A Year in Himeji, Japan

Let's enjoy sparklers!

2008-08-15T17:50:00.004+09:00

I thought my last post would be the last, but I have to tell you about Obon. Obon is a three day long holiday for worshipping ancestors. Many businesses close this week, so although Obon is not a public holiday, many people have the week off (sort of like the week between Christmas and New Years).

On Thursday night, my friend Ayako invited me to her family's celebration of Obon. I thought it was just her family and parents, but her sister and cousins and their kids came from out of town. It felt much like an American family reunion - lots of kids running around, the women in the kitchen preparing for the barbeque later. But then we went to the cemetary to pray at the ancestors' grave. And back in the house, next to the Buddhist altar, there were large framed photos of their ancestors and wrapped gifts for them.

My friend's daughter and niece, rinsing their mouths before entering the cemetary.

After the cemetary, Ayako took me to the nearby temple where she learned tea ceremony as a girl. The priest's wife made tea for us and then took us on a tour of the temple buildings.

Then we went back for the barbeque which didn't include hamburgers or chicken. There were hot dogs on sticks for the kids and corn on the cob but also squid, many kinds of shrimp, beef, cabbage, onions, tofu - all grilled. We just took the pieces we wanted and dipped them into our bowl of sauce.

After dinner, we headed to the local park for the kids to light off fireworks (which, by the way, can be bought at any store).

(But let me back up a bit, to a party we had at Shirasagi about a month ago. We invited our boss and his family. In the parking lot, we lit some sparklers and other fireworks and our boss' two kids got in on the action. But later, his wife was overheard telling him that Americans were very lively with fireworks. We laughed that off, but now I know exactly what she meant. Back to Obon...)

At the park, the kids (all between the ages of 3 and 7) all sat down nicely on the curb. One of the dads went down the line passing out sparklers and then came back down the line to light them. The kids stayed seated and held their sparklers absolutely still, just watching them!!! If you don't believe me, see the photos!!

After their sparklers went out, they put them in a big bucket of water and sat back down to wait for another! Amazing! I told Ayako about what my boss' wife had said about Americans and sparklers. Ayako's response: "Japan is safety". Indeed. But for all this safety, they don't buckle their kids up in the car! In fact they often don't use car seats. It's not uncommon to see someone sitting in the front seat holding a baby in her lap. Anyway, I digress.

THIS will be my last posting from Japan, as I leave in just a few hours. I am awaiting reverse culture shock, which I expect to be severe as I drive on the wrong side of the road, am unerringly polite to everyone, speak very slowly and clearly, and leave my wallet on a table at a restaurant to reserve a table. And gain a lot of weight eating everything I haven't had this year!!

One man's treasure is another man's...

2008-08-13T12:03:00.003+09:00

Gomi!

Gomi was one of the first Japanese words I learned when I arrived. It means garbage, generally. But there are all kinds of gomi, as I sooned learned! The garbage system is very complicated here, so I have been waiting to post this blog until I figured it out. For the most part I think I have.

Garbage is so complicated it needs its own poster which I keep on the fridge for frequent reference! (You can click on the photo to zoom in.)

To give you an idea of the complications, here is the schedule for garbage pickup:
Burnable garbage - Wednesday and Saturday
Plastic garbage - Friday
Paper garbage - 1st and 3rd Friday of the month
Large garbage - every two weeks
Things like TVs and other electronics cannot be put out. You have to pay to recycle those.

With a schedule like that, I wonder most nights which garbage I need to put out for the next day: "is tomorrow paper?" And we here at Shirasagi remind each other: "don't forget, it's dai-gomi night".

First is the burnable garbage. It has to be put in special garbage bags which we buy at the grocery or drug store (they're very cheap). I like to think that the bags are made of some special plastic that won't release dioxin when burned... but that might just be wishful thinking. Japan doesn't have much space for landfills so most garbage is burned if it can't be recycled.

Plastic garbage is pretty straightforward, though there is a lot of it. The Japanese LOVE packaging. It's common to buy, let's say a package of cookies, something like Chips Ahoy for example. Every single cookie inside the package is wrapped individually!! Every cookie! And there is usually one of those crystal packets to suck up moisture in the package too! So you can easily generate a LOT of plastic waste every week. Plastic garbage also has a special garbage bag that has to be bought (cheaply) at a grocery or drug store.

Paper garbage is a bit complicated for me, having been used to the ever-changing paper recycling rules at the Q. I'm still not sure if magazines or glossy paper or colored paper can be recycled... Paper garbage is to be put into a paper shopping bag (from any major department store).

Then there's the "large garbage" (dai-gomi). It's the most confusing of all for us foreigners, because it includes little things like tin cans, plastic PET bottles, newpaper, cardboard, batteries, milk cartons etc. But it can also include big things like bikes, furniture, and used clothing.
It's perfectly acceptable to go dumpster diving on dai-gomi day. You never know what you might find! And each neighborhood sends a representative to oversee the collection. Our apartment building custodian gets that task on our behalf!
Here are a couple photos of our dai-gomi collection point.

And here's a photo of my garbage collection system in the hallway kitchen - there's the poster for easy reference; the green bag is for plastic; the black bins below are for dai-gomi; the paper bag for paper; and the garbage can for burnable. It gets really complicated and often I don't know where something ought to go.

So now you know about garbage in Japan. I think you know everything I wanted to tell you about Japan now! Just in time, because this might be my last posting, except perhaps for one last good-bye blog. And especially timely since I'm almost out of space on blogger!

August 12 on 12 - Last memories

2008-08-13T06:59:00.002+09:00

I leave Japan in 5 days so I have been running around taking photos of all the things I've been meaning to take photos of for the last year!! Not to mention packing, cleaning, buying last minute souvenirs! Yikes!!

One of my favorite signs - it's at the entrance to a local grocery store:

No cameras, no smoking, and oh yeah, no bombs.

At another local grocery store - The Next Coming to Our Store. Thank You.

Me finally trying the green tea ice cream. It was pretty much as I suspected...

All the other flavors of ice cream including miso and black sesame.

Classic Photo of Shachi and Himeji Castle

Underground bike parking. I've never actually parked here though. I think it costs about a dollar a day.

Top fashion in swimsuits this year - Pez Candy and Kellogg's Frosted Flakes.

Three more of my favorite no smoking signs. I recently realized that these actually give some good insight into Japanese culture. In each, the message is to think of other people, whereas in the US, no smoking messages usually focus on your health or your children's health.

Me playing Pachinko. Pachinko is sort of a combination between pinball and slot machines. It's not technically gambling because you don't win money. You win tokens which you take across the street to cash in for money. So you see, it's not gambling at all.

Check out this site for a great description of pachinko!

I didn't really figure out how to play because all you do is try to get a ball into a specific hole. I thought that was pretty pointless, but that's just me. No fear of me losing all my money gambling, I guess.

Article about how Japanese cell phones are becoming too complicated! I plan to bring my cell phone back home. It won't work there, but I can show off its dictionary, converters, TV, and other features.

Nagasaki (August 1 and 2)

2008-08-10T09:07:00.014+09:00

Back in Japan, I had one more place high on my to-see list: Nagasaki.

The 63rd anniversary of the atomic bomb drop on Nagasaki was just the other day. When I was there on August 1st and 2nd, I could see preparations being made for memorials on the anniversary.

Nagasaki was particularly unlucky, because on August 9th, they were actually the second choice as a target for the atomic bomb drop. The first target was the city of Kokura but it was too overcast that morning. So the planes flew on to Nagasaki where a break in the clouds allowed them to drop the bomb over Urakami suburb of Nagasaki.

I visited Hypocenter Park to see a marker of the hypocenter and remnants of a church wall.

The black column (hard to see) is the hypocenter of the atomic bomb

A wall of a church that survived (not its original location)

Chains of origami cranes which symbolize peace (and health and long life)

Just a block away from Hypocenter Park is Peace Park.

Water fountain at Peace Park. The water is in the shape of a pair of dove wings.

The sign in front of this statue read: "... dedicated as an appeal for lasting world peace and a prayer that such a tragedy would never be repeated. The elevated right hand points to the threat of nuclear weapons, while the outstretched left hand symbolizes tranquility and world peace. Divine omnipotence and love are embodied in the sturdy physique and gentle contenance of the statue, and a prayer for the repose of the souls of all war victims is expressed in the closed eyes. Furthermore, the folded right leg symbolizes quiet meditation while the left leg is poised for action in assisting humanity."

Half of this torii (entrance to a shrine) was knocked down by the atomic bomb blast, but half remained (and remains) standing.

After a sombering morning seeing the sights related to the atomic bomb, I moved on to less recent history: Nagasaki's role as Japan's primary link with the outside world. In 1542, the Portugese accidentally landed in Nagasaki. Of course, the Portguese had brought along Christianity and, soon enough, missionaries. In 1587, Christianity was outlawed in Japan, and ten years later, 26 European and Japanese Christians were crucified in Nagasaki.

Monument to the 26 Christian martyrs (three of them were boys).

During this period of persecution, Japanese Christians made statues of Mary that looked like the Buddhist goddess of mercy, Kannon.

I checked out Glover Garden and Dejima, both tourist sites with replicas of buildings that the early foreigners lived in in Nagasaki.

It was too hot to be bothered with taking photos at Glover Garden (plus the buildings just looked like Western buildings, so to me they weren't especially interesting). But I learned that the opera Madame Butterfly is set in Nagasaki and may be based on actual events.

Dejima is the artificial island where the Dutch had a trade port from 1641 until 1853 during Japan's period of isolation. The island was originally built for the Portuguese traders and priests. But then the Portuguese were thrown out of the country for trying to convert the Japanese to Christianity. Then the Dutch were forced to move onto the island. It was attached to the mainland by a small bridge that was heavily guarded by the Japanese. The video shown said that business must have been very lucrative for the Dutch to have stayed on during the imposition of these strict rules.

The island is now within the city (much of Nagasaki was built on reclaimed land it seems).

One last famous sight in Nagasaki: Megane-bashi (Spectacles Bridge). The water level was a bit low, but when it's right, the bridge and its reflection look like a pair of spectacles.

More photos of Nagasaki

the DMZ and North Korea (July 29th)

2008-08-09T20:09:00.000+09:00

On the 29th, I took a USO tour to the DMZ. I have to admit I knew little to nothing about North Korea except that the US is always wigged out about the latest events there. So I learned a little something today about world history and current events.A bit of Korean history (that I didn't know so maybe you don't either): Korea was a Japanese colony until the end of WWII. When the war ended, Korea was liberated from Japan. The country was arbitrarily divided into two only for the purposes of the Japanese surrender. Japanese troops above the 38th parallel surrendered to the USSR, and below the 38th parallel to the US.

Fast forward a few years to the Korean War ceasefire in 1953, the 4 km wide DMZ and the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) in the general vicinity of the 38th parallel. (Yes, I know I am brushing by some major moments in history, but we all know that history has never been a real interest of mine... Until today when I found myself standing at the most heavily armed border in the world and realizing I didn't know why.)

Our tour started at Camp Bonifas with a short slideshow by the US Army. Next we boarded surprisingly nice military buses to Panmunjeon, the Joint Security Area (JSA). The JSA is where the negotiations and other communications between North and South Korean and world leaders take place, on an apparently regular basis. It's an 800 square meter area with several color coded buildings: the blue buildings belong to the UN Command and the silver buildings belong to North Korea. This row of silver and blue buildings is divided by the MDL which you can see as the slightly raised line of concrete between the buildings, and as the line of microphones on the table inside the building.

We were allowed into one of the blue buildings where Republic of Korea (ROK) soldiers stood at the ready in some sort of martial arts pose. We were allowed to walk around in the building, even standing on the North Korean side of the table! But we could not sit in the chairs or set anything on the tables.

In these photos, a ROK soldier standing halfway behind the building to only expose part of his body.The large gray building in the background is a North Korean administrative building, and the North Korean soldiers are wearing olive drab.

One building on the South Korean side of the JSA is the Freedom House, originally built as a venue for family reunions, but no family reunions have ever taken place here. But note all the security cameras on it!

We boarded the buses again to overlook the Bridge of No Return. When POWs were exchanged they were given the option to cross the bridge to the other country or stay where they were. But they couldn't return, hence the bridge's name.The Axe Murder Incident occurred in 1976 right next to the Bridge of No Return. You can read about that incident and Operation Paul Bunyan here.

From our vantage point we could also see "Propaganda Village". This is the North Korean "Peace Village" in the DMZ. It's an apparently empty city with a huge North Korean flag. The flag itself is so large it weighs 600 pounds and only flutters in gale force winds! Lights go on and off in the buildings every day at exactly the same time. This and the fact that there is no glass in the windows clued the UN Command into realizing no one actually lives there.

After the morning portion of the tour, we stopped at the gift shop which sold bits of barbed wire from the MDL and other souvenirs.

Then a Korean lunch in Freedom Village.

After lunch we visited Dora Observatory. It offered nice views of North Korea which from a distance looks like any other place. However, we couldn't take pictures beyond the yellow line at the observatory. I thought it was more entertaining to take pictures of people trying to take pictures from behind the yellow line.

Our last stop was The 3rd Tunnel. Again, I had to admit total ignorance to what this even was, but I was quickly informed. North Korea has made at least four tunnels under the DMZ for the purpose of invading South Korea. The outlet (or intended outlet) of the 3rd Tunnel is only 44 kilometers from Seoul, so when it was discovered in 1978, the people of South Korea were alarmed. Today it is a tourist attraction with its own gift shop. We watched a video and went through a small museum before entering the tunnel.

When the tunnel was discovered, the North claimed it was a coal mine - although the bedrock is granite. They had even gone to the trouble of painting coal on the tunnel walls to substantiate their claim. When that didn't work, they claimed the tunnel was created by the South.

Throughout the day, it was very interesting to hear some of the sides to this story - the US Army's; our tour guide whose parents were refugees from North Korea; and the Australian authors of Lonely Planet. Of course I didn't get to hear North Korea's side of the story, which would be called propaganda. But the cheesy video we watched before entering the 3rd Tunnel was clearly propaganda by the South. It showed the DMZ as a lovely park with benches and flowers for happy family reunions, and of course all the natural wildlife that currently thrives in this uninhabited 4 km zone.

All in all, the most interesting day I spent in Korea.

More photos of the DMZ and JSA

Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung Palaces in Seoul, Korea (July 28 and 30)

2008-08-09T16:11:00.013+09:00

On the 28th, I visited Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul. It's a huge palace compound right smack in the middle of downtown Seoul. It was constructed in 1394 and given the name Gyeongbokgung, meaning "Palace Greatly Blessed by Heaven". It was destroyed in 1592 when the Japanese invaded Korea. But the Japanese cannot be blamed for that (at least not directly). That dirty deed is blamed on either the slaves of the palace who wanted to "destroy the records of their servitude" (Moon Handbooks' version) or on the citizens of Seoul who were angered by the desertion of the king and aristrocrats as Japan invaded (Lonely Planet's version). Of course the sign at the palace blames the destruction on the Japanese, and the audio guide I rented lost no opportunity to blame the "evil" Japanese for anything.

The changing of the guard

Throne hall.

The throne room. The painting of the five peaks was a standard scene around the palace, as well as behind the throne at Changdeokgung.

At the rear of the palace grounds, considered one of the prettiest scenes in all Korea

More photos of Gyeongbokgung Palace

On my last full day in Korea, I visited Changdeokgung Palace (by the way, don't ask me to pronounce any of these names!). It's a smaller palace, but was a bit nicer because you must go on a tour and so it was less busy and quieter.

The throne hall. In the courtyard in front of the throne hall were lines of stone markers indicating where each rank should stand. The area to the right of the approachway was for civilian leaders and the left for military leaders. The right was considered more important, so in times of war, they switched positions. The middle section of the steps leading to the throne hall has no steps because the king was always carried in a palaquin so he didn't need steps.

Looking back at the city from the throne room. The gate in the foreground was for the king, and if I understood the tour guide correctly, that white ridge on the rooftop was to indicate which buildings were for the king.

The throne - notice the same five mountain peaks on the painting behind the throne.

Some mythical creatures on the throne room roof for protection.

Raised corridor for the king, since his feet should never touch the earth.

Two interesting features here. On the left is a small door. That was for when the king had to go to the bathroom. They would slide the chamberpot in and out of the building through this door.

In the bottom right is a fireplace. Korean palace floors were heated by fires under the building!

The Secret Garden. Much was made of this Secret Garden, but once again, I couldn't help comparing it to Japanese gardens and being less than impressed. I was told that the name Secret Garden was given to it by the Japanese, and my first thought was that they probably thought it was so embarrassingly small and basic that it should be kept secret.

More photos of Changdeokgung Palace

On the 31st, I took the KTX train from Seoul to Busan. I don't know if the KTX is similar to Japan's bullet train (shinkansen) but it took only 3 hours to get from northern South Korea to the southern tip. In Busan, I had a quick lunch of spicy ramen before getting on the ferry to take me back to Japan.

Overall I really enjoyed Korea, though when I got back, a friend correctly diagnosed that I went through some culture shock there. That really surprised me because I had assumed Korean culture and Japanese culture to be at least surficially similar. But I guess I've been in Japan too long... Only one week left in Japan, then REAL culture shock will begin!

Seoul Street Scenes (July 27 - 30)

2008-08-08T19:04:00.013+09:00

I spent the last few days of my trip in Seoul. I visited a couple of huge palaces (next blog entry) and wandered around the streets - plenty of interesting things to see!!

One of the most striking things about Korean big cities (Seoul and Busan at least) is the love of identical high rise buildings. I don't really get it, because no attempt is made to make the buildings attractive in any way. They just seem to construct a bunch of the exact same building, and then paint a huge number on the side of the building for identification.

