Goodbye October

The weather in Japan seems to be all about extremes. From May-September I was sweating when I woke in the morning, and then for a few weeks we had the most pleasant Fall weather, and then overnight it became frigid! The air has that biting chill to it that I remember all too well. When the evenings were warmer, Justin and I took a walk through his neighborhood, which is full of kitchen gardens and children at play.


I'm not sure if anyone here knows what "palatial" means...
The town that Justin lives in is called Kokubu and is about an hour north of Kagoshima city on the north side of the bay. It's a mediumish city that feels very agricultural - you can't miss the rice paddies and grandparents gardening. It's easy to forget that everyone at home who can has a lawn when in Japan everyone who has the extra space has a garden. Speaking to my home-owning, out-of-the-city-living coworkers, the idea of turning open space into a lawn (even when Japan gets a huge amount of rain) just sounds like a waste of space to them. Gardens aren't feasible in larger cities, but even in Kagoshima city my neighbors who have tiny slivers of land have turned them into patches of garden that change seasonally. They are all so right! Who needs a lawn when you can grow eggplant, chives, lotus and burdock root?! Driving through the countryside on a weekend you are bound to see ancient looking folk bent over their plots, perhaps pulling up a fresh carrot.

That said, I am now growing broccoli on my balcony!


The Kokubu rice fields.
Every year Japanese schools have a sports festival where all of the classes and clubs compete against each other and a "culture festival," which is more like game day/skit and song day. Different classes will turn their classrooms into haunted houses, game rooms, cafes (pictured above) or themed rooms vaguely connected to trying to have fun at school.
The waitresses at this classroom's cafe.
The school band played songs in the courtyard, my favorite was "Champs Elysees" in Japanese (it's a really popular song here!).
There are always unreal looking cute dogs around.
The sado (tea ceremony) club served us tea and sweets.
We fished things out of kiddie pools with chopsticks...
The courtyard of my school.

Justin has been perfecting soup-making. Since the cold front came in we have had garlic soup, French onion, and Japanese nabes (a kind of stew that you cook on the table and serve as indvidual items are cooked).
Riding in front of my house.

A recent festival in Kagoshima city.Onigiri are balls of rice that can be wrapped in sea weed, cabbage or meat and stuffed with pickles, fish, meat, or seaweed. They are basically a Japanese sandwich that can be eaten at any time of day. You can buy them anywhere and are such a good breakfast, lunch, snack! Also my friend Taelor and I decided that they were the perfect thing to be for Halloween!
We made these giant pillow onigiri, and with one in front and one in back, I was more comfortable and warm than I have evern been on Halloween. Japanese people LOVED it. Halloween hasn't been celebrated in Kagoshima for too long, so it is still in that stage where girls just wear cute animal ears and a cute dress, so they seemed really surprised to see us in these giant pillow costumes.

In downtown Kagoshima these fortune tellers sit in their kimono and for a pretty penny you can have your fortune told. The really popular ones usually have long lines at all times of day, but this 3am hopeful was in need of some business.
It's difficult to see, but behind the buildings there is a huge cloud of smoke that is coming from Mt. Sakurajima, our resident active volcano. Last month it erupted so loudly that I heard it in the kitchen and ran to look outside. It was pretty scary... I am not sure what the protocol is if the volcano erupts and lava comes across the bay at us...
Eating at our favorite organic restaurant. I am really in love with eating each piece of a meal in a separate dish.
A few leftover pictures from our hiking trip in Shikoku. The afternoon fog rolling in on top of the mountain.
Sitting in silence in front of our cabin.
Me, down by a river we ate lunch by.

