Lodge stay in Suwa, Nagano

Two weekends ago, I headed up to Suwa, Nagano for a birthday party at a lodge — that always means loud music and lots of food and booze in the middle of nowhere. I’ve developed a soft spot for such lodge stays because they are so much fun.

On a Friday night, a bunch of us zoomed up from Tokyo to our friends’ apartment and we chatted till late. It certainly felt like a holiday, especially when we were greeted by this:

To be served breakfast not made by myself was such a luxury. The spinach with crumbled sesame seeds and ponzu sauce was my fave.

Unfortunately it was quite rainy but I actually enjoyed lazing around in my friends’ living room till it was time to shop for food and head up to the lodge for the party.

I found it funny that our party was called, “An International Relations Party” as it was under the ward office and on paper you’re not supposed to be recklessly partying with alcohol on the premises. So it was only after 5pm, when the superintendent left for home, that we could start digging into the booze. The trick was to clear up all the mess before 9am when the superintendent came to inspect the premises and check us out.

There wasn’t much to do except explore the strange but amazing 20 obstacle courses behind the lodge in the woods. It was like a giant playground….

Most of them were too challenging so I just stood back and watched the others tackle climbing ropes and wooden planks Survivor-style.

I did enjoy this one very much though…

It was a swing-type of repelling contraption where you needed to pull the seat as far back as possible and once you let go, you’ll zoom all the way down the rope that was a good 30-40 metres.

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After that, it was time for making food. Apparently there were a few vegetarians in attendance so one of our friends volunteered to make udon noodles — from scratch. We helped to knead the dough by stepping on it, like the grape stompers in vineyards.

Don’t worry the dough was safely ensconced in Ziplock bags.

We jumped on the udon too. Don’t ask me why our udon-maker asked us to do this. It was 7pm and there was already a lot of drunkenness going on.

It was very very oishii udon in a veggie broth with carrots and pumpkin.

Alas, I have no more pictures to show you except for this:

Tequila shots….! All I remember was dancing my tush off with my friends and I woke up feeling like it was a great night.

Oops, I have one more photo. I call this inaka soba (country-side soba) and it’s pretty much the one thing I can eat outside of Tokyo. And I think soba in inaka tastes a lot better, too.

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