For some reason, I became obsessed with taking photos of the large TV screens on top of buildings.

A senior citizen percussion group. I think most of the group has already experienced some serious hearing loss because it was more cacophony than music. But good for them to try a new hobby and keep busy (and block traffic)!

Cheonggye Stream was a nice example of a linear park in a huge downtown. It was very busy with kids playing in the streams and running back and forth across the stone bridges.

As dusk fell, stalls selling street food appeared. I don't know what much of it is (nor did I try any of it) but there were definitely some squid and octopus bits for sale.

This cool street had a piano sidewalk. It didn't play music when you walked on it though.

A couple of old men playing go (or maybe it's some other game?).

Shopping Bag in box-like form

Seems Seoul has the same parking problems that Japan has. The blue disk on the ground is for rotating the cars around, so the driver doesn't have to do a 16 point turn.

This restaurant's name amused me

Kids playing in a water fountain - it was so hot, I kinda wanted to join them

If only I needed some tape...

Ginseng for sale ...

and spicy red pepper

The Great South Gate of Seoul that burned down in February of this year. It's currently being rebuilt.

Interesting men and women bathroom signs

Wine-Ade. How could I resist??

More photos of Seoul

Andong, Korea (July 26 and 27)

2008-08-08T17:38:00.007+09:00

After a 4 hour bus ride from Gyeongju, I arrived in Andong, primarily to see the historical folk village and museum.

First though, I checked into a hotel recommended by Lonely Planet for its computer in every room. I was very excited about that, but not nearly so excited by the circle bed with no sheets... To be fair, Lonely Planet did mention it was "campy".

I dropped my stuff off, procrastinating on how I could use my well-honed skills at charades to request sheets when I returned.

I went to the Andong Folk Village, which has ten historical homes which were moved in 1976 to rescue them from submersion when a dam was built. The other buildings in the "village" were from a 2001 TV historical drama. I couldn't actually tell which buildings were which.

There were a few props left in the village, for instance, this pole poorly disguised as a tree,

And this wall made of peeling "brick" and "cement" blocks with rusty nails.

I ordered mandu for dinner which turned out to be Japanese gyoza, which are actually Chinese pot stickers. So much for trying something new and Korean. But of course, the meal was served with usual assortment of kimchi.

After sleeping on the sheetless circle bed (my charades skills failed me), I took a bus the next morning to Seoul. As we were leaving Andong, I snapped these photos of a street market - plenty of garlic available in Andong!

For more photos of Andong

Gyeongju, Korea (July 25 and 26)

2008-08-08T14:11:00.016+09:00

Gyeongju is often called the Kyoto of Korea, but to be honest, I think whoever is making that claim has never been to Kyoto, because I wouldn't compare them in any way. Kyoto is classic Japan: high culture, living history, and uncountable temples and shrines in a huge city. Gyeongju is a bunch of grassy tombs and a model of a palace in a small town with a large temple on the outskirts of town.

That said, it was a very interesting place to spend a bit of time. It was the capital of the Shilla Dynasty from 57 BC and for the next thousand years, at one time with a million citizens (it's got about a quarter of a million citizens now).

In Tumuli Park, in the center of town, there are many tumuli (singular: tumulus, meaning a mound of earth and stones over a grave). These tombs date from the 4th century and have unpronunciable names: Geumwanchong, Seobonchong, Bonghwadae, and Geumyeongchong. The largest of the tombs is 23 meters high (See the man in the center of the photo for scale.)

A video I saw later at the National Museum in Seoul explained that this double tomb was for a queen and king.

A few of the tombs had been excavated and many golden objects were found in them. One tomb, Cheonmachong, was excavated and reproduced so tourists to enter. This was a king's grave from the 5th century and many golden ornaments were buried with him. The construction of the tumulus was interesting. The coffin was wooden and the size of a small room. Over this coffin, many rocks were piled up creating a large mound on which grass eventually grew.

Photos weren't allowed inside the tomb, so while looking online for photos, I found a website with this informative description:

Large ancient tombs of kings and noblemen of the Silla Dynasty can be seen
around Gyeongju at the Daereung-won Tumuli Park. There are twenty-three
large
tombs located here; the most famous being Cheonmachong and
Hwangnamdaechong. In an excavation of the area in the 1970's, Cheonmachong was
discovered with a
painting of mounted horse. This painting is the only
discovered painting from
the Silla Era. You can also view the inside of
Cheonmachong. There are 11,526
remains and crowns of the king inside the
tomb demonstrating the lavish
lifestyle of the king. Another tourist
attraction is Hwangnamdaechong, which is
the largest ancient tomb. It houses
the bodies of both the king and queen and
has over 30 thousand relics and
gold accessories. The unique thing about
Hwangnamdaechong is that the
queen's tomb has more luxurious accessories. From
that researchers have
concluded that even the queen can have a high social
position before
marriage.

Just south of Tumuli Park was Wolseong Park with more tumuli

and Cheomseongdae Observatory. The observatory was built between 632 and 646. It has 12 stones at the base symbolizing each month of the year or zodiac figure; 30 layers of stones - one for each day of the lunar month; a total of 366 stones - one for each day of the year. The four sides of the base and top represent each season.

After seeing these tombs, I went back to the hostel to meet up with some new friends. We caught a bus to Bulguksa, a huge temple complex on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List.

I was so excited to see all the lotus plants in bloom while I was in Korea! (plenty more photos of lotus plants coming!) The lotus is a symbol of Buddhism (I don't know why) so I have seen many many representations of its flower, but never the real thing, until now!

More cairns

It began pouring as I finished seeing Bulguksa, a perfect time for a lunch break! In Korea, they use metal chopsticks and a spoon (in Japan they use wooden chopsticks but no spoon).

Meals come with a large assortment of side dishes of kimchi. This meal's side dishes included pickled gourd, pickled peppers, beans, pickled cabbage, fish cake, spinach and a couple more unidentifiable dishes.

After lunch I went on to Seokguram Grotto. It's in the mountains and was very misty after the day's rain. Here is the view from the overlook.

Back in Gyeongju late that afternoon, I went to the National Museum where I saw the Emille Bell. Its ringing can be heard for 3 kilometers. The story behind the bell is quite gruesome. The first time the bell was cast, it failed to ring. It was re-cast and struck again but it cracked. Then the head priest of the temple had a dream: the dragon spirit needed to be appeased by the sacrifice of a young girl who was born in the year, month, day and hour of the dragon. So such a girl was found and thrown into the molten metal. Sure enough, the next time the bell was cast, it rang. However, it rang with the sound of a child crying for its mother - "emi".

The design on the Emille Bell

Walking back to the hotel, I went by acres of lotus plants, all in bloom. The heavy rains earlier in the day had beaten up the blossoms a bit, but still the scenery was stunning.

I particularly like how rain water beads up on lotus leaves, looking like mercury. (In case you're wondering, lotus plants are not water lilies. Lotus leaves are a complete circle (no notch in them), and the leaves are above the surface of the water, not floating on the water.)

The next morning I had a couple of hours before my bus left Gyeongju, so I quickly visited the ice storage house and the palace.

The ice storage house, outside and in.

The lintel above the icehouse door. I took this photo only because I could read the Chinese character for "ice" (the middle character). It's not much, but I get excited when I can read what a 4 year old Chinese or Japanese child can!

My last site in Gyeongju was Imhaejeon, an ancient palace. Actually the palace is long gone; it burnt down in 935. Many relics ended up in Anapji Pond and were rediscovered in superb condition in 1975 when the pond was drained for repair. Today, there is a only model of the palace on the site.

For more photos of Gy e ongju

Tongdosa and Seongnamsa Temples, Korea (July 24)

2008-08-07T12:27:00.010+09:00

Between Busan and Gyeong-ju (my next destination in Korea) are two famous temples: Tongdosa and Seongnamsa.

Tongdosa is one of Korea's most important temples, founded in 646 to house Buddha's relics (a few of his bones and bits and pieces). "Tongdosa" means transmission of the way temple, or as the guidebook went on to say "salvation of sentient beings by means of awakening the Buddha's teachings, Dharma." If you can't get your head around that, you can just enjoy the photos. (And remember, you can click on any of the photos to zoom in.)

Inscriptions on the rocks on the pathway to the temple. These are the names of visitors to the temple in the distant past.

Kimchi pots, I guess for all the monks who live here.

This fish was at many Buddhist temples in Korea. I read somewhere what its hollowed out belly symbolizes, but now I've forgotten... (does anyone know?)

The same fish and the temple drums

A pot of lotus plants and the main temple building

cute little preschoolers on a field trip

After Tongdosa, I went onto Seongnamsa Temple, also founded ages ago (in 824 AD). It's another beautiful temple, but what I remember most is the very sweet female monk at the entrance booth who offered to hold onto my very heavy backpack while I visited the temple. After my visit, she offered me a traditional drink made from rice and a map of another city.

There were these cairns (piles of stones) at many temples around Korea. Another tourist said they were for making wishes (you make your wish as you build your cairn. Of course it's bad luck to knock someone else's cairn over).

More photos of Tongdosa and Seongnamsa Temples.

Busan, Korea (July 23)

2008-08-05T14:06:00.009+09:00

The ferry arrived in Busan, Korea about mid-day. This was my first view of Korea from the ferry window. Turns out it's a fairly typical view - my week in Korea was a bit hazy and everywhere I looked there were large identical high rise buildings.

Once we landed in Busan, I found the subway station and was just about to pull out the directions to the hostel when I was accosted by an overly helpful Korean woman. This also turned out to be a fairly typical experience - looking even the slightest bit lost or confused brought "helpful" people running over. Sometimes though, it was too much help, like the helpful woman who spoke no English and who insistently put me on the wrong bus, heading two hours in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go.

In the subway station, my "just off the boat" look was apparently evident as the non-English speaking woman demanded of me where I wanted to go. I was just looking for that information when she grabbed the money from my hand and dragged me along to get some small change. I was rather stunned by this whole encounter, because while Japanese people will be very helpful if you ask them for help or directions, they will NEVER just approach you offering help. But I quickly learned in Korea not to pull out my map or guidebook unless I was comfortably sitting on a park bench or restaurant, so as to discourage unneeded "help".

In Busan, I visited Beomeosa Temple. The temple was founded in 678 AD but none of the buildings are original. For me, it was a very striking temple as the temples in Japan are not brightly colored. Another thing that caught my attention at this and every other temple in Korea is that Korean Buddhas have a handlebar moustache!

Guardians at Buddhist temples

I liked these little Buddha statues of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil!

After visiting Beomeosa temple, I took a cable car up the mountain-side for a view of Busan.

I wandered through the streets of Busan for a while, snapping photos. Korea is the world's 11th or 13th largest economy (depending on which set of statistics you're reading), but sometimes it didn't feel like it. For instance, you can't drink the water from the tap, nor can you flush toilet paper. And there were lots of things for sale on the streets, outdoor markets, etc.

a tank of barely alive eels for dinner

A couple more things that caught my eye:
"Live" food - that made me nervous, having heard other travellers stories about being served live baby octopus.

A vending machine selling books!

More photos of Busan

Fukuoka (aka Hakata) (July 22nd)

2008-08-05T13:45:00.005+09:00

After the day in Hagi, I continued onto Hakata, a large port city in Japan also known as Fukuoka. Apparently they were two separate cities at one time. On the west side of the river was the castle town, and on the east side of the river a town for commoners. They merged in 1889 but the city continues to go by either name, which gets confusing for a foreigner who is already confused much of the time.

I only had an afternoon in Hakata, so I quickly visited Kushida-jinja, a large shrine famous for a summer festival, and the nearby Hakata Machiya Folk Museum. Both displayed the large festival floats which were very impressive and tall.

That was about all I had the time and the energy for (considering how hot and muggy it was!) that day.

This sign in the hotel lobby made me shake my head in bewilderment!

The next day, I boarded the jetfoil ferry to Busan, Korea! The trip on the jetfoil was uneventful, much like flying on an airplane. It took about only 3 hours and $240 to reach Korea! It's a bit less expensive than airfare from Japan to Korea (the flight is about $350 and takes an 1 and 1/2 hour). By taking the ferry, I was able to combine my trip to Korea with a trip to Nagasaki. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Hagi (July 21st)

2008-07-26T21:05:00.015+09:00

Summer vacation started on July 19th! Hooray! I think I was more excited than the students!

The following Sunday I started my long awaited summer travelling! I used the ju-hachi kippu only available during school vacations. These tickets are basically an all day pass on the local train lines (not shinkansen) for $23. So I spent Sunday on seven different trains, travelling for 12 hours, finally arriving at Hagi at 7 pm exhausted.

Hagi is an interesting town. It was a center of unrest leading up to the Meiji Restoration and many revolutionaries in the Restoration were born and educated in Hagi. (In few words, the Meiji Restoration occurred when Japan realized that by remaining isolated from the rest of the world, they had fallen way behind in terms of industrialization. So in 1868, the Emperor Meiji reclaimed his imperial power from the shogunates who were running the country and brought the country into the modern age.)

However, what Hagi is famous for is its very well preserved samurai quarter. Lonely Planet sums it up well: It's ironic that Hagi's claim to fame is its role in propelling Japan directly from the feudal to the modern era, while its attractions are principally its feudal past.

I was up bright and early on Monday morning (I blame the lack of curtains in the youth hostel), rented a bicycle and began toodling around town.

My first site of the day was the ruin of Hagi Castle which was torn down in a display of loyalty to the Meiji Restoration.

After that I cycled through the samurai part of town, stopping every few feet to take photos of the varied walls.

I visited the Hagi Museum which had a large exhibit about beetles (the insects) and not so much about the history of the area as I had hoped.

Next, I went to the Aiba watercourse which was just a little canal along a roadside but with some historical houses. The homes along the watercourse had an opening to the canal to draw in water. (Hard to explain, see photo)

For lunch, I stopped at Mos Burger (a Japanese hamburger chain) where I ate a "taco". Don't worry Taco Bell, there's no competition here! I'm not really sure what spices and seasonings they used and couldn't quite identify the liquid "cheese" squirted on top.

After lunch, it started pouring rain. But that didn't stop me from visiting Tokoji, a temple which has the tombs of the odd-numbered lords of Hagi. There are about 500 stone lanterns which were nicely moss-covered.

One of the things that caught my eye all over Hagi was the shachi. These are the mythical fish on the roofs which are supposed to spout water in case of fire. In Himeji and other parts of Japan, these are typically just on castles and temples. But here in Hagi, they were also on rooftops of homes.

Elementary School

2008-07-12T07:15:00.006+09:00

Every Thursday I rotate between three elementary schools. These photos are from two different schools. The kids are in 1st and 2nd grade. The uniform some of the kids are wearing is their gym uniform. I'm under the impression that they have to wear it on the days they have gym; other days they can wear what they want.

Typical lessons at elementary school include:

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

Reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?

Hokey Pokey

Simon Says

Greetings (hello, my name is...., nice to meet you, how are you, etc) and shaking everyone's hand

There are four morning classes with a short recess between the second and third class. Then lunch at 12:30. I eat school lunch with the kids in whichever classroom I just taught. The students usually eat lunch at their desks, but each school has a small dining room that the classes take turns eating in. One set of lunch pictures below is in a classroom, the other in the dining room.

At lunch time, about 10 students in each class put on coats and hats and face masks and go to the school kitchen to get their classroom's lunch. They bring it back and serve it to their fellow students who have been moving the desks around for lunch and generally goofing off, as seen below:

School lunch is often a bread roll, soup, and some main dish and milk. It's hot when it's brought back from the dining room but by the time everyone is served and we wait until everyone is seated to say "Itadakimasu" (literally "I receive") before we can start eating, it's barely lukewarm.

Lunch on this day was lemon chicken (like sweet and sour chicken but just lemon flavored), a noodley soup, bread with margarine, and milk.

And on this day it was octopus rice (they very thoughtfully picked through the rice and gave me an octopus-free serving!), some bean sprouty vegetable dish, soup and milk, and an individually wrapped plum for dessert. The kids all peeled their plums before eating them!

After lunch is recess when the kids head to the playground. Every school has numerous unicycles which the kids love, and the usual playground swings, monkey bars, etc.

July 12 on 12

2008-07-11T18:49:00.006+09:00

Last Sunday, Suvanya, Sophie and I went to a tea ceremony performed in part by the students in the tea ceremony club at my junior high school.

My junior high school has a Koto club (the girls in the club were too shy to be in the photo). Koto is usually called a Japanese harp, but it’s played by kneeling on the floor next to it. And Koto music is written in traditional Japanese numbers (which string to pluck or strum). It has a plaintive sound that I can listen to for about one song.

Tanabata was a minor Japanese holiday on July 7th. Tanabata is based on two constellations which are closest in the sky on July 7th every year. If it rains on July 7th, the holiday isn’t celebrated that year! Somehow, also associated with this holiday, people write their hopes on a colorful piece of paper and tie it to cut bamboo branches.

These photos of Japanese fashion were taken on my cell phone (luckily I downloaded them before promptly losing my cell phone on Tuesday!).

Punky Brewster is alive and well, living in Himeji!

Many people have good sized gardens where they grow vegetables for their families. The remaining veggies they can sell to grocery stores. Because of all this homegrown food, it’s common to see onions and persimmons and other produce hanging outside of houses like this.

This is the machine where you buy train tickets. It’s not too complicated. There is a big sketch above the machine showing the fare to each stop, hopefully with names in the latin alphabet. You feed in your money and hit the amount of the ticket and it spits out your ticket and change. If you have problems, there is a button to hit, and a conductor opens that dark blue plate to the right of the machine and pops his head out to help. The first time I witnessed that I jumped back startled.

