May 31 +June 1

Saturday was pretty dull, I kept to myself the majority of the day, making for myself pasta with a pre-made pesto sauce, and in the evening pasta with olive oil. That’s it, sound boring? Well it was. But, the next day completely made up for Saturday. I, one of my classmates and two of the professors decided to go to a local rice festival, the train we took consisted of a single car which I found funny as hell, I just kept thinking up jokes as to how we were on the train equivalent to a short bus, I kept it to myself but that thought kept bouncing about my brain. After we arrived it took us a little bit to get ourselves oriented and determine were the festival was, once we were righted and semi-certain of our head we stopped into a café to pick-up treats, I picked up a nice chocolate pastry, it was small but tasty and held me over well while we walked, I can’t think of much more to say about it, mostly I believe because it paled in comparison to that which followed. The rice festival was quite a sight, they had a decent selection of foods and drinks to choose from. Also upon our arrival it was made clear that this festival was not just rice but meats from the region. My classmate and I split a risotto and a steak, both were simple but top notch. The risotto was made, as near as we were collectively able to determine, with beef broth and ground beef, the texture was perfect have the creamy al dente quality that one expects from a risotto, and the savory beef flavor was a perfect coupling with the steak that we go. The steak was not particularly thick and perhaps cooked a little more well than I would like, however it still remained extremely tender and was very simply seasoned with salt, pepper, and olive oil. After all that we all split a pair of rice crispy treats made with caramel. Afterwards we hung around to take a tour of an industrial mushroom growing facility, the worst of it was the stage were in the produce the growing medium, rotting straw. This is the stage were in the stench of rot is strongest, the stages that follow were all carefully controlled in temperature and humidity, so at most it carries a musky stench, but not unbearable by any means. Each of the four of us were given a small container of mushrooms, a sizeable amount for each person, had no idea how I was going to finish them all.