Barbecue Trip At Nakadaki Art Village

"Vegetarian" is an Indian word 

meaning "bad hunter"

no offense to 

all the vegetarians out there

So, did you get the joke? If you failed to get anything from your hunting, then you would just end up eating anything green you found around you, which makes you a vegetarian. Well, the catchy phrase above isn't really related to this entry. 

 

Driving along Kujikuri Beach (九十九里浜) that occupies most of the northeast coast of the Boso Peninsular.

 Restaurants and shops selling surfing equipments along the beach, which is the second longest in Japan.

 Paddy fields were spotted along the way too.

Last weekend, the people from my company organised a 2D-1N barbecue trip. The location was in an exotic place in the southern tip of the Boso Peninsular in Chiba prefecture. Nakadaki Art Village, located in the rural city of Isumi has roots of 20 years deep. The concept is something like an eco-village, which are popping up like mushrooms across Japan lately.

The wooded community, surrounded with beautiful natural surrounding, is a mixture of homes (such as studio house and tree-house), art galleries, the Nakadaki music studio, Primrose curry shop, Vanashanti healing house and more. This place is just less than 100km away from Tokyo and this little home away from home certainly provides visitors with a great and exciting getaway from the hectic metropolitan life. Nakadaki Art Village regularly hosts outdoor and music events such as the Boso Fun Ride and Forest Jam as well.

 Here we are - Nakadaki Art Village.

 Tall pine trees decorates the village.

 And the village is also surrounded with beautiful floras as well.

 We spent our night in this fantastic studio house.

 This is what greeted us once we stepped into the house - a bar!

 

To the right is a cozy living room and a kitchen next to it.

 The first floor is a huge room, where the guys could spread the futon on the floor and sleep like sardine, 

since all the rooms were taken up by the girls already haha!

 Toilet, and with all those branches, in case you slipped, you can still grab onto one of them.

 The GWC Stones haha! (photo credit: Eddie)

After departing from Shinkoiwa in Tokyo, we arrived at our destination on schedule. Karen, who rarely drives in Japan was our driver. The rest were so bad that they doubled the time we need to arrive because they expect Karen will be driving on tortoise speed. But in the end, that person who made that poor estimation was the last to arrive hahaha wtf!

After all the wooow-ing session around the studio house, it was time for us to do some shopping for the barbecue later that night. We divided ourselves into three groups, one is assigned to get the stuff for barbecue, one for salad, and another one for the next morning's breakfast. The guys were damn smart that they quickly chose to get the ingredients for salad 'coz it's the simplest and lightest job. In the end however, the girls realised that and immediately made the guys to grab the barbecue stuff instead lol!

 

Short meeting before the shopping. One of us even suggested if we would wanna do a race

to see which group would finish getting their stuff first. Sounds like the Amazing Race pulak lol!

 Eddie, who didn't need a basket, appeared from nowhere and said to us, "Hey, look at what I've got for our snacks!"

 And finally, at the cashier. Our stuff were so much that it caused light traffic jam for a while haha!

 And this is classic! The grand total for our grocery shopping, and the receipt was more than a meter long!

That is like almost RM1,200 worth of food, for just two meals! Damn siao, right? The initial budget for food set aside was actually double of that digit. Were we thinking about feeding cows and sumo wrestlers or what? And just when you thought that is insane, we actually went for a second round of grocery shopping later that evening. 

After the short adventure at the local supermarket, we decided to take our late lunch first.

 Grilled tuna head (まぐろカマ焼き) set meal.

 Eranga, Shinji, Thomas (bukan nama sebenar), Tsukada-san and Samitha.

 Eddie, Miaoling, Karen, Erika and Miyata-san.

 We dropped by the beach on our way back.

 

The wave of the Pacific Ocean were simply fantastic.

 Love this group shot a lot. The cloudy sky gives a dramatic background effect to the shot.

 Members from Gateway Computer.

 :)

 Just before we leave, I said to Eddie, "Hey, lets camwhore!"

 Our cute little rental car which was shared between Karen, Miaoling and me.

There were twenty-one of us who joined this trip but not all were from my company. Only twelve of us were from our company and the rest were the friends of our two colleagues, whom they got to know from their jamming sessions. One of them owns his own bar in Kichijoji area and he was our bartender for the night.

The menu of the night was Japanese seafood curry and salad, to go with the barbecue food. And of course, free-flow of drinks.

 

This is how our studio house turned into at night.

 The line-ups for the night.

 The girls seemed to be having great fun in the kitchen.

 The chefs kampai-ing together after they were done with their mission (photo credit: Eranga).

 We got an astrologer in the house too. And I tell you his readings are pretty accurate and that is scary! (photo credit: Eranga)

 

I worked at the BBQ pit almost the whole night (photo credit: Eranga).

 Love this nice shot a lot! Thanks to Eddie.

 

We spent the night chilling and barbecuing. Perhaps it was just too enjoyable that somebody even decided to strip haha!

 The crazy six of us decided to go for a midnight stroll around the paddy fields at two in the morning. The stars were just breathtaking.

 

One group photo on the next morning, with our Ghibli King a.k.a. Eddie sitting in the middle.

 We stopped at Tsurigasaki beach (釣ケ海岸) on our journey back to Tokyo.

 There is a toori gate build at this beach.

 The weather was just perfect for surfers.

 

This is what we call flapping waves.

 :) (Part 2) lol!

 And guess who we saw when we looked back? It was Miyata-san and Eddie behind us!

A big thank you to the organisers and it was a great two-day trip with this members!