I’ve been meaning to take a photo of the tree at the house across the street from our bus stop. You can see how they’ve pruned and trained it to go over the gate very beautifully.

There is a series of these posters against smoking. They’re all quite humorous and a bit random. You may have seen the last one before; I took it back in January. Click on the photo to zoom in if you have trouble reading the writing.

Another weird Japanese food idea – red bean Kit Kats. The Japanese branch of Nestle/Kit Kat ought to get an award(?) for their creativity. So far I’ve seen all sorts of fruit flavored Kit Kats (banana, mango, strawberry), as well as green tea, white chocolate, and possibly cherry or cherry blossom flavored. And now red bean. It was just a matter of time.

Hokkaido, Japan's Last Frontier - Part 4

2008-07-11T18:25:00.006+09:00

After spending the day at Noboribetsu Onsen, I went to Sapporo to stay the night there. On my first day in Hokkaido, I had picked up a brochure showing some guided tours. There was one to Furano and Biei which have fields of flowers this time of year. And better yet, the full-day tour promised an English audio guide. I decided to go ahead and sign up for that tour for my last full day in Hokkaido.
I showed up in the morning, ready to go, imagining myself on a bus full of Japanese tourists who would listen intently to the tour guide, while I just put in my earphones and turned up the audio guide. I hoped I’d be next to someone friendly who would tell me what time to get back on the bus and other critical information. And I hoped for a window seat. So I was very surprised to get onto a completely empty tour bus! Well, I figured, we’ll probably stop at a hotel and pick up a tour group. I kept thinking this until our first rest stop, when it became very clear that I was the ONLY person on the tour! I had a huge tour bus all to myself, and two guides, neither of whom spoke English, and of course a bus driver.

At the rest stop, they wrote on a small white board the time we’d be departing. They gave me 20 minutes to go the bathroom. Obviously I was back within 5 minutes. I was a bit afraid we’d wait until the appointed time to leave (that would be very Japanese – to rigidly stick to the schedule), but we left as soon as the driver returned.
The audio guide was excellent. It was done by a Englishman who had been living in Sapporo for 17 years. He had some interesting anecdotes, like one about a department store which went a little overboard in decorating for Christmas and put Santa on a cross.
He described how agriculture in Hokkaido was developed. And how in the 1950 they began growing lavender to sell to Europe for perfume. Many many acres (230 hectacres at the peak) of lavender were planted and doing well for some time, until synthetic fragrances became popular in the 1970s. Then all the lavender farms began to go out of business. There was one remaining farm, Farm Tomita, and a picture of the farm happened to put into a 1976 JR calendar.

Then everyone saw the beautiful scenery and decided to visit. That’s all it took. Now Farm Tomita is a major tourist destination – a bit like lavender Disneyland. They have everything lavender, even lavender flavored ice cream, which I didn’t try. (I’m still getting over the perfume flavored gum I had in Okinawa.)

It was even complete with a little lab-like setting where this woman in a lab coat wrapped soaps in plastic wrap.
After an hour at Tomita Farm, I hopped back on my private tour bus and we continued on to Flower Land. First I was served a plough grill lunch.

It was very interesting – a hoe blade over a little sterno burner. As a foreigner, I wasn’t trusted to cook my own meal, so they piled it on the plough and covered in tin foil and told me to wait. It was really good – lots of cabbage, with some bean sprouts, eggplant, carrots, corn, mushrooms, and a piece of salmon, a big shrimp, and a couple of clams. After the huge meal, I was served a piece of melon for dessert, and then was free to wander around Flower Land for an hour. There was a little wagon ride around the flowers where I took these photos. Mostly that was all there was to do, unless I hadn’t seen enough lavender products at Farm Tomita.
I got back on the bus a few minutes early and we headed back to Sapporo with just a couple quick stops along the way. One stop was to see some famous trees. Some trees in Hokkaido were made famous by TV commercials. For instance, we drove slowly past the Ken and Mary tree, famous from a cigarette commercial. We drove by another tree famous from a car commercial. There were parking lots at these trees and people posing under the trees. I tried to imagine a tree in a American commercial enjoying such popularity, but I couldn’t. It’s kind of sweet how the Japanese people get so excited about trees in commercials. But kind of odd, too.
We stopped for another rest break near Biei town. I had flashbacks driving through Biei. It literally could be ANY small town in the Midwest (USA). Any town! There were even setbacks and buried power lines. Unbelievable!

The area around Biei is famous in Japan for its scenery and a famous photographer or painter has done some famous pictures of the area. It was nice, but really it could have been anyplace in the Western US, particularly the foothills of Rocky Mountains in Colorado. We stopped for a photo opportunity and my guides encouraged me to take my camera along. I wandered to the rest room and back to the bus, not bothering to take any photos. They urged me again to take some photos. I told them “Amerika wa onaji desu”. America is the same and they thought that was the most entertaining thing they’d heard all week. I heard them repeating it to each other on the way back to Sapporo.
All said, it was a good day, and the audio guide was really informative. But it took me an hour or two to get over the guilt of having a tour bus all to myself. I don’t know why they didn’t tell me I was the only one and they’d have to cancel. Or just having a policy of a minimum number of people. I can’t imagine why they sent me alone in that huge tour bus. I hope they don’t do that regularly.
The next day, I took a quick walk through the botanical garden in Sapporo. Lonely Planet said it was a must see, but I’m not sure what exactly was a “must see”. The highlight for me was this “Canadian Rock Garden”. Who knew that there was a Canadian style of rock gardens?

My flight back to Kobe was at midday, so that wrapped up my little trip to Hokkaido. It was a great trip, all in all.
My next big trip will be to Korea in a couple weeks. I don’t know how much of the country I’ll be able to see in a week, but stay tuned!

Hokkaido, Japan's Last Frontier - Part 3

2008-07-10T17:47:00.007+09:00

On day 4 of my trip, I travelled onto Noboribetsu Onsen, one of Japan's most famous hot spring resort towns. It reminded me a lot of my trip to Beppu back in January - lots of "hells" and hot springs for bathing (onsens). Fodors says that 34,300 gallons of geothermally heated water are pumped out very hour.

First stop of the day was Jigokudani (Hell Valley) just behind Dai-ichi Takimoto-kan, the creme de la creme of onsens! Jigokudani was very sulphurous; I could taste the sulfur on my skin after walking through on the boardwalk.

This photo shows the confluence of a yellow sulfury stream with a clear water (but still very hot: 80 degrees Celsius) stream.

And here are the boardwalk and the scenery:

That was the main hell. I decided to walk on further to see the lakes made from hot springs.

And then wandered further along the trail to the outdoor footbaths in the river. If you click on the photo, you can see some people soaking their feet.

After the hiking, I visited a couple of the onsens in town. The first was a local public onsen - about $4 to enter. It was nice, but fairly typical. The guidebooks all suggested Dai-ichi Takimoto-kan so I decided to splurge and pay the $20 entrance fee. It was so worth it! The place is how I imagine Roman baths to have been. Fifteen different baths - 15! Some inside, some outside, some hot, some lukewarm, some cold, a steam room, a sauna, etc. etc. etc. I tried them all!

After a long day hiking and soaking, I treated myself to this cheese and cranberry cookie. I thought they might have meant cream cheese. I ate it; it was alright. But I still don't know if it was cheese or cream cheese. I guess if I can't tell the difference...

Hokkaido, Japan's Last Frontier - Part 2

2008-07-07T18:40:00.011+09:00

The next day, I took a train to Toyako, the site of the G8 Summit. If I thought there were a lot of police in Sapporo, that was nothing. I’d guess that there were a thousand police officers in this tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. Every few minutes, a caravan of police vehicles (police cars, police buses, and something that can only be described as tank-like) would drive down the otherwise quiet streets. There were police road blocks, and police napping in the park, and police hanging out in parking lots everywhere.

It took me a while to get over the shock of all the police and the fact that the G8 Summit is going to be right there in that tiny little town. In guidebooks, the town is spelled as “Toya-ko Onsen”, so I didn’t recognize it as “Toyako” on all the signs at the airport. I simply didn’t realize I was going to the exact location of the Summit. But there I was, surrounded by police. I didn’t want to draw any extra attention to myself, so I refrained from taking photos of all the police activity. Sorry!

Once I recovered from the initial shock (and asked one of the many police officers for directions), I headed to the excellent Volcano Science Museum which explained the geology of the area. Toya-ko is actually a caldera lake. The original caldera was created 110,000 years ago, but along the crater rim now are active volcanoes which have erupted very recently – in 1977 and in 2000. In fact, Mt Usu is one of the most active volcanoes in Japan and is very predictable, erupting every 20 to 50 years! Luckily, before it erupts, there are very consistent earthquakes which warn the town to evacuate. The museum had a great movie (with an audio headset in English for me). It was really well done, except for when they referred to the volcano as “this tender mountain”. The museum also had a simulation room where they played video clips of the last eruption, and the floor rumbled and shook. I spent a lot of time in this museum!

After the museum, I had planned to take a cable car up to the rim of Mt Usu and do some hiking up there, but I was very disappointed to learn that the cable car was closed for maintenance – due to open in time for the G8 Summit, of course. The pictures from the base of the volcano don’t do it justice, but you can see the steam from the vents.

Right near Mt Usu is Showa-Shinzan. Its name means “new mountain from the Showa era”. Back in 1943, it was a wheat field; then a series of violent earthquakes in December 1943 raised the land on one side and created a parasitic volcano. Because it was during WWII, the new volcano’s sudden appearance was kept secret, but the local postmaster kept records of the volcano’s growth over the next two years, providing valuable information for volcanologists.

I went next to the Nishiyama Crater Trail which was a boardwalk through the destroyed roads, cars, and homes from the earthquakes and mudflows associated with the volcanic eruption in 2000.

My last site for the day was the Konpira Crater - Remains of the Disaster Walking Trail. As its name implies, it also was a walk among destroyed buildings. These buildings were destroyed by hot mudflows. There were sediment control dams (dark brown structure) and canals, some of which were already in place and operational for the 2000 mudflows. Several buildings were left – an apartment building whose first floor is nearly buried in mud and a public building (signs were confusing whether it was a school or public bathing house). There was also a bridge which had been washed down stream and finally landed here.

After a full day of sightseeing, I soaked my feet in a public foot onsen (hot bath) on the lake shore before catching a bus back to Muroran for the night.

Stay tuned; more to come!

Hokkaido, Japan's Last Frontier

2008-07-05T08:57:00.005+09:00

Just got back from six days in Hokkaido, Japan’s large northern island and its last frontier. That phrase sounded strange to me too, but the guidebooks all said that Hokkaido looks more like the American West than the rest of Japan. And they were right. My first thoughts as I took the train from the airport to Sapporo was that it looks a lot like Minnesota – rolling hills, lots of agriculture and deciduous forests. I later found out that back in the 1850s when Hokkaido was "underdeveloped", Japan invited experts from the US and Europe for their expertise in farming and architecture in that latitude (about 45 degrees north). They definitely succeeded! It certainly doesn’t look like the rest of Japan!
My other overriding impression of Hokkaido is related to the G8 Summit that is about to take place there. In preparation for the Summit, the place was literally crawling with police officers. It was really strange, because I rarely see police officers here. I suspect they brought police from across the country to Hokkaido for this Summit. I got stopped at the airport by an undercover policeman who asked to see my passport. Thank goodness his badge said “police” in English, because I was prepared to just keep walking by him, assuming him to be salesperson or something.
I got into Sapporo about mid afternoon last Friday and wandered on to my hotel. The room was small and simple, but it had a TV. However, it cost 1000 yen ($10) to use the TV for a night!! Obviously I didn’t bother!

I checked out the Clock Tower, Sapporo’s famous landmark, which was correctly described in Lonely Planet as “disappointing”. I include a photo of it so you can agree, and also see how like Western the architecture is.

Next I found a Mexican restaurant in the basement of the train station! That was one of the very, very few Mexican restaurants that I’ve seen in Japan, so as I waited for my enchiladas(!), I texted all my friends to gloat!

After dinner, I took a cable car ride up a mountain on the edge of the city to see the city lights. That was also disappointing as it was a hazy night.

So I headed back into city center, stopping to take a few photos of the TV Tower (only Japan can take something like a TV tower and turn it into a tourist attraction!).

The next morning, as I walked to the fish market, I passed the TV Tower again. Afraid my photos from the night before were blurry, I took more… Not sure why because after all, it is just a TV tower with a digital clock on the side and stalls selling touristy souvenirs underneath.

At the fish market, they were selling the usual unusual stuff like octopus and sea urchins and salmon eggs, as well as very expensive melons! Can you imagine paying $85 for one melon???? (click on the photo to zoom in. The exchange rate is about 100 yen =$1)

At mid-morning, I hopped on a train to Shiraoi where I visited Poroto Kotan, a replica Ainu village. The Ainu are the indigenous people of Hokkaido, but today, except for living history places like Poroto Kotan, Ainu culture and language is pretty much extinct. The original Ainu people looked very different than Japanese people but have since been assimilated into the Japanese race.

The village included several thatched houses.

In one house they were giving performances of traditional Ainu songs and dances. Other houses had dried salmon hanging from the rafters, a significant food source for the Ainu during the long winters. Another house had skewers of fresh salmon roasting by the fire.

And there was an excellent museum with many Ainu artifacts. I spent a lot of time in this museum. One of the most interesting things about Ainu is that they used to tattoo moustaches on women! You can see them in these paintings and on these mannequins, and this sign shows how the tattoos differed among the Ainu.

The village also had five bears in very small cages. Poor bears! I bought bear cookies which I slid down the tube in the front of the cage. The bears were smart, one started pawing the tube as soon as I walked up, begging for cookies! The bears are brown bears, the same species as the grizzly bear, but different subspecies.

After a full day at Poroto Kotan, I headed on to Muroran where I stayed at a youth hostel on the cliffs above the coast. The setting was beautiful, but Muroran didn’t offer much to do, so it was just a place to sleep.

to be continued...

Yukata Matsuri

2008-06-23T17:23:00.010+09:00

Yesterday and today is the Yukata Matsuri (festival) here in Himeji. [A yukata is a lightweight cotton robe (looks like a simple kimono) with a big obi (sash/belt).] This festival is very special and unique to the city of Himeji. A long time ago, the daimyo (feudal ruler) of Himeji only allowed his serfs to wear dark colored clothing, except for one day a year when they could wear bright colors. Obviously people celebrated on that day (and continue to celebrate now, hundreds of years later - maybe I'm exaggerating with hundreds - don't really know).
For the last few weeks, all the stores in town have been selling yukata and all the accessories. All of us at Shirasagi decided to get in on the action! We all bought yukata and obi (about $30), and geta (shoes), and fans, purses, hair clips, etc. And yesterday some kind and patient Japanese friends came over to help us get dressed and to tie the obis (a real skill!).

Me and Taube being demure.

Julian and Rob earnestly discussing the finer points of Rob's umbrella...

Boarding the bus

Once we got all dolled up, we hopped on the local bus (which charged half price if you were wearing a yukata that day) and headed downtown for some group photos. First we stopped into Koko-en, the beautiful garden next to the castle and took photos of each other there.

Lyn posing prettily on walkway

Me and Sue on the bridge

Next we went on towards Himeji Castle where we had an appointment with a professional photographer. The clouds were ominous so we took some quick photos before the rain came. Just as we finished those, the rain started so we stood under the main castle gate until it let up. We managed to get another round of photos taken in front of the castle.
Showing off our obis

While we were doing that, many other people came around to take our photos too. It seemed everyone got a kick out of seeing the foreigners dressed up in yukata. We had our own personal paparazzi! We were asked to stay and to see the children’s parade so that the paparazzi could take our photos while we admired the parade! We didn’t know at the time who all was in the paparazzi bunch, but this morning I got an email from a friend that we were on the morning news!

As soon as the parade finished, the rain started again, so we beat a path to Miyuki-dori, a covered arcade (street filled with shops). Miyuki-dori was absolutely packed with people in yukata and booths selling street food and other carnival paraphernalia. We got separated but managed to meet up again for dinner at our favorite izukaya (happy hour place) and then did purikura (photo booth where you can decorate your photos afterwards).
The line for the purikura machine (the machine is the pink thing in the background)

Rice Planting

2008-06-17T17:34:00.005+09:00

On Sunday, we were invited to the home of Sue’s principal. He has a very nice, large home out in the country. In one of the first rooms of the house is the Buddhist altar, a common item in most Japanese homes.

His grandchildren were there visiting and kept us entertained with their gymnastics and other stunts. They were very, very cute. These two girls are cousins, 3 and 4 years old.
By the time we arrived the rice planting was almost finished. Not planting, actually, but transplanting rice seedlings into the flooded paddies.

Most people have a really expensive machine ($30,000) used only for a couple days a year to transplant rice. There is a second machine used to harvest rice in the fall. Growing rice is an expensive operation here and heavily subsidized by the government.

This fellow is planting rice the hard way.
Lunch was yakiniku – a sort of Japanese barbeque: beef, pork, pumpkin, onions, green peppers, cabbage, eggplant, corn and mushrooms grilled over charcoal. Everyone just gathers around and grabs pieces they want with their chopsticks, then dips it into their bowl of sauce.
As you can tell from the photos, I’m enjoying seeing all the water everyplace and the reflections of mountains and buildings and towers in the still water of the paddies.