Shikoku Travels

Last month we took a road trip from Kagoshima to Shikoku (ignore the routes drawn on these maps). We drove from Kagoshima to a town near Oita and took the ferry to southern Shikoku. We hung out around southern Shikoku snorkeling and beach camping and then headed north along the coast until we hit Nasa, a beachy area with more surfers than I've seen since CA. From there we headed inland and over the mountains to Iya Valley, a winding river valley where the treeline ended right at steep river canyon cliffs.
One of the cool things about Shikoku is that is is home to the Henro Pilgrimage, which is a path that follows 88 temples in a loop around the island. People of all ages walk the path (it takes about a month and a half) in all conditions. The next time I have a month and a half free...
Taking the ferry from Kyushu to Shikoku.
Cars in a boat on the sea!

Our first night in Shikoku we set up the tent and swam out to an island in the bay where we were staying. There are enough small islands along coastal Japan to really awaken my childhood dreams of island survival skills and having an island all to myself...

This amazing 1960's futurist building happened to be around a cape from us. We were wondering what its deal was and I hoped that it led to a sea-floor viewing room at the bottom.

And it did!

An amazingly named pachinko parlour.
The rice fields ready to be harvested.
For quite a ways the highway followed the Henro Pilgrimage path and we could see the pilgrims in their uniforms walking alongside the road. We kept honking and cheering them on though I am not sure if you are supposed to do that for people on a spiritual journey.
I love how before people enter the sandy part of a beach, they take their shoes off in the same way as they would before entering a house.
Nasa beach surfers. We were there on a national holiday so it was packed!
For lack of surf board, Justin made a raft out of bamboo driftwood.
That didn't really hold up...
Wives of the surfers video them from the shores.
We headed inland, following a road that was barely big enough for our small car through mountain passes and villages that seemed like they were from another time. We would turn a corner and scare monkeys in the road and I started to get spooked by constantly being in dark forest.
We stopped along the road and cooked a riverside lunch of mabu-dofu, a sort of Chinese tofu dish.

We finally found ourselves in Iya Valley - a winding river valley that seemed like it was cut off from the rest of Japan where they grew their own buckwheat to make soba and once built bridge made out of vine to cross the steep river canyons.

Vine bridges!

The rivers were an incredible clear blue, but pretty frigid.
For the last few days of our trip we embarked on a mountaineering trip. With Lonely Planet's Hiking Guide to Japan as our main guide/map (never use this as your only map! What a shitty guide!), we managed to get ourselves thoroughly lost from morning til afternoon. Luckily our goal was the mountain ridge, so once we made it to the top we were able to followe the ridge to place where we planned to camp. However, hours of wading through steep hillside bamboo grass, and being bombarded by fierce monkey calling were demoralizing...

Our map made mention of a mountain "hut" near where we wanted to camp for the night, and we thought we'd check it out as there was a spring nearby. The "hut" turned out to be a deluxe cabin with loft and wood-burning stove that we had all to ourselves.
We heated a big pot of water over the stove with water from the spring and took showers outside.

After a day of uphill abuse, the fog rolled in and it felt so cozy and nice to be tucked away on top of a beautiful mountain range.
Mountain trail signpost.
Taking a gander in the fog.
Our hut.
The next morning we headed off again!

Houses along the river.
Narrow road.

On the way back to Kagoshima, we drove across a bridge from Shikoku, to Honshu, the main island of Japan and drove down through Hiroshima and back to Kyushu.

The bridge we crossed, like a great grey Golden Gate Bridge. Driving the eleven hours home, I marveled at how little the landscape changed - mountainous and foresty, with big cities coming up every half hour (because of all the mountains, driving on Japanese expressway most often means that you are spending a lot of time in tunnels). If I drove eleven hours in any direction from Ojai, the landscape would change really dramatically into high desert, or huge moutains, or redwood forest. I have really grown to love the Japanese mountains, bamboo forests and volcanoes.

To the Sea!

