Jinny!

My friend Jinny from Korea arrived with a friend in Fukuoka by hydrofoil ferry today! I've been here seven weeks now and hope I know enough places to take them to! We had dinner downtown at a yatai stall in Tenjin. Two yatai stalls, actually. At the first one we were forced to order a big beer (the girls don't really drink so I had to take care of most of it myself) and some grilled chicken and pork skewers but what we really wanted was ramen so we paid our bill and moved to the stall next door!
On the way home we stopped at a convenient store where I had some sake in a box!  It looked more appealing than the "Zima flavored sparkling water."  Today we're off to the beach!

Dazaifu at night

After work today Lori and I took the train back out to Dazaifu because I read there was a nighttime festival honoring the scholar guy the whole shrine is dedicated to.  We arrived to find the main pedestrian street lined with painted paper lanterns.  

Visitors to the shrine carried paper lanterns with candles inside.  I really wanted one but we couldn't figure out where to get them!  When the festival started, people used their lanterns to light the candles tied to ropes along the bridge and around the pond.  

It was too crowded to get a good view of the dance performance but if I raised my camera above my head I could sort of capture it.  Unfortunately the guy in front of me had the same idea.  

It was a simple, beautiful, warm night lit by candles twinkling in the pond.  Next year we'll go earlier to get a good seat on the bridge and figure out how to buy our very own lanterns!  

Hiroshima

I boarded the Shinkansen (bullet train) Sunday morning and an hour later found myself 125 miles away on the island of Honshu.  Japan has had high-speed rail since the sixties and I can't figure out why the rest of the world hasn't jumped on board this soul train!  Seriously, it is awesome.  Not cheap, exactly, but for roughly the same price as a flight it sure is a lot easier.  I'm not sure what the fuel source is but if you could power these things with renewable energy then we could get around without the high costs and pollution associated with air travel.  Apparently there is a proposal in the California legislature to build a bullet train from LA to San Francisco and I hope they hurry it up and extend the line to Portland!  

I arrived in Hiroshima in the rain and was promptly invited to lunch with two staffers at the hostel.  Hiroshima is famous for its version of okonomiyaki, a sort of Japanese omelette/pancake.  This local specialty features layered goodness including udon noodles, a fried egg, bacon, shredded cabbage, a thin pancake, and heaps of special sauce.  They cook it right in front of you and give you your own spatula to serve yourself with.  Mmm.
When the sun came out I took the tram to the Peace Park, located at the epicenter of the atom bomb attack.  The "A-Bomb Dome" is the hollowed shell of a former government building that is one of the few structures to remain standing after the bomb.  Everyone working inside the building was vaporized so it is an eerie and powerful reminder of the destruction of the last century.  
Across the river from the Dome is the main Peace Park, with several monuments to the victims.  Colorful paper cranes fill glass cases around the children's monument.  Nearby is the eternal flame, which one hopes will not burn forever as it is scheduled to be extinguished when nuclear weapons are gone.  The main attraction at the park is the excellent and haunting museum, chronicling the role of Hiroshima as a military city and why it was chosen as the first nuclear target and displaying artifacts from the victims.  It was so strange to walk around the busy shopping streets of Hiroshima after viewing the aftermath of the bomb when nearly everything was destroyed.  
The next day I took a ferry to Miyajima, a famous Shinto shrine island.  Here is the famous torii guarding the main shrine.  I met up with a few guys from my hostel and spent the day wandering the hills above the shrine.
My new friend Jarrad and I found several shrines on our hike around the island.  I was hoping to find the monkeys I'd read about in the Lonely Planet, but we did of course see deer roaming free all over.  

On my third and last day exploring the Hiroshima area, I took a local train to Fukuyama, then a bus to the coastal town of Tomonoura.  I'd read about it in my guidebook and it sounded a bit off the beaten path.  I certainly wasn't the only tourist, as I was often overrun on the street by streams of older Japanese tour groups, but I was one of the only foreign visitors to this small town, and I had a good day just walking around and enjoying the scenery.
Tomonoura has a fantastic harbor on the Inland Sea and the surrounding hills are dotted with shrines.  
I enjoyed mango shaved ice with condensed milk and the view of the harbor from my seat outside a row of old buildings, including one that housed a group of rebels in the 17th century.
This shrine had the best view of the islands off the coast.
I ended my day overlooking the Inland Sea, the island-filled body of water between three of Japan's main islands, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu.  One of the shrines I visited honored a famous haiku poet, so it was appropriate that I was wearing my favorite haiku teeshirt:

Haikus are easy

But sometimes they don't make sense

Refrigerator

Anyhow, I'm back in Fukuoka now and had another great day at school!  Here is a map showing all the places I went this week, and here is a slideshow if you're hungry for more photos!  

View Larger Map

Hiroshima

Sports Day

Today was Sports Day, the all-school games extravaganza on the beach.  Here is a picture of me and my friend Kumi, who works in the office at school, has been super helpful with my settling-in issues, and is really fun!  She came to watch the friendly competition on Momochi Beach.  
All 200 students were divided amongst 6 teams and assigned a color for the day.  Some of the games we played required the participation of all team members, from the preschoolers to the 12th graders.
It was really fun spending the day with all of the students!
I was one of the captains of the black team, thus no pictures of us in the tug-of-war competition when I was busy pulling on the rope!
I did let go of a hand to take some pictures of my team during the "pass the hula hoop" game.  
Here the students are working together to cross the beach while stepping only inside the hula hoops.
Teams raced to move the giant ball across the beach without letting the parachute touch the sand.  
These second graders loved the three-legged race!
Here the high school girls are trying to knock each other out of the circle while hopping on one leg.  Good times!

I had a great time at Sports Day, even though it was bloody hot on the beach!  I loved seeing all the students having fun and working together in the games.  After Sports Day the teachers had an afternoon party at the Head of School's apartment.  Good times!  

To compensate for "working" today (Saturday), we don't have school on Monday.  Tuesday is another Japanese holiday (probably something to do with honoring ancestors) so we have three days off.  Tomorrow morning I plan to board the bullet train for Hiroshima.  Stay tuned for tales of my trip to the Inland Sea!  

Free Bollywood!

I entered a contest online with Fukuoka's International Magazine and I won two free tickets to the Asian Film Festival. Lori and I picked an Indian movie and it was awesome! Check it out:

Make sure to watch it through the tennis scene...

Who is reading this?

So it has come to my attention that I might want to set stricter privacy settings on this blog.  I googled myself and found a link to "Fukuoka You!" even though I had set the blog not to be accessible via search engines.  I'm a big supporter of the 21st century and all, but there is a point where a little privacy is necessary.  Not that I think I'm so important that many people would spend their time reading about my life here, but I do hope that some of my friends and family like to hear about my adventures from time to time.  So if you are reading this, and want to continue reading this, please post a quick comment or send me a private (is there such a thing?) email and I will soon set a password to the blog and share it with you (what a pain!).  Okay, dear readers, hope you are well.  Sayonara!  

Political Blog

I'm still addicted to the election news, so I decided to compile my own thoughts and those I appreciate the most on my own blog site.  I will try to keep this blog free of my political rantings and focus on my life in Japan.  Please see my other blog if you care to hear my opinion about the sorry state of American politics:

http://alispoliticalblog.blogspot.com/