Kokedera, the Moss Temple

2008-06-15T18:01:00.005+09:00

On Saturday, Taube, Julian and I had reservations to visit Kokedera (a.k.a. Saiho-ji, Koinzan, and the moss temple). We made our reservations by postcard a couple of months ago, as the guidebooks all say this temple and its garden are a must-see. We were told to come at 1 pm and that we would be required to spend some time copying sutras, in Japanese of course. No problem. We imagined it would be the three of us and a patient monk who would probably be trying hard not to laugh at our child-like attempts to write kanji. So we were very surprised to arrive at the temple along with a tour bus full of Japanese people!
We giggled our way through copying sutras, hoping we’d be able to keep them, until we were told to be quiet and to turn in our sutras along with a prayer or wish and our address. I don’t know why they needed our address, maybe so Buddha can find us to grant our wishes? After the sutra writing, everyone else in the temple (i.e. all the Japanese tourists) joined the priests in chanting what we had just written.
Then we were free to wander around the temple garden which was the real intent of our visit. The garden was beautiful with 120 varieties of moss and a pond in the middle of the garden in the shape of the character for heart, not that we recognized it. I took a lot of photos so here are just a few, and the rest are on a web album here.

dragon fly on lotus plant

Angie and Ash's Visit (Part 5 -final)

2008-06-14T06:47:00.006+09:00

We spent the next day of Angie and Ash's visit on the train to Mt. Koya and had our first adventure before even leaving Tokyo. To get all the way to Mt. Koya by 5:30 p.m. when dinner was served, we had to leave Tokyo during morning rush hour. What a nightmare that was! We experienced first hand the white gloved train conductors pushing people (us and our suitcases) into crammed train cars. Reminded me a lot of matatus in Kenya! We ended up having to separate because we couldn’t all fit into the same train car, so I took a later train, which stopped at a different platform at the next station. After 20 minutes of trying to find each other at another Tokyo train station, we finally met up again, and settled in another train for a more comfortable ride south.
After countless hours on the train and eight transfers, including a cable car up the mountain, we finally arrived at Mt. Koya.

We stayed at Rengejoin Temple where the head priest’s mother spoke English. What an extraordinary life story she told us over dinner. She is 88 years (a very young 88!) and told us about how she went to Tokyo to study English at university as a young woman. Of course, this was during a time when women didn’t go to university, and IF they did, it was to study domestic sciences. She returned to Mt. Koya after graduating. All of the young men were off fighting the war, so after some time, she married the head priest of Rengejoin temple. After the war, the temple was in ruins, and there was very little food available. But eventually they prospered and had two sons, the elder of which is now the head priest at the temple. (The position of head priest is passed down father to son.)

The temple had a beautiful rock garden that the head priest was raking (a light rain had disturbed the design) and a lovely garden with a pond.

Before dinner we had to attend a 40 minute meditation service, which was rather long for Angie and me. Ash enjoyed it and told us over dinner how his grandfather used to make him meditate as a child and even threatened him with “meditation camp”. Dinner itself, while vegetarian, was still typically Japanese with many unidentifiable things.

As instructed, after dinner we bathed in the Japanese style bathroom, and then retired to our adjoining rooms for an early night.

We were required to attend a 6 a.m. morning service before breakfast. The morning service was chanting, which while interesting, was a little long for me, half asleep and hungry from not having eaten much of my dinner the night before. Breakfast was also typically Japanese, rice, miso soup, and pickles, and we quickly decided our first stop of the day would be to supplement breakfast with some “normal” food.
We spent the day exploring Koya-san (Mt. Koya) and really enjoyed the little mountain-top town. There are 117 temples in this town of 7,000 people. The town is the headquarters of the Shingon Buddhism sect established by Kobo Daishi (Kukai).

What we learned about the founding of Koya-san: In 804, Kobo Daishi (not his name then) went to China for Buddhist training. From China he threw some sort of shiny Buddhist implement towards Japan. When he returned to Japan in 806, he went looking for a place to establish the new sect of Buddhism. He met a hunter with his two dogs in the woods and asked the hunter if he knew of a good place for his temple site. The hunter told him he had seen something sparkling in the trees of a mountain. Kobo Daishi went up that mountain, and sure enough, there, hanging in a pine tree, was the golden implement he had thrown from China. Imagine that. So he decided that was a sign to establish his sect there and it became Koya-san. The descendent of the pine tree which caught the implement is encircled by a fence and revered.
We visited several temples and pagodas before having lunch and then wandering on to the famous Okunoin cemetery. There are an estimated half million tombs here, marked by mossy stone statues. We enjoyed wandering along the path and snapping lots of photos.
At the end of the day, we hopped back on the trains and came to Himeji. Saturday was spent at the castle, but unfortunately the festival we had hoped to catch that day was postponed due to rain. The next day Angie and Ash headed off to spend a week sightseeing on their own.

June 12 on 12

2008-06-11T17:59:00.007+09:00

It’s the rainy season here, and we could get as much as 8 inches of rain in June alone. Typhoon dependent of course! Mostly it’s been overcast and drizzly, but yesterday I did get stuck in a downpour while on my bike. Which leads into my first set of photos: umbrella management. There is truly a love of umbrellas here. No one wears a rain coat, they choose to carry an umbrella instead. People can even bike one-handed with an umbrella which is a lot harder than it looks. I’ve tried a few times and it’s downright dangerous because you can’t really see where you’re going, and the wind catches the umbrella, sometimes even turning it inside-out. Because people are always carrying umbrellas around, there are lots of these locking umbrella racks. You put your umbrella in and take out the key so no one can steal your $5 umbrella. (Japanese people will, however, leave their expensive cell phone on an empty table to save a space in a busy restaurant, but they don’t dare leave their umbrella unlocked!)

You’ve heard me go on about the endless shoe and slipper changes here. This photo was taken at Himeji castle where tourists must take off their shoes and either wear slippers or go stocking-footed to visit the castle. You can see the system in place. Slippers all lined up to people to grab a pair. Staff passing out plastic bags for people to carry their shoes in (they do reuse these bags).

I’ve been meaning to include a photo of a sock store. Yup, this store just sells socks. Obviously when changing shoes is a big part of your day, you want your socks to be stylish. Curiously though, there is no great need to match your socks with your outfit.

Thought this was funny. For those times when you simply can’t communicate, just use an etch-a-sketch! (zoom in to read the English instructions for another chuckle)

This month’s ikebana arrangement. The tall flowers are arranged in a fan shape. I was happy because it was a different arrangement from our usual 100-70-50 arrangement.

This is a common sight on the streets once it gets dark. Fortune tellers set up a table and a lantern and read people’s palms.

Ohtsu Junior High School has a kendo club. Kendo is a Japanese martial art, very strange to watch. The costumes look like something out of a Star Wars set (or maybe a Star Wars set looks like something out of a kendo club). Kendo-ers (not sure what we’d call people who practice Kendo) do this weird skipping thing, and then stomp one bare foot onto the ground and screech when striking their opponent. When I first heard the Kendo club practicing, I thought they were killing birds!

These next couple of photos are Angie and Ash’s (having them here reminded me what’s interesting and weird!)

I may have blogged about these yellow lines before. If you zoom in you can see a raised marking on them. They're for blind people to use with their canes so they can walk safely down the sidewalk. The pattern changes when there is a turn to make, or at points to cross streets. The entire country is covered with these yellow lines, making me wonder if the government expects a sizeable chunk of the population to turn blind in the near future.

Even during Tokyo's rush hour, you can see the inherent orderliness in everything here. In this photo, people are lined up in two lines for the next train. When the train arrives, each line will go up to the train against the door, leaving the middle free for people to exit the train.

I should have included this one in a winter 12 on 12 because this is a classically Japanese winter thing. It's called a kotatsu. It's basically a low table (notice the lack of legs on the chairs) with a small heater built into it, and a quilt under the table top. It's quite cozy for your legs, but not so cozy for your upper half.

Angie and Ash's Visit (Part 4)

2008-06-08T18:04:00.006+09:00

Day 4 found us on the train heading south to Kawaguchiko, a little town in the five lakes region just north of Mt. Fuji. We had great views of Mt. Fuji on the train ride there, and we were very excited, jumping up to take crappy photos of power lines with Mt. Fuji in the background. A little sampling of those photos:

In Kawaguchiko, we dropped our bags off at the hotel, noted the view from the hotel,

and hopped on the "retro-bus" (basically a little bus intended for tourists). We went first to the cable car for a ride up a nearby mountain with great view of Mt Fuji and lots of these cartoon characters from a Japanese fairy tale. The fairy tale is called Kachi-kachi Mountain and is about an evil tanuki (those raccoon-dogs which Japanese believe can change their shape and play tricks on people). The story is rather gruesome, but interesting. Here's a translation of the story.

Mt Fuji was covered in clouds by mid-afternoon so we hired a paddle boat and toodled around the lake for a while.

View of the cable car line from the boat (you can click on any of these photos to zoom in).

We woke up the next morning to rain, but luckily we had taken lots of photos of Mt. Fuji, so we hopped on the train towards Mt. Koya, our next destination.

Angie and Ash's Visit (Part 3)

2008-06-08T17:07:00.005+09:00

We took a day trip to Kamakura on the third full day of Angie and Ash's visit. Kamakura was the capital of Japan for a short while (1185-1333) and has numerous Buddhist temples. Kamakura is also a major destination for school trips so the town was packed with overly friendly kids in uniforms. They were so friendly, in fact, that we quickly came to the conclusion that they were given an assignment to talk to foreigners on their trip. (Later in the trip, Angie and Ash confirmed this when students pulled out a worksheet to interview them.)

We started at Hachimangu, a Shinto shrine. Hachiman is the Shinto god of war, so this is a common shrine name. At this shrine was a ginko tree which "witnessed" the murder of a shogun in 1219.

Next we walked past Jufuku-ji temple but nothing was happening there, so we went onward to Zeniarai Benzaiten shrine. To get to this shrine, we had to walk through this tunnel to the shrine courtyard,

and then into a cave where a spring flowed. The purpose of visiting Zeniarai Benzaiten shrine is to wash your money in this spring, in the belief that the money will double. Ash washed a few coins, while I snapped photos of the strings of origami cranes hanging from the cave ceiling.

The Great Buddha statue at Kotokuin temple was next. It's 11 meters tall and made of bronze. I had been very excited to visit this temple, but it didn't quite live up to expectations - Buddha was smaller than I expected. However, I did find this sign at the entrance amusing.

Since the day was still young, we went on to Hase-dera temple. We weren't expecting much there, but really it was an impressive place! It had several terraces of gardens and buildings, an army of jizo statues, and a cave to wander through!

This last picture is a rinzo, rotating bookcase, which houses the Buddhist sutras. By turning the rinzo around 360 degrees, you can earn the same merit as from actually reading all the sutras. Sounds like a deal to me!

The next temple was Jomjyo-ji with a famous rock garden. Ma-ma (so-so) in my estimation.

Last on the day's itinerary was Hokoku-ji temple and its beautiful bamboo garden (the brochure called it a "garden" rather than a forest...).

Angie and Ash's Visit (Part 2)

2008-06-05T07:04:00.006+09:00

The second full day of their trip, we had an appointment for a tour of the Imperial Palace. On the way there, we walked back through the International Forum for a photo op.

The Imperial Palace tour was quite nice but all outside, and we didn’t even get to meet the Emperor! We did get a handy English audio guide to the tour, so while the other 100 people listened to the tour guide (a.k.a. security guard) bellowing into the microphone, we just tuned into our headsets.

It was “dangerous” to take this photo from the bridge at the palace, but luckily I took the photo before I listened to the audio guide tell me that!

I think that’s Tokyo Tower in the background.

After the palace tour, we visited Yasukuni shrine. Yasukuni means “peaceful country” so as you might not guess, this is where Japan’s war dead are enshrined. About 2 million veterans are enshrined here so their spirits can be worshipped. The shrine is very controversial, considering Japan’s military history and the fact that some of the enshrined souls are war criminals, and the fact that it was a government sponsored shrine until after WWII when Japan's new Constitution effectively separated church and state (more effectively than America's Constitution has). The Prime Minister’s visit here always creates an international stir, but there was nothing happening the day we were there.

In fact the greatest point of interest was wondering why there were all these strings strung across the garden pond. Theories: prevent the birds from catching the fish; encouraging spider webs; for hanging tarps to cover the pond. None of these theories was satisfactory: the koi (goldfish) were HUGE, we didn’t think they would want to encourage spider webs, and the strings didn’t look strong enough to support tarps. So we continue to ponder.

Angie and Ash's Visit (Part 1)

2008-06-03T06:40:00.007+09:00

Angie, my best friend from the Peace Corps, and her husband, Ash, arrived last Saturday for a two week trip to Japan. I went up to Tokyo early on Saturday to meet them there, and had a few extra hours to do some sightseeing before they arrived. I wandered through the Tokyo International Forum building which Lonely Planet said was worth a walk through because of its unusual belly of a whale architecture.
I meandered on to the East Garden of the Imperial Palace but had unfortunately left my camera in my suitcase in the locker at the train station. It was a nice place for strolling around, killing time until it was time to head to Narita airport to meet Angie and Ash.
Narita airport is actually about an hour northeast of Tokyo, but there are many express trains that go straight there. At the train station at the airport they announced they were searching luggage. They were also checking passports which had me worried since I only had my alien registration card on me. (Interestingly, when Karen and I flew to Okinawa, they didn’t even check IDs, but just to enter Narita airport and meet friends I needed an ID.)
It’s amazing how many blond girls who looked like Angie were at the airport. Actually, the thought that kept recurring to me the whole time we were in Tokyo was how many foreigners there were there! I guess I’m no longer used to seeing people who look like me!
After we met up, we got back on the train to check into Sakura Hotel in Ikekuburo. The location was great – a McDonalds, Subway, Denny’s, and KFC right outside Ikekuburo! Angie and I were very excited! Ash was looking forward to all the “delicious” Japanese foods so his enthusiasm didn’t quite match ours! We had a quick dinner at KFC (my first time eating there in Japan, if you can believe it! It was so yummy! There’s a KFC here in Himeji but I don’t know where exactly). It was an early night for us; Angie and Ash were understandably exhausted after the 12 hour plane ride!
The next day we were up all too early (unfortunately I also got on the early to bed, early to rise sleep schedule). After breakfast at Denny’s, we visited Meiji Shrine where we saw a wedding party and then walked through the gardens there.

Next on the itinerary was Harajuku to people watch, specifically all the teenagers dressed in goth outfits! We never figured out why some of them have bandages/rags tied over their noses. We assume the suitcase was because they couldn't leave the house dressed like that and changed clothes at the train station.

Angie and Ash were much more impressed with the people watching than I was, leading us to the theme of our time together: “Sara has been here too long”. For instance, I suggested Melon Fanta to Angie as an alternative to ginger ale. She didn’t like it. I recommended Lemon Cider as a beverage similar to Sprite. She thought it tasted more like cough drops. They did like my favorite candies, Pure sweet/sour gummies, but I think they discovered them on their own.
We stumbled into a sushi train restaurant for a late lunch. The sushi circles around the restaurant counter on a conveyor belt and you just grab the plates you want. At the end, the waitress counts your plates (and the color of your plates) to determine your bill. Ash was in heaven, while Angie and I made a light snack of a salad roll.

A bit more people watching and we called it a day and headed back to Ikebukuro for dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant and an early night.

Japan in the headlines

2008-05-31T16:28:00.002+09:00

A couple of interesting articles:

Japanese woman caught living in man's closet

UCLA gave transplant to Japanese gang boss - I'm currently reading a book about Japanese gangsters, yakuza. Similar to the mafia

I just finished spending a week with Angie and Ash, sightseeing, so expect some blogs soon!

Where Jesus went for those 11 years

2008-05-19T15:30:00.003+09:00

Everyday something surprises me here in Japan. Today I'm startled to learn that Jesus lived in Japan from the time he was 21 until he returned to Israel to be crucified. But actually he wasn't crucified, that was his brother Isukiri who was crucified, all the while Jesus was on his way back to Japan where he lived to be 106! Who knew?

Here's the whole story (cut and paste from a few different websites):
There are probably very few Christians who have even heard of the small village of Herai that lies tucked away in the northern reaches of Aomori Prefecture, but some here maintain this to be the place where Jesus settled, married and died at the ripe old age of 106. Although it's commonly held that Jesus grew up as a carpenter in the Galilee town of Nazareth, according to the legend of Herai, or Shingo as it's now known, the 11 "missing years" of Christ's life not accounted for in the New Testament of the Bible were spent in Japan. According to the local legend, Christ first came to Japan, aged 21, during the reign of the 11th emperor, Suinin, and landed at the port of Hashidate on the Japan Sea coast. Apparently, he settled in Etchu province where, under the tutelage of a great master, he studied Japanese language, literature and various other subjects. The Legend of Daitenku Taro Jurai (Daitenku Taro Jurai was the name Christ is said to have later taken) claims that at the end of his 11-year stay, Christ returned to Judea, aged 33, where he taught about the "sacred land" of Japan. But, unfortunately, "Christ's teachings about Japan were considered too radical," and he was condemned to death.

The New Testament teaches Jesus was crucified at Golgotha, rose from the dead after three days and later ascended into Heaven. However, according to the legend of Herai, Jesus escaped this fate, and instead his brother Isukiri was nailed to the cross and died. Christ, meanwhile, fled with his disciples and went into hiding, carrying locks of the Virgin Mary's hair and his brother's ear.

After an arduous journey across Siberia, Christ finally returned to Japan and settled in Herai where he changed his name, married a Japanese woman called Miyuko, fathered three daughters and lived to the age of 106. Devout Christians may insist that the Garden Tomb, which lies not far from Damascus Gate outside the Old City of Jerusalem, is Jesus' true burial site, but the people of Herai have another story to tell-marked by a large wooden cross, Jesus' tomb (Juraizuka) sits alongside his brother's (Judaibo) in Herai. Isukiri's tomb holds his ear and locks of the Virgin Mary's hair. It's hard to imagine anyone, let alone Christ, would have schlepped out to one of the remotest parts of northern Japan in days of old, as even today it demands a great deal of effort to reach the village.