The weather continues to be hot and muggy, and the best way to escape is to the sea! Kagoshima has some incredible beaches (this fact seems to be mostly ignored by most Kagoshima folk, aside from the fishermen, maybe because Japanese women are afraid of the sun?) that just need finding.
We took a boat to a hidden cove where we were greated as the celebrity foreign guests by all of the people picnicking in the sand. Fish had just been caught, so we were served fresh 刺身 (sashimi) and beer. The super prepared Japanese beachers (Japanese people seem to be incredibly good at always being prepared for outdoorsy encounters... We show up to a campsite lucky to have the bare essentials and are frequently saved by treats received from those around us who seem to like sharing foods as an excuse to start up conversation) showed us their catch of spotted eels and mahi mahi and we headed into the water for a snorkel.

Kagoshima has turned out to be an incredibly snorkeling spot! The waters are tropical-ish and we have found spots with great corals and puffer fish and millions of neon blue fishes and vast schools of little silver fish that are often served mixed with rice for cafeteria lunches at my schools. My favorite has been swimming with squid! They have the funniest goggle eyes that seem to give them a lot of personality.
Another weekend, another boat. A boating event organized by the local yachting club - get some foreigners and some Kagoshima folks onboard sail boats and race them around islands in the bay!

After the race and sailing lessons, we stopped at an island for a huge 焼肉　(yaki niku - grilled meat) picnic and a swim. So much sun, so full of meat, such wonderful warm waters!
Me and this guy loved trailing our toes in the water as the wind pushed us along.


Our great captain.

Another work-related feasting and drinking, another boat. The Japanese work environment is all about work parties and especially work drinking. To celebrate new foreign English teachers coming to Kagoshima we had this year's 宴会　(enkai, or welcome party) on a boat! It seemed like the best idea ever until we got on the boat and realized how tiny it was and how seasick we all quickly were becoming. Once the boat scooted into the bay and we had more alcohol in our bellies, it was again, a great way to get drunk with your co-workers.
At an 宴会　(work party) there are always many speeches given (Japanese people seem to love speeches and formality) and everyone waits to drink or eat until the first unanimous かんぱい　（kanpai!).
The table was laden with 刺身　(sashimi), から揚げ　(Japanese version of fried chicken that is eaten really often, in fact too often for my stomach) and other fish and rice dishes.
Our work party boat!
Exploring other beaches... we came across this beach that had an island shrine. A perfect spot for juggling practice and praying for future happiness!

Kinkoan Bay



A few last pictures from out countryside, granny bike rides in Hokkaido.

Hokkaido Contd.

Mmm, someone's bum!
I started taking pictures on something other than a disposable (though I love thee) while in Hokkaido.
The view from a cheesy "chocolate" factory we were tricked into going to. By tricked I mean we willingly found ourselves trapped in a place that was not a chocolate factory at all, but a scary depository for fake antiques and out-dated museum displays where they happen to make cookies that have some chocolate on them. My favorite part of the museum was a fact on a wall somewhere that stated that though Japan is one of the largest producers of chocolate in the world, it exports only a small portion of this chocolate because "Japanese chocolate is made most suitably to Japanese taste," meaning that Japanese chocolate really isn't that great and only something that people can eat because they have grown up doing it. That being said, the chocolate produced in Hokkaido was incredible. They have this thing called nama choco which means "raw chocolate" and is kind of like the love child of caramel and fudge and chocolate and is sooooo delicious.
The view from the Sapporo guesthouse we stayed in while studying Japanese at a school in the city.
Volcano climbing. Mountain climbing seems to be quite popular in Japan and you can always count on everyone being prepared to last out a storm on deserted island for their morning walk up the mountain. While we often are hiking in funny foot gear, lack warm clothing and enough food or water, the other hikers we pass consistently seem to have just spent a few hundred dollars on this season's outdoor gear and carry with them small feasts. I really admire how common it is to see people climbing steep mountain trails who are in their 60's and 70's in numbers that you would never see at home. I'm going to keep this Japanese example dear to me for my whole life... Gotta keep that body moving!

