11/11/04: Sasebo and Aso

Hi all,

I can't believe we are well into November. Time is flying!

The local hills are covered with citrus trees, most growing a small, thin-skinned, seedless orange called mikan. They are a lot like the Spanish clementines. Roadside stands here sell about 5 pounds of mikan for 100 yen ~ $1.

We've had some beautiful weather. It's snowing in northern Japan, but it's still t-shirt weather here. Been doing lots of biking and hiking. A few weeks ago we drove northwest to Sasebo and rented a sail boat and sailed around Omura Bay's Kujukushima area --translation: 99-islands. The area is actually home to 208 islands, must be something with the metric system?? There was a strong wind, so we whipped along, weaving around the islands.

Kujukushima is famous for pearl cultivation. The oysters are strung up in floating raft platforms that reminded me of the lobster traps along the Maine coast, only these were in neat, orderly rows -- a contrast to the hodge podge of Maine.

Later in the day we visited a pearl museum where the kids got to select an oyster, open it and extract the pearl. We learned how the pearl industry was able to consistently achieve round pearls and that the oysters remain in the water for two or more years to grow the pearl to the desired size. The industry really takes a hit when pollution or typhoons damage their coastal waters.

Last weekend we headed southeast and visited Aso, home of the world's largest volcanic crater. The crater was formed when the volcano collapsed thousands of years ago. It has a 15-mile diameter and is now home to fertile farmland, the town of Aso and a rail line. You don't realize you're in a crater until you stop and look around and note that you are completely surrounded by mountain walls. We stayed at another traditional ryokan inn that had hot spring baths. This inn served us a five-course dinner in our room and breakfast in the dining room. We could lounge in our provided yakata robes while eating.

We hiked off the extra calories by visiting mountains along the rim of the crater and an active volcano. Looking over the volcano's edge, all we could see was steam rising from green water. I guess I pictured bubbly red lava, but when you're that close, green water is just fine. There are concrete pill box shelters peppered along the volcano's side in case of an eruption. I don't know how much it really buys you to hide out in one of them.
We leave on the 20th for ten days in Thailand -- spending a few days in Bangkok and the rest of the time at a beach in Krabi on the Andaman coast. I don't think we'll find any turkey for our Thanksgiving, but we should be able to find something memorable.
More photos at http://photos.yahoo.com/~iverlink
-barbara

10/22/04: Kunchi and Huis Ten Bosch

Hi all!

I'm sure you're all busy with your October activities. Some folks have been asking what it's like to live here, so I posted my notes on a blog. You can add comments/questions. There are two months worth of notes, so consider yourself warned. The most recent entry is about the rice harvest. http://iversonjpn.blogspot.com

Last week we were in Nagasaki for their annual O-Kunchi festival. Kunchi is a three-day autumn festival held for Ujigamisama, the God of Nagasaki. It looked like a big street party to us. There are three large stage areas set up around the city at which each of the 10 or so towns perform an elaborate, showy presentation. Each show has something to do with Nagasaki's historical role as a Japan's gateway to the world, so the common elements are a ship on wheels, loaded with a musical band of costumed children, towed around by a band of strong men and accompanied by women in elaborate kimono. There's also dancing, music, firecrackers, drums; each one was quite a show.

The city streets are lined with food/games stalls: yakiniku, squid on a stick, roasted corn, special "kunchi" cakes (sweet bean curd in rice flour balls), fruit crepes, ice cream, okonomayaki, shooting galleries, ring toss, catch the goldfish/turtle/chick games, plus vendors selling candy, balloons, costumes, toys, and lots of fair-type junk. A guy selling fresh pineapple slices on a stick played rock, paper, scissors to give away a second piece. Eric was the only one to win.

Later in the week we went to a theme park called "Huis Ten Bosch". It's a Holland theme city complete with windmills, canels and old world European architecture. There were lots of things to see and do, with Disney-type rides in each area. Walking the cobble stone streets almost convinced me that we were in Europe, but the Japanese couldn't quite pull off the Dutch costumes.

We ate dinner on the way home at one of the "kaiten-sushi" places which has a conveyor belt bringing plates of sushi past every table. You just grab what looks good as it goes by. Each plate is color coded to indicate how much it costs (Y100, 200, or300), and they add up the empty plates at the end of the meal. A very good and inexpensive meal!

Bridget went on an overnight camping trip with her class. We got a long list of things for her to bring that took us more than a few days to translate. We were relieved they didn't ask for a tent or sleeping bag -- it turned out they stayed at a dormatory. Eric has had two class trips-- both to factories; one that makes breakfast drinks that are loaded with caffeine and sugar, the second to a fish factory that makes rolled fish snacks for convenience stores. Eric said the breakfast drink place was better than the fish place.