Herai is NOT a Japanese name. In modern Japanese language “Herai” sounds almost identical to “Hebrai” which simply means “Hebrew”. In Hebrew “Herai” resembles a word meaning "a mountain". Indeed, Jesus and his brother Ouriki tombs are placed at the flattened top of quite a steep mountain. It is quite possible, that renaming the village was a part of the Japanese government cover-up. (these last sentences were from some cult's website)

Interestingly, Jesus' Japanese descendents are not Christian.

I'm sure you're as shocked as I am. Like I said, I never know what's next!

1368 steps

2008-05-17T18:00:00.009+09:00

Last weekend I took a long planned trip to Shikoku. Shikoku is the large island south of Himeji where I started the pilgrimage circuit last month. The reason for last weekend’s trip though was to climb the 1368 steps to Kompira-san!
We started the weekend by taking the train over a long suspension bridge to Marugame. It was a rainy day, so we decided to visit a small uchiwa museum. Uchiwa are non-folding fans which Marugame is famous for making. They’re paddle shaped and made of bamboo with paper glued over the tines to create a fan. It was quite interesting seeing the steps involved, watching the video and demonstrations.
After hiding out from the rain as long as possible, we went on to Marugame Castle. The castle’s position is impressive, on top of a steep hill in the middle of town. We climbed the muddy hill and were less than impressed with the three-story castle (considering we see the six-story Himeji Castle everyday), but we dutifully entered and took our photos.
Having exhausted the short list of sites in Marugame, we got back on the train to Kanon-ji and Jinne-in, where two more of the temples of the 88 temples in the pilgrimage circuit are. But first we climbed the stairs to a shrine, practicing for the next day.

At the temples I posed next to the monk figures and got my temple seal book stamped (5 down, 83 temples to go!)

Then we got on the train to Kotohira where we checked into our very nice hotel. We wandered out to look for some dinner, and after nearly an hour of wandering around a very dark and quiet town, we finally found a little restaurant right next door to our hotel (we had assumed it was a bar when we first passed it). After almost ordering the curry and rice, we had a great spaghetti dinner (I spied the small container of parmesan cheese and knew there must be some pasta on the menu!) and then went back to our hotel to take a bath in the Japanese style bathroom.
In the morning, we went back to the little restaurant for a breakfast of a cold ham sandwich, hard boiled egg, salad and coffee (that was the set breakfast), then we made our way to the 1368 steps leading to Kompira-san.

We could have paid about $65 to be carried up the steps in one of these contraptions!

(A pilgrim on a smoke break)

(the main gate at 365 steps)

There were many shops selling all sorts of souvenirs but we took our guidebook's advice and didn’t buy anything on the way up! The climb wasn’t too bad. The main shrine complex was 785 steps up, then we continued on to the inner shrine, another 583 steps. While we wanted to be able to say we had climbed all 1368 steps, we agreed that the inner shrine wasn’t really worth the extra effort –it was small and the view was much the same as it was at the major shrine.
We descended, bought our souvenirs, including omiyage (snacks for co-workers), ordered the spaghetti again at our new favorite restaurant, then left Kotohira.
Since it was still early afternoon, we stopped at Zentsu-ji, the site of the largest of the 88 temples on the circuit. The temple complex was surrounded with some very interesting statues in all sorts of interesting poses.

I didn't wear my pilgrim vest, but conveniently, there were these cut out figures, so you can see how I might look in the pilgrim costume (although I hope my ears don't stick out quite so much in real life!)

I got my temple seal book stamped, and we ending our temple visit by walking through a pitch dark tunnel. Zentsu-ji is also famous as the place were square watermelons were invented, but we didn't see any of those.

We got on the train for a very complicated and confusing ride back to Himeji (just when I thought I had the train system all figured!)

May 12 on 12

2008-05-17T17:27:00.006+09:00

(It's shameful I know, it's already the 17th, I haven't posted my 12 on 12 yet, and now I'm only posting 7 photos. Oh well, June is another month!)

Now that the sun has come out and the days are brighter, so have the parasols. Japanese women are petrified of letting any sunlight hit their skin, so everyone has one of these fashionable parasols. (Not me though! After that winter, bring on the UV!)

Doraemon is a popular kids’ cartoon. He’s a superhero robot cat from the future. I believe his superhero powers come from a pouch on his stomach (or maybe it’s a big pocket in his clothes). Youtube has a video of the first Doraemon cartoon.

Another popular kids’ character is AnPanMan. His photo is in an earlier blog too. He’s the bread-head superhero with his best friend the baker. Here is the link to the AnPanMan on-line shop!

This cat is seen at many stores. She brings good fortune by waving in customers. Her paw is always up to welcome customers. In some models her paw actually waves back and forth.

For Karen’s birthday earlier this month, we went to an izukaya, like a bar but izukayas are known for having lots of bar food. We call this place the Black Room (we don’t know its real name. Unfortunately, that makes it difficult to invite Japanese friends to join us!) To order food at this izukaya, you scroll through the screen on this console and press the appropriate buttons. In a short while, voila, the waiter appears with your selections! No need for charades or pictionary with this handy device!

This Japanese coast guard boat amused me, but you'll have to click on the photo and zoom in to see why. On the boat is written, in English, Japan Coast Guard. There is no Japanese written on the boat. Don't Japanese people need to know what that boat is? Is it only English speaking foreigners who might need to know what the boat's affiliation is?

Sorry Christine, no toilet photos this month, but maybe you'll enjoy the slogan on this t-shirt.

Happy Mather's Day

2008-05-11T04:42:00.000+09:00

I'm off travelling this weekend again but wanted to wish my mother a Happy Mather's Day!

Hope it's a great day! Talk to you soon!

Love Sara

Tottori and Kinosaki

2008-05-08T14:06:00.005+09:00

This past weekend was a four day weekend, due to Golden Week holidays. We were hoping to take a four day trip someplace, but only managed to get a hotel room for one night. Unfortunately, everyone in Japan makes some travel plans for Golden Week, so hotels were hard to find.
We took the train to Tottori on Saturday. Again, because everyone was traveling, the train was very full and we ended up sitting on the floor between the cars. We were fairly comfortable there so the two hours weren’t too bad (it would have been awful to stand in a crowded train car for two hours!)

In Tottori, we first checked out the fish market which Lonely Planet described as interesting. And it was! There were the usual fish, and squid, etc, as well as live octopus on ice (we could see they were still breathing), live eels in a tank, and turtles’ claws. We didn’t know what they did with the rest of the turtle.
After lunch at a restaurant called “Chocolate Bar” (although their menu spelled it “cocholate”), we took a bus to the sand dunes, the real reason we were visiting. The sand dunes weren’t so impressive (particularly having seen the sand dunes of the Sahara), but they were right on the ocean. Some people were taking camel rides, others were taking a horse-drawn carriage ride, and others were parasailing from the highest dune. We walked down to the shore and put our feet in the water and started hunting for shells and jelly fish. This was the Sea of Japan (between China and Japan), the first time for me to visit it. (I bought a disposable camera for the day, since I didn’t want to risk ruining my camera, so you’ll have to wait for the photos. In the meantime, you could check out the photos on Lauren's blog when she went last year).

We stayed at a Japanese style hotel where they had our three futons all laid out for us.

The next morning we hopped on a train to Kinosaki. The train followed the coast line which was rugged and beautiful. Kinosaki is known for its crab, and they really made the most of that association! Every restaurant had numerous crab dishes on the menu, there were live crabs for sale, as well as dead crabs, and crab trinkets. (The dead crabs are $50 each!)

We noticed a lot of Japanese flags at Kinosaki and wondered why - maybe the Prime Minister is from Kinosaki? But no, we later realized it was Constitution Day (we were too busy enjoying Golden Week to worry about which holidays we were celebrating).
A cable car ride took us up to a mountain where we looked over the town. We took the cable car halfway down to a temple and then walked the rest of the way.

A few other photos from the day:

Dried, translucent squid jerky for sale.

A pretty canal running through town (with lots of illicit discharges. but they're probably not illicit here).

We appreicated this guy's nicely succinct philosophy.

The Emperor's Birthday and a Beach Clean-Up

2008-05-05T16:00:00.005+09:00

Last Tuesday was the first public holiday of Golden Week. I'm not sure how the rest of the country celebrated the Emperor's birthday, but a bunch of us took a day trip to a nearby island. The boat ride to the island took about an hour. At the island we participated in a beach clean-up (of course, this being Japan, we didn't actually know that this was the purpose of our trip.) The beach wasn't very big or untidy so we picked up bits of plastic and other garbage for a while. The Japanese people were picking up all the seaweed too.

After the clean-up was finished, we had to listen to many speeches (the speeches lasted as long as the actual clean-up did!), then there was a rope tying demonstration. Finally lunch. We had been told to bring our own lunches, so we all unwrapped our sandwiches as trays of sashimi and thorny twig tempura were placed on the table in front of us. The food kept coming - miso soup with bamboo shoots, some sort of stew with venison and konnyaku, onion and krill soup.

After lunch we sat on the beach a while, watching some kids play with a dead jellyfish that had washed on shore. We saw more jellyfish in the water as we waited for our boat to leave.

And we saw a cuttlefish in a tank at the harbor, waiting to be someone's dinner, no doubt!

Happy Children's Day!!

2008-05-05T14:06:00.006+09:00

Today is Children's Day here in Japan. It used to be Boys' Day (you'll remember that Girls' Day was in March) until 1948 when it became Children's Day, one of the national holidays making up Golden Week.

In the last couple of weeks, lots of koinobori have been flown outside homes with sons. These wind socks typically have three carp - one representing the father, one the mother, and the last carp the children. Traditionally, there was a carp flag representing the father and one carp flag for each son. Why carp? Because they symbolize strength and success (a carp is strong enough to swim upstream against the current to achieve its goals).

It's been fun seeing the koinobori pop up everywhere and trying to get photos when the wind is just right! Occasionally they are also strung across a river or a bay (I'm not sure if they're intended to represent the boys in town, or if they're merely decorative). Here are a few photos I've taken. Try clicking on the last photo to zoom in and see the flags better.

The other decoration put out for Boys' Day is a samurai doll, paralleling the doll's display for Girls' Day. Often these are in the window cases at stores displaying very old dolls. Sometimes, just the samurai helmet is displayed.

I hope you're all enjoying a Happy Children's Day! I have lots of blogs to catch up - it's been a travel-filled Golden Week!

A Weekend at Home

2008-04-27T10:21:00.010+09:00

I have no travel plans for this weekend, but thought I'd share with you all some things I learned since my trip last weekend to Nagoya's Atsuta Shrine. Remember how it was full of weddings and new babies? Well, I asked a teacher at my school about all the babies and she said it's a tradition to bring a new baby to the shrine when it's 30 days old.

When I told her about all the weddings, at first she was surprised. But then she pulled out her handy desk calendar and said, oh that Sunday was a very auspicious day (and of course a weekend), that's why there were so many weddings there! She went on to point out days that are good for pulling a person close to you (building a relationship). She said those days are also good for weddings, but not good for funerals. And of course there are inauspicious days too. I was a bit surprised to hear all this (didn't think the Japanese people were quite so superstitious), and very surprised to see these dates marked on a normal desk calendar.

For your entertainment, I offer the following photos.

This sign I see every day while waiting for the morning train. But I just noticed what it says: "Sauna and Radon". More radioactive water for people to soak in, I guess!

These rhinoceros beetles are really popular pets here. There is a lady at the bus stop who sells them from her bicycle! The beetles are huge - about the size of a person's hand! And they have these ferocious looking pinchers! Wikipedia has a bit more info about them.

Yesterday I went to the movies. It was only the second time I've gone since being here. Movies are very expensive, normally about $20. We were able to buy discount tickets, so we paid $14 to see 10,000 BC (there aren't many movie options in English. If we want to see a movie on a particular day, we have to ask which movie is playing in English and at what time, and that's what we see!). On Wednesdays, "ladies" pay only $10 to see a movie, so a few weeks ago, a few of us "ladies" saw Enchanted. I'm going to be very behind in movies when I get home! The movie theater is on the 7th floor of a building full of shops, and because of the height, the theater has these Slow Descending Devices at each window. Basically, a harness to lower yourself out the window in case of an emergency!! (You can click on the photos to zoom in and see the text. I love the sketch of the woman wearing a dress being lowered down the side of the building!)

On Friday night we had a going away party for Adam. The theme was Dagwood sandwiches. Everyone was instructed to bring such a sandwich - with a green olive on top! It was fun having a good excuse to splurge on nice bread (I am not impressed by Japanese bread - the crusts are soggy even on a loaf of French bread (they even think cream puffs are supposed to be soggy!)), sandwich fixings and green olives ($4 for a small jar of olives!).

It's almost time for Golden Week. This year it's split into two different weeks and two of those days fall on a weekend, so that's kind of a bummer. But it's not a good time to travel anyway, because EVERYONE in Japan is travelling then, and prices skyrocket. The holidays of Golden Week are April 29th (this Tuesday) - the Emperor's Birthday. May 3rd (next Saturday) - Constitution Memorial Day. May 4th (next Sunday) - Greenery Day (I'm not exactly sure what this is about). May 5th (next Monday) - Childrens Day. In Japan, only public holidays which fall on a Sunday are moved to the next day. Public holidays which fall on a Saturday are celebrated on that day since many people work a 6 day work week.

And one last thing - here's a very interesting blog devoted to Japanese convenience stores and the junk food one can buy there! http://www.konbini-life.com/ (Konbini means convenience store.)

Have a great weekend!

Another sacred shrine and Nagoya Castle

2008-04-21T17:50:00.011+09:00

This lovely spring weather has me traveling like a fiend! Yesterday I took a day trip to Nagoya. It’s about 4 hours away on the regular trains, so I decided to splurge on the shinkansen (bullet train) to get there in just an hour and a half, but at twice the price. That way I arrived just as things were opening up, and had a full day of sightseeing. Then at 4 pm, when I was too weary to see anything else, I took the regular train back, arriving in Himeji at 8 pm.
Following up on last weekend’s trip to the most sacred shrine in Japan in Ise, I went to Atsuta-jingu, Japan's second most sacred shrine. It dates from the 3rd century, and looks a lot like the shrines at Ise.

I don’t know if it was some sort of special day, but there were at least two weddings happening there that day, as well as some sort of ceremony for new babies. I quickly lost count of how many very young babies I saw in what looked like a christening gown, and blanketed with what seemed to be a small kimono cover. I assume the families were praying for the baby’s health and success, much like they do in November for the 7-5-3 holiday for children aged 7, 5, and 3.
(The groom is in the black kimono. In the red and white outfits are the shrine priests and priestesses).

After the shrine, I headed to Nagoya castle. The castle was very nice, had lots of good displays inside it, and a nice garden around it.

The wisteria was in bloom, and there were many rest areas with benches under the wisteria.

The symbols of the castle are the golden shachi on the roof. These shachi are usually translated as dolphins, but recently someone told me they are actually supposed to be orca whales. However, the shachi have scales and don’t resemble orcas any more than they resemble dolphins. I like the explanation that it is a mythical creature, a fish with a tiger’s head, best. Shachi are often on top of buildings are protection against fire (apparently if a fire were to happen, the shachi would magically spout water and put out the fire). The shachi on top of Nagoya castle are a pair – one male and one female. The female is the tiniest bit smaller than the male. An exhibit in the museum explained how in difficult economic times, the shachi were melted down and recreated using less gold.

Like much else in Japan, the castle was destroyed in WWII and rebuilt. Interestingly, in the museum inside the castle, they had a photo of the castle engulfed in flames from the air raids.
Some of the stones in the castle foundation and walls had been etched with symbols to indicate which feudal lord placed the stone. Apparently this was so no one could later take credit for another’s work, or be accused of not contributing their share of the work.
Kiyomasa Kato takes credit for this large stone.

A lot of ex-pats live in Nagoya, so there were a lot more signs in English than is typical. However, even the English in Nagoya could use a little work.

Ise

2008-04-18T18:48:00.010+09:00

Last weekend my wanderings took me to Ise, about 3 hours east of Himeji. Ise is famous for Naiku and Geku, two of the most sacred shrines in Shintoism. This is the place where the Japanese goddess, Amaterasu Omikami, is believed to live, as well as Toyouke Omikami, the goddess of clothing, food and housing, who provides Amaterasu with sacred foods. The temples are in a beautiful setting - forests of ancient cedar and next to a clear river. Both the cedars and Isuzu River are sacred – I saw many people pressing theirs hands and foreheads to certain large cedar trees, and everyone stopped to purify their hands and mouths in the river before approaching Naiku.

Interestingly, these buildings are rebuilt every twenty years to exact specifications. In fact, next to every building is the bare alternate site waiting for the next set of buildings. The next rebuilding will be in 2013.

Most of the buildings are mostly out of sight – only the Imperial family, who is descended from Amaterasu, and some high-ranking Shinto priests are allowed to see them.

Since this is such a sacred site, I assume this shrine is THE place to buy your household shrine.

After visiting the shrines, I strolled along the streets where all the tourist stores were. Tea, apparently, is a specialty of the area, as well as these tiny shrimp-like things.
And everyone was enjoying fish-cake on a stick, well everyone but me!

I stayed the night at a little ryokan (guesthouse) in Ise. My room was small and simple, but suitable. The futon is the folded bundle under the window. The ryokan had a little courtyard in the middle of the building.

On Sunday, I hopped on a train to nearby Futami where the famous wedded rocks are. You may have seen photos of them as a classic Japanese site. The rocks are called Meotoiwa, and they are certainly smaller than I expected! For scale, you can see the bird (I think it’s a cormorant) stretching its wings on top of the torii (the bird is alive. At first I thought it was a statue!) Frogs seem to be the symbol of the shrine next to the rocks.