We visited a very volcanic area in southern Hokkaido where canyons were yellow with sulfur and the steam boiled up all around us. It is usual for hotels in volcanic areas (where isn't it volcanic in Japan?) to have onsen, or hot springs inside of them arranged in varying degrees of relaxing to rustic decor. Near this area we went to one of the most amazing onsen I have ever been to, which seemed like it was a giant indoor naked hot water park. Each pool was fed by a spring with a different mineral make up and we spent ages just trying each pool out. You could order alcohol on little floating trays and the outdoor pools looked into an alpine wood. Naked beings of all shapes, sizes and ages were running about and it was absolute bliss after a long day's hike.

Instead of the rollerskating rink, can I have my birthday there next year?
Looking into a pool of boiling and belching sulfur water.
We camped by a beautiful lake and awoke to mists and children catching small fishes.



Near the lake was a particularly active volcanic area. During WWII a volcano grew out of the ground in a field but local authorities kept it on the hush because they thought it was a bad omen. I can't even imagine a volcano just growing out of the ground one day! Isn't that supposed to happen over thousands of years? Barbecued eggs anyone?

In Sapporo I soaked up as much cute coffee shop and amazing coffee as I could get (Kagoshima is sadly lacking in great coffee, but the green tea is top rate).



Toward the end of our trip we headed north to central Hokkaido to see the countryside. We stayed at an enchanting hostel in the middle of fields, fields, fields, run by a New Agey family who cooked two meals a day straight from their garden. At night I could hear a brook outside our window and I don't think I've slept that well in ages. The grandmother of the house knocked on our door for breakfast at 7:30 each morning and I felt like I was in some kind of dreamy wholesome countryside camp.
Queen Anne's Lace - one of my favorite flowers and reminds me of summers in New England on my grandparent's farm.

Onions onions everywhere.

Hokkaido

We went to Hokkaido for a couple weeks to escape the subtropical Kagoshima heat, study a little Japanese, climb volcanoes and eat some of the famed regional specialties. Hokkaido is the northernmost island of Japan, with cool weather to show for it. Hokkaido was a different Japan than I have experienced thus far - tall Japanese people, "fat" Japanese people, Japanese people with tattoos, natural parks in the middle of the city, proliferation of international foods and locally made dairy products!
Most larger Japanese cities I have been to are all too commonly "concrete" themed, but Sapporo had lots of herbs growing in the middle of the city. Blackberry bushes even! In Kagoshima a friend found a blackberry bush for sale for $300 and in Sapporo they were in people's front yards everywhere.
There was a beer festival in a downtown park for the weeks we were there. Sapporo Black label is definitely the best Japanese beer. I love you drunk Japanese girls.
The countryside was pastoral and dreamy in a very Pennsylvania way.

There was still a a little jungle.
We studied Japanese and it was hard. Nothing new about that.
One of Hokkaido's specialties is many varieties of crab. On my birthday we went to a crab restaurant where we had our own personal server dish us out dozens of kinds of crab cooked in as many ways.

I had never had crab sashimi before, but mmmmm creamybutterydelicious!

One of my favorite Japanese snacks is senbe, rice crackers, that come in all sizes, flavors and levels of delicious and crunchy.
Before our crab feast we had champagne and cheeses at a lookout point with all of Sapporo below!

Me, Brian's reflection.
Every weekend we headed out to the countryside to check out nearby volcanoes, hot springs and lakes. A lake dreaming of Disneyland.

We climbed a volcano steaming with sulfur and couldn't walk for days after.
Sapporo's parks: A land of long-haired dachshunds!
Inner-city lake-ing.

Get in my stomach!

Summer Festivals and Beaching

The weekends are for exploring unknown beaches where we meet no one else but the fishermen who walk past our tents at 6am.
Our friend Tomo brought some uni from his snorkeling and chopped them open and we ate them right there. Countless experiences of being subjected to eating strange raw sea life with my dad had prepared me for this moment, and I did him proud.

Justin prepares the barbie skewers.

