Publisearre: 22.06.2023
When arriving at the port in Ogi by ferry, non-Japanese tourists can have a lot of difficulties finding their way around. This is because there is hardly any information available in English. Megumi has also noticed this and today she wants to explore the area around the port with us and consider what needs to be improved the most. We also talk to a few tourists from America who had trouble renting a car. Not only are the flyers and posters in Japanese only, but the staff also often speak little to no English. I explain to Megumi that it's very difficult to translate Japanese texts with Google or other apps because the combination of characters sometimes has completely different meanings, and the app often doesn't recognize it correctly. In the same building, there is also a souvenir shop where the same problem exists. Everything is in Japanese, and there's no one to translate it. Why would tourists buy something if they don't even know what it is? Next, we visit the tourist information center. The first thing that catches our attention is that none of us would have known it was a tourist information center. You can actually rent bicycles there, and the sign that would have told us that there's more to offer is, like almost everything here, in Japanese. So we go inside and look around for a while. I find bus tickets and timetables, of course, in Japanese. I explain to Megumi that I have the map saved in English on my phone, so all we have to do is print it out and include it. She looks at the bus tickets and starts laughing. There's a QR code on the ticket holder, and next to it, it says that you can get the English bus ticket here. In Japanese. Seriously? Well, that's why we're here. After visiting all the important points, we get some Tayaki and head to Megumi's house. There, we all cook lunch together, and I carve a few chopsticks since we forgot to bring some, and Megumi doesn't have enough for everyone. After the meal, we prepare a dough for donuts. The donuts today are more of an experiment as we want to try if they taste good with rice flour. We make two varieties, one with wakame seaweed and one with sweet potato paste. However, due to the rice flour, the dough has a different consistency, and we can't really shape them into donuts, so we just make small balls. We fry them in a pan on the rocket stove. Both varieties are delicious (especially the sweet potato one), and I will definitely cook them at home, just like all the other recipes