there we went to the wood storeroom, which had pillars of wood bowls everywhere, going all the way up to the ceiling. Then, we went to the lacquering room. Lacquer is a syrup-like substance used to cover the wood and you need to paint it on in a moist area for it to dry. After it dries, there are still 20 more steps to complete before it's finished!
                                                                                                                                  
That night, we stayed at another onsen and in the morning, we left early to go to the city ofKanazawa. The city had a place called the 21st Century Museum. There is an exhibit of a pool that looked like people were standing under the water. The trick was, that they had glass under the water so you could go underneath it without getting wet.  It was really cool. 

We also went to a store that makes all kinds of stuff using gold leaf. They invited us in to make gold leaf chopsticks. Gold leaf is a very thin sheet made of gold powder that is only 1/100th of a milometer thick, so you can't touch it with your fingers ... you have to use special wooden tongs to pick it up. We had to be really careful working with it, but our chopsticks came out great. This area is obviously famous for making things with gold leaf because they even use it in food (they said it's good for your digestion). We got ice cream with gold leaf sprinkles on it while we were there!

Now we are going to Bhutan, a small country in the Himalayas (only 150 miles from Mt. Everest) but before this blog ends, here's my "top ten' list of what I liked about Japan:

1. Heated toilet seats everywhere!
2. Going to Hirado and Nozaki Island: Especially meeting our new friend Satoshi-san.
3. Baseball game in Fukuoka: All the yellow balloons during the 7th inning stretch were so cool.
4. Bullet trains: The fastest trains in the world.
5. Uzumasa Toei Movie Village: It was so real and we loved the ninjas and samurais.
6. Gion district in Kyoto: The kimonos were hard to walk in but we had so much fun
7. Ishikawa Prefecture: The aquarium we visited was great
8. Kidzania: It was fun to make our own pizzas
9. Sumo wrestlers: Man, those guys are big!
10. Temples & shrines: So many cool statues.
 
'Till next blog!