... And in the spirit of checking off "things-to-do" on my list, I also finally made it out to the Nihon Minka-en -- an "Open-Air Folk House Museum, [it] is an attempt to recreate 24 historical buildings from 15 different prefectures, dating from the late 17th to the early 20th century." I've been meaning to go for quite a while, but the recent start of rainy season has complicated matters a bit - whenever I've had time to go, it has been raining. Last Sunday was no different but I decided to bite the bullet since i really wanted to see this place and I was not disappointed (albeit somewhat wet). 
It's quite impressive to see the detail of the craftmanship that went into these places, the regional differences in the building designs (steep roofs in regions with lots of snow for example) and it also helped me understand certain Japanese customs, such as the "always taking your shoes off when entering a home" for example: as you may be able to see in the second image, a lot of the houses were laid out in such a way that the first space/area you reach when entering was used for everything from horses, to storage and general dirty-work - whereas the living quarters were on a slightly elevated area off to one side -- with this layout in mind, it makes complete sense that one would shed the outdoor + dirty area shoes before stepping up onto the living area space, right?! At least this is now my personal theory, which may of course be completely off :)
While at the Minka-en, I also enjoyed a serving of Sansai Soba -- Soba noodles with "Mountain Vegetables". I think I described the mountain vegetables, aka young fern, before, but I've tried adding a picture as it really is quite a pretty, albeit unusual veggie.
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