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Our bus

6:20am: The bus rolls out of the bus stop in Kawaguchi. We all have designated seats in the bus, very organized

Our beautiful tour guide serves us hot green tea

Each of us receives a coupon to exchange for a free pack of dried seaweed in the fish market

7:20am: our first stop of the day in a service area

Rice ice-cream

7:36am: The tour guide tries to sell us special edition spoons which are engraved with the Japanese Crowned Princess and her daughter's names

9:35am: We stopped at another service area.

10:45. We went to a fish market in Teradomari to buy seafood. Many seafood shops line the street

This man from a fish shop welcomes us once we got off the bus in the fish market

Many tour groups, including ours, get dropped off to this fish shop

A crab stall inside our fish shop

Trolleys from different tour groups line up in front of the fish shop for people to put their purchase on them. Staff will then transfer the goods to the corresponding buses

Our trolley. The bag on the left is mine

A fellow tour member gets the dry seaweed with her coupon

12:10pm: We had lunch in a restaurant above this spoon factory and store

An old Doraemen poster decorates one of the spoon-making machines

These fish grills in the spoon factory are less than US ten cents each. Buyers just need to drop the money in the bowl on the floor

Our lunch room

My lunch set which features sashimi (raw seafood) and seafood soup

I dumped the raw tuna, shrimps, clams and squid into the very hot soup and covered the lid. After ten minutes it was completely cooked. All the other Japanese looked at me in awe/horror

14:00pm. We came to the foot of this hill to look at cosmos

14:45pm: We arrived at this sake maker

This postal bike parked inside the sake brewery compound is operated by a Sakai Masao postman. The first character of his name means sake, how appropriate

Harvested rice stalks form a wall on the driveway of the sake making compound

Rice

People who have their own bottles fill them up with the water from a natural underground spring right next to the sake building

There's sake sampling in the store next to the sake brewery. When I took this picture, eight people have taken a sip

A huge wooden drum used to make sake in the old days

The staff hangs a green plant outside the entrance of the sake brewery when they make a new batch of sake, when the plant turns brown, the sake will have finished aging

16:25pm. Another stop at a service area

17:40pm. We made a last stop at this service area

Crab potato chips, only available in Nigata, the pack says

I also bought fried fish cakes and baby puffer fish

The seafood pack that I bought

Gifts from the tour company: Crab, prawns, dried seaweed and a spoon