Fall in Fukuoka

Fall is here, and I've been busy busy busy but not that exciting lately. It's that time of year when I realize that it's been two months and I'm still in Unit 1 and I wonder why I haven't done some of the things I meant to do. I have been missing Portland quite a bit lately, as my social life here just can't compete with what I left behind. However, I'm still loving my job and getting to know my new city. I'm trying to decide where to go for a five day break a month from now. Tokyo? Kyoto? Shanghai? I might have to go to Osaka to get my visa for Vietnam. I hear they have good okonomiyaki there, and this guy I went to high school with is a big dj on the Osaka scene, or so he claims on facebook. Hmm.

Last weekend I went on the high school overnight trip to a camp in the hills. I didn't get much sleep and can't say I enjoyed the night part much, but the day was beautiful and the kids were having a great time! I did enjoy tossing a frisbee around in the field and eating hotdogs with my high school colleagues.

On Sunday I joined a group of total strangers (who I met through an ad with the local international magazine) and biked out of town into the hills for a hike. It was pretty cool to get to a view like the one above and know that I had walked and biked there from my apartment (in the distance). I am now a member of the "Fukuoka International Hiking Club" and hope to go on more hikes in the future. The hills of Fukuoka are covered in cedar trees and ferns so I almost felt like I was in Oregon. I avoided running into any wild boar which, unlike at home, is a possibility here.

If I make it through this week (quarter progress report grades are due tomorrow and I feel terribly behind in everything!) I hope to get out next weekend to the Saga Balloon Festival and the nighttime Lantern Festival in Yanagawa, the canal town I visited with Jinny. I also have to make sure my students are ready for the Model United Nations conference, which is in Seoul next week! And good news: Karinna will be there, too! I'm definitely looking forward to eating some bibimbap with Karinna in Korea!

Nagasaki, Unzen, Obama

We had a three-day weekend so Lori and I took a two-hour bus to Nagasaki. Since we'd both seen the Peace Park and Museum at Hiroshima we decided to forego the bomb epicenter in Nagasaki. The city is famous for other reasons, namely it's long history of being the gateway to Japan, which is reflected in the international influences in the food, religion, and architecture in the city.

This bridge is the oldest Chinese-style stone bridge in Japan and it was just down the river from our hostel.

We visited several Buddhist temples (with Shinto shrines nearby, of course) including a few that were built in the early 1600s by Chinese Buddhist missionaries. The temples were spared destruction in 1945 because Nagasaki's hills gave them protection from the bomb blast.

We splurged on a fancy shipoku lunch, a big spread of Japanese, Chinese, and Portueguese-influenced delicacies.

In Chinatown we snacked on steamed pork buns. Nagasaki is also famous for a Portuguese pound cake known as castella. The Portuguese were allowed to trade at the port of Nagasaki for only a few years before they were expelled for being too Catholic. The Japanese government did allow Dutch traders to take their place but only within the confines a small artificial island in the harbor.

These sage statues grace the courtyard of the Confucian Temple in Nagasaki. At the museum behind the shrine were several items on loan from the National Museum in Beijing, including a couple of the life-sized soldier statues from Xian.

After two nights in Nagasaki we headed east to the Shimabara Peninsula, dominated by the volcano of Mt. Unzen. Hot springs lovers have been travelling to the resort town of Unzen for centuries. Lori and I enjoyed hard-boiled eggs from the bubbling "hell pools" and relaxed in a public bath. After trying champon for lunch (Nagasaki's famous Chinese-style noodle soup) we took a bus down the mountain to the coastal hot springs resort town, Obama!
We were excited to pay homage to Obama in Obama. The town didn't seem to be cashing in on its name, except for one shop sign advertising Obama as the "champion we can believe in" (or was that "champon" soup?). Lori and I splurged and stayed in a hot springs ryokan (traditional inn) where we had a fantastic spread for dinner served in our room. After dinner we relaxed in the hot tub on the pool (overlooking the bay) then returned to our room to find our dinner cleared and our futons rolled out for bed!

We joined several naked Japanese ladies in the public bath on the bay. Actually, they joined us, after I took this photo of the empty pool!

I can't believe the election is less than a month away! I took my ballot to the consulate the other day where it was Fed-Exed for free to Oregon. If you want to know what I'm thinking and reading about regarding the election and the economy, check out my political blog, http://alispoliticalblog.blogspot.com/


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Nagasaki, Unzen, and Obama 10/12/08

Weekend excursions

Since Jinny was my first visitor I was a bit nervous about choosing the best things to show her around Fukuoka.  I'm still getting to know the place myself!  The city itself seems most exciting at night, so during the day we set off to visit some of the places I'd read about that sounded cool.On Saturday we went to Futumigaura Beach, about an hour from my apartment.  It is popular with surfers and tourists who want to see the famous white shrine.  We had burgers at a beach cafe and watched the surfers.  It was the first really pleasant day I've seen here, weather-speaking.  It was sunny but not humid, perhaps a sign of the coming fall.  
On Sunday we took the train to Yanagawa, an old city famous for its canals.  We took a boat ride through the canals with our wonderful guide who sang to us along the way.  

Yanagawa was beautiful and I'm sure I will return there often.  We had steamed eel for lunch, a Yanagawa specialty, and enjoyed watching other groups go by in their boats.  I hope to go back in November for a nighttime lantern festival.  The fall and spring colors must be especially lovely.

Here is my lunch, Yanagawa-style steamed eel, rice, and eggy "noodles".  If you want to see more pictures, check them out here:

Jinny's visit

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!  

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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!