Kumamoto Promenade and Crushing Disappointment

After our few days of kicking it in Kagoshima, we were off to Kumamoto in the central area of Kyushu for three nights. Kumamoto is famous for one of the best castles in Japan, and it also has a zoo and some museums and such.

One of the first things we did when we got there, in order to find food, was to walk around a nearby shopping promenade, where we found a restaurant with a statue of a really ecstatic chef (although for some reason we never ate at the restaurant). Naturally when you see a statue with a funny pose, you take a picture of yourself and/or someone else mimicking it. So that's what we did. Except at first Ed's camera was set to video when he handed it to me.

Then I reset it to photo capture, but notice the anguish and desperation in Ed's face as he tries to copy what must seem like a very complicated pose.

And then there's me. First time. Nailed it.

I kinda wanted to try again to really get all the angles right and to open my joyful mouth a bit wider, but by then the whole thing was getting old, and a lot of people had been staring judgily at us for a few minutes. So we moved on.

Somewhere in the promenade was a mochi shop that was attracting a lot of tourists. "Mochi" usually gets translated into English as "rice cake," but it's not the kind of rice cake that we think of when we imagine diet food. It's more of a squishy, tasteless rice dough, which is used in ball form in soups, or it can be filled with sweet red bean paste (gag me with a spoon) as a confection, and it's used in lots of other awful Japanese foods. This shop makes mochi in the traditional way, which involves pounding the dough with giant wooden mallets, which they let tourists do. So that's worth a stop. Here are a couple videos of me pounding the mochi and then getting a little gift of mochi (which I later threw away because it's gross) from the shop.

Now, had I known a key fact that I did not know before booking this whole vacation, I would not have booked this vacation, and we would have gone to Thailand or something. The key fact is that seemingly every public place of tourism, such as museums, zoos, aquariums, and castles, close over New Year's for at least two or three days. But sometimes as long as two weeks. We caught a little of this in Kagoshima when we tried to go to the art museum and it was closed. But we didn't realize the extent of it until we got to Kumamoto.

After a bunch of walking around our first evening there, and getting supper and so forth, we went back to the hotel to make a plan for the next two days. But then we found out that the main attraction, Kumamoto Castle, had been open for the last day of the year on that day, and we missed it. It wouldn't reopen until after we were gone. Then we found out that all the museums we wanted to go to were also closed until after we were gone. The only major tourist attraction that was open was the Kumamoto Zoo and Botanical Gardens, and we were lucky to catch that, because the next day would be the last day open before closing for a few days.

So next time I'll talk about the zoo. It was pretty cool.

Kagoshima Christmas

For Christmas and New Year's, Ed came to visit me in Japan. First we stayed a few days in Kagoshima so he could rest up a bit from travel and see my town. Then we were actually supposed to go to a really awesome little village called Kurokawa Onsen, which is a place with a whole bunch of traditional Japanese inns with hot springs. It's extremely expensive, but that was going to be our splurge for just one night. Unfortunately, I got sick from eating too much unhealthy restaurant food, and it wasn't a good idea for me to travel that day, so we stayed in Kago one extra day. We tried to reschedule, but they were all booked up for the next two weeks. Their policy was no refund if you cancel the day of the booking, so I will end up having to go either by myself or with one of my coworkers next month.

Anyway, here are some of the pics from our few days in Kagoshima.

 First is of our time at a nice buffet. Actually, most of these are gonna be restaurant pictures, I think. We didn't really do much for this leg of the trip.

The best thing about the buffet, and almost the trip, was this chocolate fountain. It was like everything I'd ever dreamed of. It could have only been improved by what they had provided for you to hold under it, which I think was only a few pieces of fruit. I got them, though. I found some pancakes and stuck a spoon under the fountain and drizzled some of the chocolate onto the pancakes and put some blueberry jam on it. Yeah.

Here are some shots we took to serve as Christmas photos for Ed's dad and possibly other family.

These two probably won't make it to the fam.

Across the road was a nice hotel, which somehow arranged their room lights into a heart shape. We were wondering how they could manage that. Like, you could always block the heart rooms from being booked and then leave those lights on, but how do you ensure that it's only a few satellite lights on, like in the picture, and not so many as to obscure the shape?

