Koiwai Farm

One sunny Saturday, Tyler and I visited Koiwai farm, a famous dairy farm on the outskirts of town. We took a 30 minute bus ride into the beautiful countryside, across rice fields and to the farm!

(It was very sunny and windy.)

I was a little confused to find that there were basically no animals in the area of the farm that was open for visitors. I guess most of the actual farm work happens nearby, but not in the visiting area. What the visiting area did have was a beautiful open field with attractions (food, gift shops, activities) around the outside edge. We started off our visit with the best soft serve ice cream I have ever tasted. It was so creamy. It was real dairy! It was like it just came out of a really cold cow that ate nothing but sugar. YUM.

Tyler and I tried our hands at some Japanese archery. We definitely need a little more practice to achieve any sort of accuracy, but it was fun. We wandered some more, checked out the gift shops, and then headed to the one big event that was advertised: something about a sheep dog and some sheep!

We went to the sheep area where there actually were pastures of sheep. Yay! Animals! I do love sheep. The show was a sheep dog herding up some sheep, then the announcer guy demonstrating sheep sheering by sheering a sheep in front of the crowd, which I thought was a little weird to watch. That poor naked and embarrassed sheep! But the weirdest part was that there was a mysterious white couple sitting on the grass in front of Tyler and I who entered with an entourage and were being video taped while they sat and watched the sheep. Very strange.

Anyway, we walked around in the sun, and ate delicious food, and got this really great picture taken as an ice cream cone and a milk jar. All in all, a day well spent!