Actually there are two separate shrines next to the rocks, one to the god of marriage, traffic safety, and exorcism (yes, one god for these three seemingly unrelated things), and the other to the god of the sea.
Next to the Meotoiwa, there were stalls selling snacks such as sea urchin, squid on a stick and snails roasted in their shells. I relied on the local convenience store as my source of snacks for the day!

A few interesting quotes from the English versions of the tourist brochures:
“Gourmet in Shima? That’s bonza!”
“We recommend that you challenge to eat lobsters raw and alive”
“Accommodations in Futami are full of emotion”
“Enjoying whole aspects of Futami full of joyful aquarium, …”

April 12 on 12

2008-04-14T20:16:00.005+09:00

The Japanese postal system – a mail drop box, and postmen on motorcycles (seems to be the most common method of mail delivery). And a mail-bike.

On sunny days, people hanging their bedding off their balcony, a very common sight.

Children’s masks for sale at festivals. The red blow-up figure is An-pan man, a superhero whose head is made of bread, and his best friend is a baker and together they go around saving the world by eating bread (yeah, I don’t understand it either).

This is a delicacy, rather it used to be a delicacy. It’s camembert cheese, pressed and dried until it’s as tough as beef jerky.

What’s a 12 on 12 blog without a toilet photo? Here you can very clearly see the men’s urinals at the entrance to this public toilet.

A couple photos of Japanese fashion. Short shorts seems to be all rage right now, worn with knee-highs or boots. It’s a fashion I won’t be copying.

The other fashion of the moment is long shirts over jeans. Another fashion I won’t be able to pull off.

Japanese rip-rap. All the shores are lined with these tetrapods. It’s not very aesthetic.

This was taken outside a photo studio – I imagine this boy’s samurai ancestors wouldn’t be too keen on this cutesy pose!

And I leave you with a funny sign.

Efficiency??

2008-04-08T18:02:00.003+09:00

After a painfully long boring day sitting at my desk at school, I came home to surf the internet and found this (somewhat dated) article about Japanese efficiency. It's hard to believe, but the Japanese workplace is not an efficient place!! People put in long hours, but a lot of it is just face time - letting the boss know you're there.

Anyway, the link to the article is here.
For those of you who are too busy (and efficient) to read the whole article, I've cut and paste the most interesting paragraphs:

If you want a look at what's really ailing the Japanese economy, just drive
over on any given weekend to the Ito-Yokado shopping center parking lot in
Shinyurigaoka, a large suburb half an hour west of Tokyo. Actually, it doesn't
matter where you go, since the same scene is played out at parking garages,
train stations and construction sites all over the country. But on a typical
weekend here in Shinyurigaoka, there are four guards at the intersection
directing traffic. Another man is on hand to make sure you don't miss the turn
that leads to the garage. Five meters down the path, an attendant removes the
ticket that the machine just generated and hands it to you. Head up the slope to
the first floor and a woman will wave you on, just in case you missed the
brightly lit No Vacancy sign over her head. (Every floor, whether full or not,
gets its own guard.) When you exit, you get the same treatment in reverse: more
floor guards waving you through, a white-gloved attendant to feed the ticket
back into the machine, and a new crew of traffic smoothers to make sure you are
safely on your way. By the end of your visit, at least 20 employees have
provided you with a service of nearly zero value that could easily have been and
was clearly designed to be completely automated.
According to the Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development,
a government-affiliated research center, Japanese laborers are 40% less
efficient than Americans, 20% less efficient than the French and 11% less
efficient than the Germans. The Japanese lag behind not just Britons and Swedes
as well but where will the humiliations end? the Italians and Spanish,
too.

On a related topic, I have seen teachers do the following in the staff room: shave! clean their ears! cut their toenails!! Seriously, just take 5 more minutes in the bathroom at home, please!!

(For those of you wondering just how efficient I was today: I wrote a bunch of emails, planned some vacations for my remaining time, wrote out postcards, read about 100 pages of a novel, organized some photos on my laptop, and counted the days remaining of the school term that started yesterday. All that and I still had plenty of time to stare into space.)

A pilgrimage to a whirlpool and beyond

2008-04-07T21:28:00.004+09:00

The last day of spring break, I took a day trip to Shikoku, the large island south of Himeji. To get there, I took a bus across the world’s longest suspension bridge, Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, 3,911 meters long.
Shikoku has many tourist attractions, like the Naruto whirlpools which were my first destination. The whirlpools are caused by the changing tides rushing through a narrow strait. There is a science museum at the site of the whirlpools to educate people (well, those people who can read Japanese) both on whirlpools and bridges.
At the entrance to the museum, everyone spun a bingo ball kind of thing, and the color of the ball that rolled out determined which prize you won. I was the lucky winner and was presented with a large and heavy bag of Japanese food which I then had to drag around all day, trying not to be ungrateful. Since I don’t like Japanese food, I tried to distract myself by thinking of who I should give this food to. I decided a couple of teachers at school could be the lucky recipients, including one English teacher who always eats cup of noodle for lunch (yes, it’s very popular here, but they call it “Cup Noodle”, dropping the “of”.)

After the museum, it was low tide, one of the ideal times to see the whirlpools, so I followed the crowd walking under the suspension bridge (this bridge was not the longest one in the world). The walking platform had glass windows in the floor so you could see the churning water 45 meters below you. It was cool, but the girders of the bridge really obstructed the view. I was a bit envious of those people below in the sightseeing boats.
After low tide, I moved on to my next site, a couple of the temples of the Shikoku pilgrimage. This pilgrimage is famous throughout Japan. People walk (or take a tour bus) around a circuit of 88 temples on the island. It’s about 1,400 km long and can take a couple of months to finish! The pilgrimage follows in the footsteps of a famous Buddhist priest from the 9th century.
The temple seal book I bought in Kyoto was getting full, so I decided to buy a second book and collect as many of the 88 temples’ seals as I can (but over a series of day trips with just a bit of walking). At the temple shop where I bought my new book, the Buddhist monk also gave me the white vest that pilgrims wear and insisted that I put it on. So you can imagine me, trudging along in my white vest and carrying the heavy bag of Japanese foods I really didn’t want. My serenity was severely compromised! Later I read in the brochure that the white vest used to symbolize a death shroud, showing that the pilgrim was prepared to die at any time. Luckily they didn’t give me the traditional walking staff which was formerly used as a grave marker for a pilgrim who passed away along the journey!

Surprisingly I was able to find the first three temples without too much trouble (I can just make out the basic kanji for numbers and for temple.) This coming weekend I’m going back to Shikoku and will visit a few more of the 88 temples. Maybe I’ll get a photo of myself in the white pilgrim vest then…

Sakura and Hanami

2008-04-07T21:00:00.005+09:00

It’s cherry blossom (sakura) season here in Japan!! Cherry blossom season is the time for hanami, picnics beneath the blossoms. We had one last Wednesday with the people who were attending our spring break classes, and again on Saturday. Saturday was also the day of Himeji’s cherry blossom festival, so there were literally thousands of people picnicking on the castle grounds under the cherry blossoms. We watched koto (Japanese harp) and taiko drumming performances while sharing food (sushi and snacks) and getting free refills in our square sake cups. The pictures can speak for themselves.

A bit of trivia about the cherry blossoms – they don’t have a fragrance, at least not one I can smell. And the cherry trees in Washington D.C. were a gift from Japan in 1912.

Nikko

2008-04-04T20:02:00.005+09:00

Before even coming to Japan, I had heard about Nikko as the origin of the three wise monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. For some reason that totally caught my attention and I have been looking for an opportunity to visit Nikko since I arrived! The saying itself came from China or India, but in Japan it became associated with monkeys because of a play on words ("don't do" sounds similiar to "monkey" in old Japanese).

Nikko is in the mountains, so it was considerably colder than the spring temperatures we had just gotten used to! In fact it snowed the morning we left Nikko (sleek actually, but snow sounds more dramatic). We stayed at a really nice place in Nikko. I'd definitely recommend Nikko Park Lodge! It's really cozy and is clearly the place to stay, judging by all the cool travellers we met there! Nikko was pretty and had cedar forests. We even saw wild monkeys and deer!

As we walked from our hotel to the sites, I noticed this severely over-engineered river channel! And then this billboard directing tourists to the interesting weirs around Nikko! Maybe there was a hydrologist convention in town that weekend?

We first saw Shinkyo which is sacred bridge. It didn't look particulary sacred, but you be the judge.

Then we went into the National Park where the temples and shrines were. The most impressive was Tosho-gu, a shrine and Ieyasu's mausoleum. (Ieyasu established the Tokugawa shogunate.) This shrine was confusing to me, because it had a pagoda, which I think are generally associated with temples rather than shrines.

And it's not like other Japanese shrines. It's covered in gold leaf! Really beautiful! This is where the carvings of the monkeys are. And these carvings of elephants were made by an artist who had never seen a real elephant (at least according to Lonely Planet).

We then climbed these stairs to Ieyasu's mausoleum. On the way we missed the Sleeping Cat, which is famous throughout Japan (we're not sure why. Probably just because it's cute). We looked and looked for the cat before asking a fellow tourist who directed us back down all the stairs, and sure enough, there was a crowd of people taking pictures of the cat carving. We walked right under it on our way up.

After seeing the rest of the shrines and temples there, we took a very expensive bus ride up a very curvy mountain road to Kegon Falls. Japan’s most famous waterfalls are not so breathtaking, at least not in very early spring. We took an elevator down through the earth to a platform. The falls drop 318 feet. And yes that's snow on the ground.

We had just a bit of daylight and energy left after the falls, so we walked along these Jizo statues. This particular walk is called the Mystery Jizo walk because the number of jizos you count isn't the same coming and going. We didn't bother counting - it was sprinkling, and there were other tourists there counting for us. They did get the same number though.

That was it for Nikko. The next day we took a 14 hour train ride back to Himeji. Luckily it was incident free, but the skies were too cloudy so we didn't see Mt. Fugi.

It's a Small World After All!

2008-04-03T18:34:00.005+09:00

Just north of Nikko are several theme parks -Tobu World Square, Edo Wonderland, and Western World. We started at Tobu World Square which has many monuments and famous buildings around the world, all at 1/25 the actual size. Somehow we imagined this much bigger than it actually was, and we thought it might take the whole day... We were initially disappointed with this theme park, but then got into the "small world" spirit (and kitschy-ness) and spent the morning posing with all the famous buildings we had been to! Here are just a few photos. (My remedy for getting excited about this place was to take photos of EVERY building.) They had the Twin Towers, which was weird, but also the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China, and many many sites within Japan.

What was especially cool was the little people, often dressed in kimonos or school uniforms, or in the case of this NYC scene, window washing uniforms.

After we finished our around the world sightseeing trip, we headed back in time to the Edo period here in Japan at Edo Wonderland. It met up to World Square in terms of kitschy-ness factor, but by then we were prepared for and expecting it. It was rather like the Renaissance Festival, with lots of people in costume and lots of random shows. We saw a show of a famous geisha at the time entering town,

a ninja show, a water magic show (this was an all new low in entertainment value as we could actually see the tubing at her wrists!),

and a couple of short plays.

Spring Break

2008-04-02T20:30:00.009+09:00

It's spring break here. Spring break, though, is not really a "break". All the teachers still go to school, and students still go to school for club activities. Lucky us, though, we ALTs give English lessons to the community during the school breaks. It's great on so many levels - instead of an hour commute, I have a 5 second commute (just going down to the meeting room on the ground floor of our apartment building). Classes are just from 9 am to noon, so I get to sleep in AND finish early! And we all share the teaching responsibilities, so each ALT leads one or two classes, and just assists with the remaining classes. Not a bad gig for two weeks.

Spring is here, definitely, although it's not consistently warm yet. I can't wait until summer! Seriously, I want to know when I get dressed in the morning that it will simply be hot. I hate wondering: will be cool or warm, rainy or sunny?? Do I need a sweater, T-shirt, jacket, umbrella, sunglasses - maybe all of the above? Can I wear capris or a skirt or will I regret it? Makes getting dressed too complicated! Bring on summer!!

Anyway, back to the real topic of this post - my weekend trip to Nikko! Because it's spring break, the railway offers a special ticket - basically as far as you can go within one day for $22. Heather and I decided we'd show them how far we can go! Last Thursday, we used a ticket to travel from Himeji to Tokyo. I'll simply mention that a shinkansen trip from Himeji to Tokyo costs $150 and takes 4 hours. Instead, we did it for $22 and 14 hours... We're still not sure it was worth it...

We left at 8 am on Thursday with our handy "timetable" listing all the transfers we'd have to make along the way. All went smoothly for the first two hours, until we got on a train which didn't depart on schedule. We were puzzled, until I overheard the word "jiko" (A quick aside - knowing Swahili has come in surprisingly handy here - only because I can associate words that sound the same in Swahili and Japanese. So when I heard "jiko", I thought of the Swahili word for stove (also "jiko") and I used my random memory trick to remember that in Japanese "jiko" is accident (think of a stove accident). Heather witnessed this in action as I muttered the word jiko a few times trying to remember the connection - ah-ha!! "stove" => "accident")

Having some connections between trains only 4 minutes apart, the initial 40 minute delay turned into us arriving in Tokyo two hours later than expected. But we found our hostel and got a bit of sleep.

In the morning, we headed to the nearest convenience store, joking about how sad it is that we often get a complete breakfast there. We grabbed orange juice, yogurt and a pastry and walked on towards our first sightseeing destination. But what did we see along the way?? A Denny's!! Yes!! We immediately decided our convenience store breakfast would be better eaten as snacks later in the day. I ordered the french toast and Heather the scrambled eggs and toast (no Grand Slam breakfast on the menu in Tokyo. But the Denny's bathroom was as gross as you'd expect a Denny's bathroom to be).

Across the street from Denny's was our first sightseeing stop of the day: Senso-ji temple. It's the oldest temple in Tokyo. On the back of one of the buildings was an enormous pair of straw sandals, apparently for one of the gods' use.

The sign in the background of this photo shows the proper protocol for rinsing your hands and mouth at a temple or shrine.

Although it was only 10 am, the vendors around the temple were already setting up their stands to sell squid and octopus on a stick. Luckily I was still full from my Denny's breakfast!

Not unusually, there was a shrine within the temple grounds where we saw this cat taking a nap under the shisha statue.

Surprisingly the cherry blossoms were at their peak that weekend in Tokyo (they're not yet at their peak here in Himeji, which is further south than Tokyo). After seeing the temple and shrine, we took a stroll down a riverside park which was full of sakura (cherry blossoms).

Next on our itinerary was the restaurant wholesale district. But on the way, we noticed this advertisement, quite possibly for raw beef sushi. I continually ask "what will they think of next", but there's always something stranger and less appetizing.

We knew when we'd found the restaurant wholesale district.

Heather's main objective while in Tokyo was to buy some plastic food. Many restaurants have displays of plastic food outside, giving a useful visual of their menu. And apparently Asakusa in Tokyo is THE place to buy this plastic food! Here's the store where Heather purchased her bowl of plastic udon.

Once that task was accomplished we were back on the train to Nikko. I'll post about that in a separate blog - but here is one last photo of Tokyo, where even the subway station entrances look like temples!

Slumber Party

2008-03-26T16:06:00.006+09:00

Last Friday, the eighth grade teachers at school had an overnight enkai. An enkai is a formal staff party - I've been on several dinner/drinking/karaoke enkais with the teachers at my last school, but never overnight. So I was very curious about this overnight enkai.

We piled into a couple of teachers' cars and drove to Mt Rokko near Kobe (about an hour away). We arrived at 7pm, checked into our rooms. I shared a room with two other female teachers.

It was a traditional Japanese room with tatami mats, a low table and chairs without legs. And at bedtime, we simply pulled these out of the way, and pulled three futons out of the closet!

Of course, the bathroom had toilet slippers to change into. Can anyone who speaks French tell me if these say what I think they say!!!

Dinner was also in a traditional room. And unfortunately, it was a lot of traditional Japanese food.

This first course was sashimi (raw fish), and whole baby squid (those brownish-purple things), and "the reproductive shoot of the horsetail plant" in a bamboo cone. The next day hiking, we saw a reproductive shoot of the horsetail plant.

Next was a "soup" with little broth, but plenty of octopus and bamboo shoots and very slimy seaweed.

After that was a serving of baked red snapper.

Then the waiters came around to light our little table top cookers which contained Kobe beef. Yes, that is a huge scoop of butter on top of the famously "marbled" Kobe beef!

The next course was taro (a potato like tuber). And then tempura (two prawns, fiddler fern, and broccoli).

Finally soup (fish cake and clam) and rice.

Dessert was mochi (surprise, surprise) around red bean paste (surprise, surprise, again).

By the time dinner was over, it was late. We went into another teacher's hotel room and hung out for a bit. I asked what we would do the next day. The English teacher said "biking". The next morning we went down for a breakfast buffet (hooray, they had scrambled eggs and toast, as well as "normal" Japanese breakfast food). I asked what time we would be biking, and got a confused look in return. After a little more back and forth (me asking if we were renting bikes, if everyone was going biking, etc.), I realized that the teacher had been saying "viking", as in viking-style (all you can eat) breakfast, not biking (Japanese people have a hard time pronouncing "v"). We had a good laugh over that!

What we did end up doing was visiting a botanical garden (it was a bit too early for many flowers, so I didn't take any great photos). After the botanical garden, we went to the "Hall of Halls". That turned out to be a music box museum!

Then lunch and a bit of time for souvenir shopping, then back to Himeji.

It was really interesting to experience this overnight trip. Japanese people are famous for their devotion to the company, and I think these sort of trips really encourage teamwork (although at the expense of time with the family).