I'm enjoying my course and am sitting in a classroom with a bunch of 20-year olds who ask me questions about selecting their major. We're comparing business practices in Asian cultures, so it's been interesting with lots of good discussion.

Ten typhoons have made land fall in Japan this year ... an unusually high number. The last one brushed by us but caused a lot of damage in other parts of the country. The guys at Sony have given Dave a nickname that translates into something like "man who calls the storm".
I've posted pictures of both the Huis Ten Bosch and Nagasaki Kunchi Festival: http://photos.yahoo.com/~iverlink There are also new photos of the Iverson's in the Sept Isahaya festival album if you're looking for a laugh.

barbara

9/26/04: Festival, Yufuin, Beppu

Greetings again,

We experienced our first Japanese festival by participating in it! Last Saturday was the Isahaya Nonnoko festival and Sony sponsored a group in the parade. Men wore a a white shirt under colorful waistcoat-length kimono jackets, called happees, with Sony logos, white shorts and black or white slippers. The women had full-length red kimonos, thick yellow waist wraps, the traditional Isahaya straw bonnet, and sandels. We had a team of professionals dressing us in the kimono and doing the wrap work. Bridget and I got tutted at for wearing the wrong undergarments; not that it mattered because we got wrapped within an inch of our life.

We were well-prepared for the parade because we had gone to three practices perfecting the steps to the sara-odori (the dance of the dishes) which is marched/danced to an awful song call "Nonnoka bushi". The most important part of the dance was to hold ceramic saucers, two per hand, and clink them together like large finger cymbals. It was quite a scene. The managers walked along the parade route, handing out cups of sake to the crowd, replacing smashed dishes, and waving huge fans to keep the marchers cool. Back at the hotel we changed and then went to Sony's dinner - lots of speeches and a huge buffet feast, with every kind of Japanese food imaginable: tempura, okonomiyake, sashime, soups, custards, yakatori, emamae, spicy noodles, spring rolls, pot stickers, plus plenty of beer and souchu. Then more speeches where they made us get on stage and say a few words.

Good thing it was a holiday weekend, by Sunday we were ready to leave town. When the allies occupied Japan after the war, one of the things they did was get rid of all the regional, traditional holidays and substitute them with generic, national days. So Monday was "Respect for the Aged Day" and Thursday was "Autumn Equinox" day. Most of the folks Dave has been working with at Sony are fairly young, so I told him that's why he had Monday off, but not Thursday. We decided on an overnight to the Yuffin/Beppu area, which are in the Oita region of Kyushu - northeast to the Pacific ocean on the map: http://gojapan.about.com/cs/japanmaps/l/blkyushumap.htm

Yufuin is a small, very sweet, resort town in the biggish Kuju mountains. The town sits in the shadow of a huge dormant volcano, Yufu-dake. Our objective was to find an onsen (hot spring-fed bath) resort. People travel from all over Japan to Kyushu because of its famous hot springs. We were able to book a room with the help of the folks at the train station info desk. We had tried calling a place closer to us earlier and got rejected because we are gaijin (foreigners). Nothing personal, the language barrier was enough to make them feel uncomfortable with us. We've heard that foreigners often don't use the baths correctly and it causes a bit of trouble.

Our room was Japanese-style, which means a small entry where you take off and stow your shoes, a tiny bath with a washbasin and toilet, then one big room floored with tatami mats, a low table, cushions, and 2 low chairs. There was a large closet which stored the futons and other bedding. The maid set up the the sleep area while we were at dinner by moving the table and chairs and laying the futons side-by-side. The onsen was wonderful. We got 15-minutes in a private outdoor bath (with view of the volcano), and all the bathing time we wanted in the male and female communal baths. Each area had a changing room, a wash area for soaping up and rinsing before getting in the bath (the part foreigners mess up), large indoor and outdoor baths, all, again, with a view facing the ominous-looking volcano. The water was hot enough to cause a wince getting in, but not so hot you can't stay for 10 or 15-minutes. We dressed in the provided yakata robes, and strolled down to the onsen whenever the mood struck us. I think I went five times. It was incredibly relaxing.
They told us dinner was a BBQ, which turned out to be a Korean yakatori - a grill in the middle of the table where you cook your beef, chicken and vegetables. This was great fun for the kids and we all stuffed ourselves. Monday morning we drove over a mountain pass into Beppu, which is a much larger, garish, strip-laden spa town on the Pacific coast. Really the antithesis of Yufuin. We drove down to the sea, parked, and walked the disappointing waterfront a bit till we came to an area where women were burying people in heated sand. For about $7, Bridget & Eric each got a cotton robe and about 15 minutes buried in the piping hot sand, then a shower and soak in a hot spring tub. They thought it was a hoot, and we got some nice pictures with just their heads sticking out of the sand.