You know, beach stuff.
Eating the skewers.
The yogurt lady. Every day at lunch a yogurt lady brings a messenger bag full of yogurts to my office and I buy her dairy treats. The yogurt carts park outside office buildings and grocery stores and their existence are a mystery to me in a country that doesn't on a whole eat too much dairy. But I love having yogurt delivered to where I work, so I eat all kinds of strange flavors: aloe, grape, aloe and grape together.
The town where Justin lives had a summer festival where all of us civil servants dressed up in happi and learned a coordinated traditional summer festival dance and danced for hours in the street and drank a push cart full of beer.
All kinds of groups got all themed out and we all did the same dance together. Summer dance, sweaty dance, beer dance.

We were supplied with mini cans of beer because apparently it is easier to hold them while you dance.
Best group outfit.
Our beer cart that followed us everywhere/that I followed everywhere.
Our dancing soundtrack.
Justin and I with Miss Kokubu (Justin's town) and Miss Kirishima (bigger town nearby). What fine ladies.

Summer festivals are basically the best - one of the only times that Japanese people get really wild in public. Oh, but the nights are so hot and so sweaty! You've got to do something like dancing in the streets really drunk with your co-workers and students to take your mind off it.

Oh yeah, and an article about Japanese cell phones. (My phone is in the picture!)

Island school, shrines, lambchops, and some good country livin'

At all Japanese elementary schools that I have been to tooth-brushing at lunch time is a big deal. The teachers check the kids mouths to make sure they haven't missed a spot and each kid has their own tooth-brushing kit. With all of this attention on the teeth you might think that Japanese kids have excellent teeth, but its exactly the opposite. I have never seen more people with rotting teeth in their mouth (aside from India) in my life. Japanese dentistry seems to be inefficient and unused, so I had my teeth cleaned in Thailand. Shady? Not at all actually. More on rotting Japanese teeth later.

One of my favorite island kids who is too young to go to the only island school but at every lesson she watches from the window or peeks in the door.Miniature island cars coming to get me from the boat.


Arriving at the island.Akusekijima island with a hat on. On July 22 at around 11am there will be one of the longest total eclipses right over the southern islands of Japan. From Akusekijima the eclipse will last around six minutes! Currently, around 70 people live on the island, but for the eclipse about 400 will storm the island. While I was teaching a French camera crew came to interview the islanders about how they plan to handle the influx of people. Answer: everyone is sleeping in the school field and gym.
The twelve hour boat trips get a little long after the sixth hour. The sea was really rough this trip and I projectile vomitted off the deck of the boat a few times and the wind was so strong that my puke flew straight out in front of me (thank god the wind wasn't going in the other direction).
My first balcony-garden tomatoes! Thanks to Justin's master carpentry skills (building me planter boxes out of bamboo), I have basil, lemon thyme, dill, cilantro, chocolate mint, zinnias, and bell peppers. The balcony is a harsh climate though - super hot and windy so my crop isn't as glorious as I had hoped for.
A recent visit to Kirishima Shrine. This shrine has something to do with marking the spot where the creator goddess gave birth to Japan so the emperor visits every year.
Washing hands and mouth before entering.


Takachiho Farm. We stumbled across this "farm," me in high hopes of a massive petting zoo, to find that it is a place mostly where people eat animal products and laze around in clover fields while Johnny Cash is being piped in on speakers set in trees. Which was also really great. Also kind of surreal, to close my eyes in a field and let Johnny Cash convince me that I am definitely not in Japan anymore. Open them, and ah! Surrounded by Japanese people picnicking and eating in psuedo "Bavarian" eateries!

After hanging out with some lambs I was really pleased to see that we could eat them! Lamb in Kagoshima is hard to come by (everyone I've talked to complains that lamb has too strong a smell), so we feasted.
I love being able to grill meats at my table! So interactive! Fresh!


Feeding farm animals of all kinds. These animal feed vendors could only exist in Japan, or Switzerland maybe.

Countryside house.