Osaka Temples and Shrines

2008-03-26T07:53:00.004+09:00

A couple of weekends ago, I took advantage of the spring weather (finally!) and took a day trip to Osaka. There are a couple of temples and shrines there that I have been wanting to visit, so off I went! I started at Tennoji Park where I took this photo of the fountain (still looks very winter-ish, I know, but it really was warm-ish!)

Then I visited Shitenno-ji temple. It was really cool, and one of the few temples in Japan that has a torii (the gate at the entrance. Typically when you see these torii, you can assume you're at a Shinto shrine, rather than a Buddhist temple.) Shitenno-ji is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Japan (the brochure says it is the first state-established Buddhist temple), founded in 593 by Prince Shotoku. Shitenno means four guardian kings, and the temple is dedicated to them.

I'm not sure exactly what was happening that day (or maybe it was just a normal day), but everyone was writing out messages (or maybe sutra) on very thin pieces of wood. They passed them into the monks who waved them through incense, and then chanted whatever was written on the wood. Then they were returned to the writer. Whatever service this was, it was expensive, about $30.

This temple complex had a garden that was based on a Buddhist parable, Nigabyaku-doh. There are two rivers, one of water and one of fire. The water river symbolizes a greedy mind, and the fire river symbolizes anger or grudge. Between the two rivers is a white path which leads to paradise! So this garden has two small streams and a path between them. This photo is of one of the rivers (they were both of water, so it was hard to tell which was supposed to be the one symbolizing anger).

After Shitenno-ji, I visited another nearby temple, Isshinji, which the kindly lady at the tourist office recommended. She only said it was famous in that area. What she didn't say is that this temple makes statues of Buddhas out of the ashes of dead people. Creepy! To make one of these statues, Okotsubutsu, the remains (ashes) of 20,000 people are powdered and kneaded into the shape of Buddha! They began this practice in 1887 and every ten years they make another statue. The temple had a very large cemetary behind it - I guess everyone wants to be part of a Buddhist statue!

Next I took a streetcar south to Sumiyoshi Taisha. What's interesting about this shrine is that it's one of the three remaining shrines built prior to the arrival of Buddhism in Japan. The shrine is torn down and rebuilt exactly as it was every so many years, so while these buildings were built in 1810, their design is much older than that (3rd century).

Even the phone booths have a similar design!

The shrine has a famous bridge which several people were sketching that day (as I mentioned, it was one of the first nice spring days).

This little boy's mother told him to pose and look cute. He immediately did an adorable Shirley Temple impersonation!

Finally, I had my fill of old shrines and temples, and so I ended the day at the ultra-modern Umeda Sky Building. It's a famous 40 storey skyscraper, built for the view of the city.

Japanese Cooking Class

2008-03-22T19:06:00.008+09:00

On Thursday nights, a Japanese woman teaches cooking to a few people at the apartment. I usually have Japanese language class on Thursday nights, but this past Thursday was a holiday (the vernal equinox is a public holiday here). Mitch asked me to take his place at cooking class that night, so I was finally able to learn to make a Japanese meal (admittedly though, I won't be making any more Japanese meals).

Our teacher arrived bearing bags of groceries and dishes (as you see in the photo above, place setting is very important). She went over the recipes we were to make, and then she put us to work.

The first dish we made is often translated as "croquettes" - basically a meat, onion, and grated potato patty. There was a tasty sauce on it - made of mayonnaise (of course!), mustard and okinomiyaki sauce (a bit like BBQ sauce). Our teacher was topping these patties with dried bonito (shaved fish), but I managed to stop her before she put any on mine.

The next dish was a soup. The primary ingredient in this particular soup is the dregs from making sake (rice wine). We were each given a bag of these dregs after the sake factory tour a couple weeks ago, but had no idea what to do with them! Also in the soup were carrots, konnyaku (more about this strange food later), salmon, and taro (a starchy root, kind of like a potato).

Next was konnyaku. Konnyaku is a rubbery substance (notice I didn't say "food") made from the root of the devil's tongue plant. As the wikipedia article correctly points out, it doesn't have much taste; it's more about the texture. Unfortunately the texture is extremely chewy - I imagine that chewing on a bicycle inner tube would be similiar. I can only manage to choke down one of these cubes. Here's a photo of the konnyaku being cut, and another photo of the finished dish - we fried it with garlic and of course, dried bonito (fish shavings).

The last dish was a salad, made of daikon, tomatoes, and broccoli sprouts. And those tiny dried minnows that I live in fear of. What Japanese dish is complete without some fish flavor? First we fried those minnows in some oil. Then we mixed them into the salad. If you click on the photos you can zoom in and you can even see the eyes of these minnows.

Dessert was hot milk curdled with more of the sake dregs. And I was hoping for chocolate...

Keep those care packages coming!!!

SUMO!

2008-03-20T10:17:00.004+09:00

Sumo wrestling tournaments are held six times a year - three times in Tokyo, once in Osaka (and the other two times in other cities). Osaka is just an hour away by train, so when the sumo tournament came there, it was an easy decision to go check it out! There was a considerable range of ticket prices - from hundreds of dollars to about $30 dollars! We went for the $50 seats and they were great!
Luckily, we got a pamplet in English with our ticket, explaining some of the rituals and rules of sumo. The wrestling match part happens very quickly - a wrestler loses if he's forced out of the ring or if any part of his body touches the ground (except of course for his feet). But the rituals were a little harder to understand. There was lot of throwing rice and leg lifting and squatting and glaring. All part of the build-up, trying to intimidate an opponent.
Here is the procession of wrestlers into the ring. The man in the middle in the brown kimono is the referee.

Once we figured out the basics, we began to try to predict the winner of each match. We judged each wrestler on things like height, flabbiness, and control during the leg lifts. Once we had a system figured out, we started betting with each other - only 10 yen bets, but they added to the fun of the game! Of course, we didn't really know who we were betting on, so we just cheered "go blue" (for the guy in the blue loincloth). We had a great time and I was disappointed when the clock struck 6 pm and it was all over (prompt like everything else in Japan).

The rest of my photos from the tournament are here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sarainjapan/15Sumo
And here's a video I took of the action.

And as always, I encourage you to check out wikipedia if you want to know more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumo

The Moffle

2008-03-19T21:17:00.001+09:00

Wow - just when I thought they couldn't come up with anything else to combine with mochi (pounded rice). Somehow they managed. Check out this yahoo news article
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080319/lf_nm_life/japan_moffle_dc

March 12 on 12

2008-03-15T11:51:00.010+09:00

I brought my camera along last Wednesday (the 12th), mainly to take photos of the junior high school graduation ceremony. But it turns out staff aren't allowed to take photos (I'm still a little peeved about that rule, since most of the other ALTs were allowed to at their schools.) Anyway, since I had my camera on me, and it was the twelfth, I took a few photos. Enjoy!

1. Shisas at a temple I bike by on the way to work.

2. The teachers' room - only half of it.

3. My desk and beyond in the teachers' room (you'll notice my pink cell phone, a novel, a Japan guide book, and Japanese language textbooks - all to keep me entertained during those days of no classes.)

4. A classroom - there are almost always 36 students in a classroom. Usually one row of desks will be boys, the next girls, etc. (6x6)

The back of a classroom - those cubbies are for each student to put their school bags in .
5. The first (7th) grade shoe cubbies.

6. The teachers' shoe lockers, and pairs of slippers out waiting for guests to change into on graduation day.

7. Me, being artsy as I waited on the train platform.

8. Dried fish hanging outside a fish shop

Bunraku

2008-03-14T11:03:00.005+09:00

On Wednesday night, I went to a bunraku performance. Bunraku is basically Japanese puppet theater, but the puppets are 3/4 lifesize and are operated by three men. The first man is wearing traditional Japanese clothes and he operates the head and right hand. The other two puppeteers are dressed in black hooded outfits (like black KKK capes). One operates the feet, and the other operates the left hand and props. The puppeteers are silent throughout the performance. A narrator and shamisen player sit off to the side of the stage and provide all the sound.

The sets were beautiful, as were the puppets and their costumes. The stories, however, were incomprehensible. I did a bit of online research beforehand so I would understand the plot, but found very little information on the internet. It was even more difficult to follow because the puppeteers did not do the voices for their puppets. The narrator did all the voices and emotion, so I had to constantly look to him to see what was happening.

I think we saw two short plays and a third longer play, but I'm not even sure of that! The first short play had the same scene as shown this picture from the wikipedia bunraku webpage.
I have no idea what was happening in the third play. Something about a blind girl who could play the koto (Japanese harp). I caught the words "samurai", "dangerous", and "vacation/rest". Then at the end someone committed ritual suicide, and the blind girl might have drunk poison, I'm not really sure. (Love stories that end in suicide are classic bunraku plays.)

But even without being able to follow the stories, the 2 and 1/2 hour performance flew by!

Photos were not allowed during the performance. The photo above is from a website. And here are a couple more websites with more information and photos: http://www.bunraku.or.jp/english.html

http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/unesco/bunraku/en/index.html

Last weekend - and upcoming events!

2008-03-09T17:54:00.006+09:00

This was finally a quieter weekend for me. I went to the Himeji Museum of History with Mr. Matsumoto, my co-teacher for the monthly kids' classes I've been teaching this year. He brought along two of his adult English students who were looking for an opportunity to practice English. So I had three tour guides! That in itself attracted a lot of attention, and a few other museum goers stopped our group to find out why we were speaking in English (and to encourage me to learn Japanese! But if I learn to speak Japanese, then these people don't get a chance to practice English! So the way I see it, I'm being very altrustic by not being conversant in Japanese!)

I got a lot of attention from the museum staff too, who pulled out an expensive fan and a samurai helmet for me to try on! The helmet was very heavy (about 5 kilograms) and was used only for ceremonial purposes, not for battle. Two kids at the museum presented me with origami ninja stars, and the way was cleared for me to take a photo of this boy dressed in samurai gear.

Tomorrow is graduation day at junior high. It's a big deal since the students have been together since 1st grade, but will go their separate ways to high school. And tomorrow night I'm going to a bunraku performance (Japanese puppet theatre). I should have lots to tell you about tomorrow night.

And this Friday I'm going to a sumo match! I'm very excited, although I suspect I'll get bored within about 20 minutes! (My attention span when it comes to sports - spectating or participating - is notoriously short!) But I really want to see a real live sumo match - so I can say that I've been!! How cool is that!?! In keeping with my academic (rather than athletic) tendencies, I've been researching sumo and found this official website with some history and explanations of the sport. Study along with me, if you'd like! I'll fill you in on the actual event next weekend! http://sumo.goo.ne.jp/eng/ozumo_joho_kyoku/shiru/kiso_chishiki/beginners_guide/origin.html

Ethnology, Plum Blossoms and Modern Art

2008-03-07T20:55:00.004+09:00

Since I just can't seem to take a day off of sightseeing, last Sunday I went to the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. (Ethnology is what I like to oversimplify and describe as the study of cultures.) The museum was incredible!! From the website, it didn't look like it would take too long, but it was huge and full of interesting artefacts. And the admission price was only about $4!! There was a corridor of these spaceship-like booths where people were watching videos. Very futuristic!

The museum was organized by geography, so there was a large room on Oceania, another room on the Americas, (you get the idea), etc. and then a room on Ainu culture (that's the native culture of Hokkaido (the large northern island of Japan)).

Ainu culture is fascinating! The people look more caucasian (but apparently aren't) with lots of body hair. Women used to have tattoed mustaches. And the Ainu people practiced a bear cult! They would capture a bear cub and rear it, sometimes even nursing the cub. When the cub was a few years old, they would kill it in a festival, and eat the meat, and somehow also worship the dead bear.

The last room also really caught our interest - the exhibit on mainland Japanese culture (of course!). A couple of things in particular -

this large paper float for the Nebuta festival. The festival is held in a couple different cities in August, and floats like these are paraded through town to get rid of the spirits that cause sleepiness. The floats are lit up from the inside and are really beautiful!

I also took note of these traditional straw mittens and boots. Somehow I don't think I would have been very happy to be a Japanese person hundreds of years ago.

After the museum, we wandered through a plum tree grove where lots of people were taking photos of the blossoms, picnicking, and working on their laptops. (You can see it's still cold here - everyone is bundled up, but that doesn't stop the diehard plum blossom enthusiasts from sitting on the cold ground under them.)

This park also contained a contender for the world's ugliest sculpture. We couldn't figure out what it was supposed to be...

Back at Osaka station, we found a store selling cookies! How exciting!! They were a bit expensive, but sooo worth it! I opted for the chocolate oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies instead of the tomato cookies. At least there weren't any seaweed or fish cookies...

Hinamatsuri

2008-03-06T16:30:00.005+09:00

March 3rd was Girls' Day (or Doll Festival), called Hinamatsuri in Japanese. Families with daughters display beautiful dolls of the Emperor and Empress.

When a baby girl is born, her maternal grandparents give her parents a set of these dolls. They're REALLY expensive, easily $1000 for a basic set! Every year in the middle of February, her parents will display them, but always taking them down on March 3rd. If the parents miss this deadline, it's said that the daughter won't get married!

I went over to my friend Chiaki's house to see her display (she has an 18 year old daughter). It was very large, taking up as much space in her family room as the piano!

On the top shelf sat the Emperor and Empress in front of a gold screen.

The second shelf had the Empress' three ladies in waiting. Then a shelf of five musicians with traditional Japanese instruments.

Next were some diamond shaped mochi (the ubiquitous rice cakes) and two advisors to the Emperor, one young and one old. The next shelf had three men cleaning, one was happy, one sad, and one angry. And the bottom shelf had displays of furniture and candy. What a beautiful tradition to celebrate daughters!

(PS. I have changed the format of the photos, so if you click on a photo, you should be able to zoom in on it)

Sign Says... huh??

2008-03-06T16:18:00.003+09:00

I haven't had much time to blog this week, so I hope you'll be content with a few photos of funny signs. Hopefully these will hold you all over until the weekend, when I should have time to update.

(they meant "3 pieces for 1000 yen")

Sake Factory Tour

2008-03-02T08:47:00.005+09:00

Yesterday a group of us took a tour of a local sake factory, Tatsuriki. (Sake, as I'm sure you all know, is a Japanese alcoholic beverage made from rice. Japanese people often describe it to us foreigners as"rice wine", but it tastes more like a hard alcohol like vodka).

The first half hour of the tour consisted of a video in Japanese of how sake is made. (Check out the link about for details on how it's made because the only word I understood from the video was "yukuri" which means "slowly".) We watched men wearing nothing but a pair of shorts hefting the half-finished product around the factory, sampling it and spitting it back into the vat. Apparently the Japanese Health Department is a little more liberal than its counterpart in the US.

After the video, we all put on hair nets and rubber boots (apparently there are some regulations after all) and stepped into a solution of disinfectant before we entered the factory.
Here is some sort of machinery. One person was trying to translate for us - this has a computer...

This little shrine was on the 2nd floor of the factory. Sake is often used in Shinto ceremonies.

After the tour, we had samples of sake! We were told to bring snacks. We Americans and Australians decided that meant snacks, like peanuts, and chips, etc (Trisha brought a tangerine and banana!). However, all the Japanese people pulled out entire meals of raw fish and octopus dumplings, and who knows what else. We looked like the poor relations at the end of the table! We sampled six different kinds of sake. Kampai!!

Ocean, You Meet Whale Shark

2008-02-25T16:57:00.006+09:00

Yesterday I took a day trip to Osaka with a few friends. We woke up to a couple inches of snow but we thought nothing of it as we got on the bus to go downtown. At the train station though, it was a bit chaotic, people were running out of the station, clearly in a great hurry. That was our first clue that the rail system was upset by the snow. Sure enough, the special rapid train wasn't running, so we had to take a local train (think "takes twice as long to get anywhere because it stops at every little station") for about a half hour until we could switch to a special rapid. Those were trains #1 and #2 of the day. Finally in Osaka about an hour and a half later, we caught the loop line, but managed to get on the one train that wasn't exactly on the loop line. Unfortunately we didn't notice that until the end of the line. We had to hop off, and wait for a train returning. Trains #3 and #4. Last we caught what was called a subway, but it wasn't underground, so it was Train #5. Finally, we had made it to the aquarium!

The aquarium was great and had a theme: the Pacific Ring of Fire. It had lots of creatures other than fish: otters, seals, octopus, jelly fish, penguins and of course dolphins. For reasons known only to the museum staff, the otter habitat had a huge skeleton of what might have been a mammoth.

Here is curiously Japanese service - if you want a picture of yourself next to a plastic whale shark, you get in line. When it's your turn, you hand your camera over to the museum staff who shoot your photo for you. It's a really cool service and they've got a very efficient system for it. I've seen it at lots of places and think it's something we should adopt in the US.Of the aquarium creatures, I was most impressed by the octopus. They had clay pots (traditional octopus traps) in the tank, and the octopus (octopii?) were moving in and out of them. I love to watch their weirdly graceful movements.

Here we have some squid or cuttlefish (couldn't find a sign to tell me which) and kelp.
Giant spider crabs! Sardines swimming endlessly in circles.

And beautiful orange jelly fish

After the aquarium the afternoon was still young, so we rode the ferris wheel next to the aquarium. We had a birds eye view of a cruise ship and the aquarium and the urban sprawl that is Osaka.

Those of you interested in more aquarium and ferris wheel photos can check out the webalbum. Some of the photos are out of focus - couldn't get the seals, otters, and penguins to stand still for a photo!