 Here's another boring torii, right in town.

I took Ed over to my campus and showed him my office on Christmas afternoon. Then we had to sneak into the dormitory where I live so I could drop off all the Western food items he'd brought for me. Visitors of any kind, especially the male sort, and probably most especially the young(ish) boyfriend sort, are expressly forbidden in the Catholic dorm, even when all the students are away on vacation. However, it being Christmas, I knew that the nun in charge of the place would be off doing nunny things, and even if she was in the dorm, she wouldn't be up on the fourth and fifth floors where my room and kitchen are (and the fourth floor has the back entrance, so we didn't have to sneak by the main entrance, where she might have been). I'm such a rebel.

The point of that story was to introduce this picture, which Ed took of me petting one of the couple dozen neighborhood cats around campus. I call this one Tripod. If you look closely, that back leg is cropped halfway.

Something strange that I learned about Japan is that even though pretty much no one is Christian in Japan, Christmas is getting pretty popular around here. I imagine companies figure it's a good marketing holiday, which of course it is. So that's why we were able to take our pictures with Christmas trees outside the shopping center and so forth.

However, unlike Murrkan Christmas, Japanese Christmas is not a family affair. It's actually more like Valentine's Day, because Christmas is associated with couples here. If I would ask my students if they had plans for Christmas, they'd often say, No, I don't have a boyfriend. Apparently the thing to do is spend it with your significant other and give a gift and some chocolates or something, and the big thing is to eat Christmas cake. It's not fruitcake; it's just boringass white cake with white frosting, usually with strawberries and Christmas designs. Here are a couple examples from Google.

 

 And then here's an alternative chocolate cake. Notice the price. That's almost 40 bucks. Cake is expensive in Asia. And so is everything else. Except electric space heaters. I got one and the price was acceptable.










 Jenna, the other dorm teacher who is also American, told me that one of our students almost cried when she told her that Americans don't really eat Christmas cake like this. I think if she knew the full extent of American Christmas, she would probably cry that she only gets some stupid cake. Ha.

Another thing to do on Japanese Christmas, for reasons known only to the gods of capitalism and marketing, is to go to KFC. The Colonel statue is outside dressed in a Santa costume starting in October/November, and they have all these Christmas family sets ready to go on the day. Ed and I had gotten kind of tired of searching around three times a day for a meal, so we decided to do the traditional thing and eat fried chicken. Also, I secretly wanted to eat KFC because I love it and I hadn't been there in a long time.

It was kind of disappointing, though. When we got in there, it was pretty busy, but we didn't understand the menu. It seemed like all they had were 3000-piece family meals made of nothing but various incarnations of fried chicken and maybe some fried fish, too, it being Japan. There did not appear to be any side dishes available. Eventually we managed to find "peiya paku," as well as a cooler with some cole slaw and drinks. So we did that. Apparently there are no mashed potatoes and gravy or biscuits at Japanese KFC, which basically defeats the whole point. After we'd decided what to get and got up to the cashier, he gave us a small counter-menu, which is common at Japanese fast food, and that actually had a couple extra side dishes, like potato wedges and corn soup or something. But it still wasn't right, so we went with the original choice.

Here we are enjoying our food.

I was extremely surprised to find that a pair pack, obviously meant for only two people, was easily enough for three Western people. You could have fed an army of Japanese people with what we got. It was crazy. There were like three kinds of fried chicken--nuggets, tenders, and a couple drumsticks--plus a big roasted thigh. I think this meal was a large contributor to my sickness two days later.

During the meal, a Japanese woman came up to us and nervously told us in hit and miss English that we were such a cute couple and that I looked like Anne Hathaway from Les Miserables, which she had just seen and was able to show us a flyer of. I thought she was trying to say that we looked like the couple from the movie, but when I read the synopsis, it didn't look like there really was a couple, so I guess I misunderstood. In any case, in Asia, when I have the haircut of an actress, I look JUST like the actress, because we're all white chicks, I guess. In Korea I was Ashley Greene.

The day after Christmas we went on the ferry to Sakurajima (Cherry Blossom Island) to see the volcano. We took a selfie on the mainland first, though.