I posted a few photos at http://photos.yahoo.com/~iverlink Looks like my web site is a bust - my ISP and Japan ADSL folks aren't working together.

All our best,
barbara

9/17/04: Kyushu travels

Greetings from Isahaya!

Hope you are all well. Thanks for the email, we really enjoy hearing everyone's news. Until my ISP clears up some issues, I won't have web site photos ... so here's another text message.

We've had several adventures so far. One of my favorites was hiking Mount Fugen, which overlooks the volcanic Mount Heisei Shinzan which erupted in 1991 and buried part of the town of Shimabara with mud slides. After our hike, we went to Shimabara and saw the houses that have been preserved to illustrate the devastation. The volcano is still active and its steamy hot springs support the town of Unzen's famous resorts.

We have visited Nagasaki twice. The first time we toured Glover Gardens. After ~200 years of isolation, Japan opened it's ports to trade in the 1850s. Foreigners were allowed to live in the city for the first time, but were segregated to the part of town now known as Glover Gardens. The homes we saw were very European in design and were a sharp contrast to Japanese style homes. This mirrors a current trend; the Japanese have been hiring carpenters from Europe and the U.S. to build them Western style homes. Too bad-- Japanese homes are so beautiful!

Our second visit was to the Nagasaki Science Museum. (Bridget refuses to visit the Atomic Bomb Museum, so we'll have to work on that). With the focus on natural disasters, off to the earthquake simulator we went. It was pretty cool. We buckled up, watched video footage from the 1923 Tokyo Earthquake and the 1995 Kobe earthquake and experienced the seismic intensities of the quakes. Whew. There was also a great observatory and we viewed a few bright stars from one of their powerful telescopes.

We've been to a wonderful, interactive zoo and spent a day in Fukuako, the largest city on our island of Kyushu. Fukuako is a major gateway, with an international airport, ferries to South Korea and the hub of the shinkansen (bullet train) that can speed us to other parts of Japan. We were in town for a baseball game and to visit the art museum. The art museum was at the far end of Ohori Park, a lake park modeled after Sai Lake in China. The bird life was impressive and we saw herons, egrets and cormorants hanging out.

Later on we watched the Fukuako Hawks play the Osaka Buffaloes. We got a bento box dinner, and for a snack with beer, Dave and I liked the popular edamame-- pea pods soaked in salt water. You squeeze the pod and pop the peas into your mouth. The Hawks had a bad night and we were seated next to the Osaka Buffalo fan section who were putting on quite a display of support. They had trumpets, drums, noise makers and huge flags and yelled all kinds of chants and song routines whenever their team was at bat. Which was often. It was fun to see their enthusiasm but my hearing is still recovering.

Otherwise, we've been trying to dodge the heat. It's been an unusually hot September with temperatures climbing into the 100s most days. My comparative management class starts in two weeks and I need to work on finding the campus.

More soon,
barbara

9/8/04: News from Japan

Hello all!

I only got Internet access yesterday, so am catching up on my email. It's so good to finally feel connected. We are all well and hope that you are too.

We're straddling the two worlds of resident and tourist. By week I'm fumbling through the grocery stores trying to decipher what I'm about to purchase and by weekends we're camera-wielding, pavement-pounding adventurers. I have to admit playing tourist is a lot more fun than hanging my laundry on the balcony (yes, that's what they do here).

The kids are loving Japanese school! Whew. Their classmates treat them like celebrities and are very, very nice and helpful to them. Bridget is convinced that the newness is going to wear off and she will be abandoned at some point, but I think she is enjoying the attention while she has it. Eric's favorite class is caligraphy ... with paintbrush and ink he is learning to master kanji. Twice a week, the PE class is swimming while the weather is still warm. We've had to buy special slippers for the kids to wear in the school building and a cleaning cloth because the kids are in charge of cleaning the school! Hmmm. Let's see how I can work these new skills to my advantage.

All is well for Dave at Sony. We didn't see a whole lot of him last week -- with all the drinking and special evenings out -- but this week he seems to be back in the same old dull routine of hanging out with us... the typhoon may have had something to do with it, but we'll see.

Isahaya is a small city and does not have a subway or tram system. The buses don't make any sense to me, so I am taking my life (and everyone else's) in my hands and driving on the left side of the road and pretending I understand the Japanese traffic signs. Our city seems to be a series of strip malls, which is disappointing, but on the bright side, we are able to find most things that we need.

I'm working on posting some notes and photos to a web page, so will send out an update alert soon.

Barbara