A few random things

2008-02-21T21:16:00.008+09:00

An interesting article by Jared Diamond (of Guns, Germs, and Steel fame) on the origins of the Japanese people http://discovermagazine.com/1998/jun/japaneseroots1455/

Last weekend I saw an ukiyoe exhibit at Kobe City Museum. Ukiyoe is what first comes to mind when you think of Japanese art - particularly the tidal wave print, and the Mt Fugi series of prints. They're woodblock prints, typically from 1700-1800. And, as is usual for art, it wasn't much valued in Japan, but made a big impression with the Impressionists in Europe at the time. Rumor has it that perspective in a painting was actually first done in ukiyoe, and then later copied by European artists. The exhibit was amazing. Lots of the pieces were on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. We were there on the last day of the exhibit and it was packed. The crowd was about four people deep, so we just took a passing glance at each piece but certainly was worth the afternoon trip to Kobe.

And here are photos from last week's ikebana classes. That's Eiko, our instructor, posing with my bouquet. The branch is from a peach tree, and of course those are daffodils, and another unknown flower.

Last Friday night, I joined Mitch and Merry for yakiniku (basically "grilled meat"). They had been many times to this restaurant and raved about it. For about $20 you get to eat as much as you can within 90 minutes. You cook the food yourself on the built in burner in the middle of the table. Merry had the menu translated into English by one of her teachers at school and that was VERY helpful - and saved us from potentially ordering liver or tongue! Besides all the meat, we had pumpkin, sweet potato, cabbage, and garlic grilled, as well as the ubiquitous bowl of rice, and a Pepsi drink bar!! Things got a little heated when the extra fatty beef was put on the grill, but I'm sure the place has a well-tested sprinkler system!

Mom and Dad's visit - Part II

2008-02-21T15:17:00.007+09:00

On Day 5 of mom and dad's trip, we left Kyoto in the morning and took the bullet train to Okayama. There we saw Okayama Castle and the adjacent garden, both I had seen before. But this time of year the garden looked completely different. Mostly it was a lot of dormant grass, but in one corner there was a plum tree grove and the trees were just beginning to blossom! The trees didn't have a leaf on them but had many pink and white flowers.From Okayama, we took a local train to Kurashiki, a nearby town with a little historic district. Little was an understatement. The historic district was about two blocks long, along an old moat. We did meet a friendly Japanese man, who showed us a shrine and huge wisteria tree, and then gave us a really nice picture book of Kurashiki!

Later that afternoon, we hopped back on the shinkansen to continue to Hiroshima. We checked into our hotel, and then found a American-food restaurant recommended by my friends. My bean and cheese burrito was muy bueno!

The next morning we started off at Hiroshima castle, where Dad modelled some samurai clothing.

We walked on to the Peace Park and viewed the Atomic Bomb Dome, the Memorial to Sadako, and the Peace Museum. The park had a flame burning that will only be extinguished when the world is rid of nuclear bombs.

After a sobering morning in Hiroshima, we took a ferry across the bay to Miyajima. Miyajima has the famous "floating" gate. We timed it just right - high tide was at 2:04 pm, and we took the 1:35 pm ferry and even had time for a quick lunch of fried rice before visiting the shrine. And we were even more lucky - there was a traditional wedding that day, so we took a lot of photos of the wedding party and the shrine! I took a ton of photos. Below are a couple of the best, the rest are on a webalbum.

That evening we took the shinkansen to Himeji. My last day with my parents was spent on a tour of Himeji castle. One of my friends is a volunteer guide there and he loves to practice English. He gave us a very interesting tour and I learned lots of new factoids about the castle. We went for okinomiyaki (Japanese omelet) for lunch and then my parents headed off on the shinkansen for Tokyo for a little R&R after their whirlwind trip through Kansai!

Mom and Dad's visit - Part I

2008-02-19T18:06:00.010+09:00

My parents were here visiting last week. We saw an incredible amount of things! Some were places I had been before, but most were new sights for me as well! Unfortunately, it was a particularly cold and snowy week as you’ll see from the photos!

They flew into Osaka, so we spent the first day seeing Osaka, starting with Osaka Castle.

Actually we had planned to spend the first day seeing Osaka, but as we finished touring the castle, it started snowing very heavily! And it appeared that it was going to continue snowing for some time, so we cut our losses in Osaka and hopped on the train to Nara. We checked into our ryokan (traditional Japanese style inn) (it has a great website with pictures of the rooms), huddled around the space heaters for a while, and then went out to visit Horyu-ji, a temple which has some of the oldest wooden buildings in the world.

NARA
The next day we went into Nara. I saw this part of Nara before, so I didn’t take many pictures, except this one of the snowmen in front of the five storied pagoda,and several of some monks clad in orange. At first we assumed they were Japanese monks, so we followed them trying to get them in our photos! Later we heard them speaking English and we had to conclude that they were also tourists, likely from another Asian country.

KYOTO

In Kyoto the next day, we started at Sanjusangendo. This place was incredible!! It had 1001 golden statues of Kannon, the goddess of mercy, and statues of the 28 Buddhist guardians with explanations of how they come from Hindu gods. Fascinating! Unfortunately, photos were not allowed inside, so check out this website!

Next on the itinerary was Kiyomizudera and the streets in front of it lined with souvenir shops. We saw this poor dog dressed in its Sunday best. My father was impressed by the tangle of power lines and I admired this store selling nothing by fans.

I bought a shuincho, an accordion style book full of blank paper used to collect the stamps from Buddhist temples. It's the souvenir to have! For 300 yen, each temple stamps their seal in red ink, then write calligraphy over the page. The end result is very cool and I intend to bring this book along on all my future sightseeing adventures here in Japan! Our last stop in Kyoto was Ginkakuji. It's also called the Silver Pavilion, but it isn’t silver, in fact the building itself isn’t particularly eye-catching. We walked by it and followed the path up the hillslope, before realizing the non-descript building was the pavilion! There was a mound of sand in the shape of Mt Fugi, and this abstract sculpture in the shape of waves. It's supposed to be beautiful to see by moonlight...

The next installment: The Konrads go to Okayama, Kurashiki, Hiroshima, Miyajima and Himeji!

Ohtsu Junior High

2008-02-06T20:46:00.000+09:00

At the beginning of this school term in January, I started at a new junior high school. In order to provide native English speakers in as many classrooms and for as many students as possible, we ALTs spend one term at a small or middle sized school, and the other two school terms at a larger sized school. So I’m now at Ohtsu Junior High School.
Ohtsu JHS has about 600 students. That’s only 100 students more than Yumesaki JHS, but it is enough to give the school a bigger feel. That, and the fact that it’s more in the middle of an urban area. Yumesaki JHS was at the edge of town with a mountain behind it.
My commute is significantly more complicated, but a bit shorter, which means I get to sleep in 15 minutes later than last year and that makes me very happy! Plus, my friend Sue and I commute together and we have 45 minutes twice a day to catch up! I leave on the 6:57 am bus to downtown where I catch the train. At the first stop, I change to another train and continue on for about 15 minutes. Ohtsu JHS is about a mile from the train station, so then I walk for 20 minutes. Or, I bike. A previous ALT bought a bike and left it with the school for future ALTs. I keep the bike at a bike shed next door to the train station. For $20 a month, the bike is safe and kept out of the elements, and the owner says a friendly good morning to me everyday! (He says more, but I only understand the “good morning” part of it). I can bike to school in under 10 minutes, which during winter is definitely a good thing!
As I mentioned, Ohtsu is a bigger school and has some “big city” problems. Now don’t worry, I’m not talking about weapons or drugs, or even swearing. Remember, this is Japan. Yesterday the entire student body (all 600 of them) was called into the gym after school for an assembly for some “discipline”. I didn’t know exactly what might have happened, but I texted my friend Heather: “Somebody did something and now everyone is in the gym getting scolded. Except me, alone in the staff room”
Heather: “That happened once at my school when a kid got caught smoking”
Me: “I hope it’s more interesting than that” (I was feeling bored and in need of some drama)
Me, later: “Just found out – some kids hid some slippers as a joke” (not exactly the high drama I was hoping for)
Heather then regaled me with text messages about events when she was in high school and the discipline that resulted (or did not result) from them. To protect the identity of who killed the duck, I’ll end the text message transcription here.
But, as I’m sure you’re thinking, in a school in the US, it would have to be something like a bomb threat to prompt the teachers to call all the students into the gym for some discipline. Here in Japan, it’s a harmless practical joke, involving shoes, no less (I’ve told you before how hung up they are on changing shoes!).
So life at Ohtsu is going well, as long as I keep a close eye on my shoes! I’m definitely kept busier here than at Yumesaki! And in addition to the usual after school activities, Ohtsu has lots of interesting clubs – kendo, judo, tea ceremony, and flower arranging. I feel sorry for the swim team though. The pool is, of course, an outdoor pool. Because the students belong to one club for the entire year, the poor swim club only gets to swim for a couple months. The rest of the year they spend running around the building!

Since I'll be gone next week sightseeing with my parents, here is my February 12 on 12, a bit early.

Some girls at school. I didn't realize it last term, but this sailor uniform is by far the most common junior high school uniform in Japan. The uniform (skirt, blouse, tie and blazer) at Yumesaki was unusual for a junior high).The central courtyard of the school.View from the second floor of the school looking towards the tennis courts. You can barely make out the large canal on the right side.A particularly scenic part of my bike ride to school.

Another nice bit of scenery on my bike ride. This is the building, where the community's yatai (the big portable shrine you saw in my festival photos from last fall) is housed.

These photos are of Hiramatsu, the little, unstaffed train station near school.This week's flower arrangement by the school's ikebana club. It has orchids in it. My ikebana arrangement from my community center class. It has gebera daisies in it and tree branches with new leaves.

Next week, my parents and I have an ambitious itinerary filled with temples, shrines, castles, and museums. I'll post lots of photos in a week or so.

Setsubun

2008-02-03T21:16:00.000+09:00

Today was Setsubun, the day before spring(?? we're clearly still deep in the throes of winter!). Basically, Setsubun is about throwing beans at the devil while yelling "Demons out, good luck in". Wikipedia has a nice explanation of it for those of you who want to know more.

Our friend, Chiaki, invited us to go to the Shinto shrine to participate in the traditional activities to prepare for spring. We first biked to the shrine behind Himeji Castle where we just missed the celebration. But Chiaki managed to convince the devil to put his mask back on so 4 year old RJ could throw beans at him.

Trisha also modeled a devil mask and the soybeans especially packaged for this celebration.

We hurried onto another shrine where our timing was better. When we arrived, the community leaders were inside the shrine, possibly receiving some sort of sacriment (we're not really sure). When they finished, they came out to the walkway of the shrine where they begin to throw mochi (remember, that is the pounded rice we made last weekend) and little packages of soybeans. Everyone in the crowd used bags or their hats to catch these things. It was a lot of fun as everyone got into the spirit! I caught only three packets of soybeans and one mochi because I was going crazy with the camera! I even took a little video. Please enjoy! By the way, we were instructed to eat one soybean for each year of our life. For good luck, of course.

Arima Onsen

2008-02-03T20:29:00.000+09:00

On Saturday, Heather and I took a day trip to Arima which is just north of Kobe and famous for its hot springs (onsens). Heather and I have become onsen affectionados since our weekend at Beppu!

Half the fun of the day was getting there! We started on the special rapid train from Himeji to Kobe. In Kobe, we got on a cable car to take us up the mountain. It was steep climb!

At the top of the mountain we had magnificent views of Kobe and this ugly bird sculpture. The angular island is, of course, artificial. We took a bus ride around the top of the mountain. There was some snow up there, and there were lots of families taking the kids to a sledding slope. We continued to the Ropeway Station, where we took the ropeway down the other side of the mountain to Arima.In Arima, we started our onsen experience at Kinsen, so called because of its gold colored water (kin is the word for gold). Of course, it was really iron that made it this color, but it did have a certain shimmery tinge to it. After soaking for a while, we moved onto Ginsen. Gin means silver, but this water was clear. I've just looked on wikipedia for more information on Arima. It says the Ginsen water has radium and carbonate. Great, I soaked in radioactive water. A website (not wikipedia) claims:
Ginsen (Radioactive spring (Radon spring)) (Apparently there is some discrepancy whether it's radium or radon. But everyone seems to agree it's radioactive.)
Spring gas goes through the whole body by inhalation and improves your natural healing power. (I sat in the steam room at this onsen, unknowingly breathing in radioactive steam.)
～Ailments relieved by this spring water～
Myotonic spine disease, degenerative joint disease, chronic multiple joint disease, degenerative spine disease, chronic gout, joint and muscle rheumatism, mild peripheral arterial circulation disorder, menopausal discomfort, bronchial asthma, etc.

Of course we couldn't take photos inside the onsen, but there was a little hot spring along the road side, showing the "kinsen" water. The crows on the rock are fake. There are a lot of fake crow statues in Japan.

And we peeked into a Buddhist temple where I snapped these photos.

It was a nice relaxing day, although very chilly and snowy. We had a nice Indian dinner back in Kobe (Kobe is known for its international restaurants) and bought some chu-hai (a sparkly cocktail sold in a can) for the train ride back to Himeji!

Principals' Party and Karaoke

2008-02-03T10:03:00.000+09:00

It's been a busy weekend, starting with Friday night's formal party hosted for us by the Himeji Board of Education. The principals from Himeji's junior high schools were in attendance. The party started at 6 pm, and in the welcome speech, we were instructed to enjoy each others' company "for two hours". And indeed the party ended promptly at 8 pm.

There was a fancy spread - lots of crab legs, raw salmon and raw shrimp, and in the midst of this elegant food, scrambled eggs with ketchup.

Here Suvanya, Steve, and Heather are enjoying the festivities:
This is the Principal from Yumesaki Junior High School (my school last term) and me after a sampling of sake.
When the party ended at 8 pm, we went on for the after-party. We stopped first at a bar called "Not Blue" where the waiter rearranged the couches for our large group! That's Joe, Katie, Taube, Adam, Karen, Julian, and Steve.After Not Blue we went to karaoke. There are a few karaoke places in town. We frequent two of them, "Time Machine", and "the other karaoke place" (seems none of us know its name). We went to the "other place" where drinks are included! We got a room for 90 minutes and made the most of it. (Mitch, Joe, Katie, Abby, Adam, Taube, Steve, and Karen). Joe and Katie LOVE karaoke!
Our classic karaoke song is "We All Live in Shirasagi" (sung to the tune of Yellow Submarine. Shirasagi is the name of our apartment building). Julian really gets into it!

I can't feel my toes

2008-01-29T18:47:00.000+09:00

Today’s lovely precipitation combination of sleet, snow, and rain has inspired me to blog about winter in Himeji. It’s miserably cold. The temperature stays right around freezing, and considering that central heating just doesn’t exist here, it’s miserable! It’s just impossible to get warm!
I’m sure you’ve heard me complain before about the unheated classrooms. I literally can see my breath in them. The boys are in their uniforms with many layers underneath, but the poor girls are in uniform skirts with bobby socks, so their legs are bare! I really do not know how they can concentrate! Then, for some unfathomable reason, the teacher or one of the boys will open the window. It’s snowing outside for heaven’s sake, why on earth would you open the window?? It’s the Japanese love for “fresh air”, no matter what the temperature!
At least the staff room tends to be heated, although it’s with a kerosene heater so it’s not a very stable temperature. It gets wicked hot and then the heater is turned off until it becomes too cold to move your fingers. Then the heater is turned back on until it’s hot again. The cycle continues many times throughout each school day.
I have begun to dress like an Eskimo. Today I am wearing tights under my pants, as well as knee highs, and a fleece blanket over my lap. I have on a long underwear shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, and a fleece jacket. I only take off my scarf and gloves when I arrive at school, and the fleece jacket is rapidly becoming my second skin.
Now to tell you about my apartment, which the previous inhabitant affectionately called “The Icebox”. It’s nice and quiet because it’s away from all the other apartments and none of my walls are shared with any other apartment. But that means that every wall is an external wall, and apparently insulation is an unheard-of concept here in Japan. I only turn the heat on when I am in the apartment and awake. So in the morning when I wake up, it’s usually 45 degrees! I turn on the heater and sometimes a space heater while I get ready for work, but it only warms up to 50 degrees or so by the time I leave. In the evenings, I crank the heat again, but except for the weekends it never gets a chance to warm up to “room temperature”. I’ve learned to be satisfied with 60 degrees. Well, not satisfied exactly… I’m counting the days until spring!
P.S. Don't believe that temperature module on my blog. There is NO WAY it was 45 degrees today! 35 degrees at most!

Making Mochi

2008-01-27T12:28:00.000+09:00

Today our friendly neighborhood shrine had a mochi making festival. (As always, wikipedia has a nice little article on it.) Mochi is rice that has been pounded into a sticky paste. It's then coated in something and eaten as a sweet treat. Of course, the mochi itself is rather tasteless, just being rice. I've tasted mochi in packaged sweets many times, and it's not bad at all. Except when you're thinking it might be something really delicious, like the time I ate an Oreo chocolate pie and was so disappointed to discover that the cream filling was actually mochi!! It seemed such a betrayal by the good people at Nabisco!

The whole neighborhood turned out for this festival. Seventy kilograms of rice had been soaking in water for two days. Then, this morning, it was cooked for just 15 minutes. The men were in charge of cooking the rice, then bringing it over to the pounding area, where another group of men were taking turns pounding it with big wooden mallets. Another person was slipping the hands into the rice to wet it and turn it, in between falls of the mallet! After it was sufficiently pounded into a doughy mass, it was brought over to a table covered in flour, where the women were waiting to shape it into little balls. Those balls were then set in the shrine building itself. (I think they were just resting here and were awaiting some further cooking).Other balls of mochi were dunked into pots of sweet beans or rolled in a soybean flour (looked and tasted like ground peanuts), and then served to the people loitering around. It was a really interesting morning, and great fun to taste freshly made mochi!