Near the port there is a little park, and on the way there, we met some kitty friends. There are a few friendly cats on the island.

In the park is a little foot spa (chutzpah), where you can stick your feet in and enjoy the hot spring water and the view over the bay. It's especially good in winter, which it is right now.

Then we went on a little walk on the lava trail, where you can see a nice view of Mt. Sakurajima and look at all the lava that previously erupted all over the island.

Here's a map of the ol' island. I wish it were small enough to walk all the way around, but it would be a good long day of walking, I think, or maybe a bit more, so I'll never get around to it.

Kagoshima is famous for shirokuma (polar bear), which I think I've mentioned previously in the blog. It's shaved ice with condensed milk poured over it, with little bits of fruit and gelatin (and sometimes sweet beans--GROSS) stuck all around it. The original is made to look like a polar bear, but now they have other flavors, like the one we got, which has chocolate syrup and cereal on top of it also. Here are pictures of us enjoying our shirokuma.

 Another food experience we had was shabu-shabu. This is a popular Japanese dish, and one of the few that I actually like. Ed had never had it before, so I was glad we managed to find a place. Shabu-shabu is a soup that you get to make at your table. They bring out a nearly flavorless broth for you, and you boil it at the table, then there's a plate of very thinly sliced pork and a bunch of leaves and other vegetables to throw in there, too.

 You're supposed to simmer the ingredients in the broth for like ten minutes or something to make it more flavorful, so here are some shots of us sadly slash impatiently awaiting our meal.

After you eat all the solids out of the soup, one of the traditional things to do is order rice to go in it, and you can also put egg in there. We kind of didn't know the protocol there, so we ordered onigiri (rice triangles with a garnish) instead, but then the waiter was asking us if we wanted the rice IN the soup, so we were like, yeah, that's what we really wanted anyway. The first part of that event was out loud, in Japanese, and the second part was more internal, in English. Then the owner or manager came out and took charge, presumably because she figured we wouldn't know what to do. She emptied out most of our broth, and put in the rice and poured the beaten eggs in all around, and cooked it for us. It was good.

We had a conversation with her in Japanese about what we were doing in Kagoshima and about my job and how long I've been there and where Ed was from and so forth. It was a little rough, but a pretty good accomplishment for me, considering how little I've had time to study.

After five days in Kagoshima, including my sick day where we just stayed in bed all day watching Nova and stuff, we moved on to Kumamoto, up near the middle of the island. I'll get to that next time.

Kumano Kodo Part 3: Hiking Day 3

I've decided to skip the second day of hiking, because nothing happened and it's mostly just pictures of trees. It's the same with the third day, but at least there are some stairs and a waterfall, too.

Here's a view from the beginning of the trail we took. I think this was from a road that led to the trail or something...

Another boringass torii, but I like bridges.

These two big trees mark the beginning of the trail. The trail we took was quite popular, and for a while we were kind of walking with a big tour group. I think we managed to pass them shortly, though. It was mostly old people.

The red umbrella is from the hotel--we were at a different hotel for this hike, about a thousand times bigger than the minshuku. It was its own city, pretty much, on an island. Anyway, it was rainy that day, so I borrowed a hotel umbrella.

Gnome residence.

I think most or all of the trail was a rock path, so it made it easier to walk on, except for being slippery when wet.

Hollow tree.

I got quite a few shots of fog around the mountains that day, so that was okay.

View of a torii from above.

Here's another bright red shrine that a bunch of tourists were hanging around at.

Right next door was a Buddhist temple though, that another bunch of tourists were hanging out at.

There's the waterfall we were hiking to. They had a "free" photo service where they'll take your picture at this photo spot with the waterfall. First they'll snap a couple shots with your camera, then they'll take one with their camera and you are kind of pressured to buy it for like ten or fifteen bucks or something. I didn't cave, though. That's too damn much for a stupid photo.

Then down a hill a bit was a pagoda and some gardens and a Buddha and such.

This guy is rolling a wheel in that monolith. I think you're supposed to pray while you roll it.

And finally, some waterfall. It was nice, if you like falling water.

And what waterfall would be complete without a giant crane right next to it.

These stairs were pretty cool, though.