All Posts from the Adventures Category
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Visitor frenzy
A couple of weeks ago we had friends James and Caro and their daughters Clem and Floss for a six-day stay right here in Sunami Heights. Despite the fact that they’d just spent a week skiing in Nagano and were understandably tired, we determined to take them around as many of our haunts as possible.
The fun began on Friday, when we hauled them straight off to our favourite Cafe Hoxton by the sea:
and then on to Takehara for a dose of genuine Old Japan:
followed by some temple action.
As it so happened that weekend was the annual Tondo festival at Felix’s primary school, the one where you burn all your New Year resolutions in a huge flaming bonfire made of tinder-dry bamboo and then toast mochi rice-cakes on the glowing embers. Which was a bit nostalgic for us, because this very festival was our first major defining cultural event when we arrived in Japan one year ago.
The festival was on the Sunday, and I’d put up my hand to help out with preparations, so on Saturday I was delegated to head up the mountains behind the school with a team of Sturdy Locals to find some nice bamboo to put in the fire. I did wonder whether clambering all over the hillside hacking off bits of bamboo at random might not be a bit environmentally unfriendly, but it was pointed out to me that there’s no shortage of the stuff. Officially we were performing a community service by thinning out the forest and reducing the risk of bushfire, or something along those lines. I got the job of trooping down the mountain carrying the main piece of bamboo which was too long to carry on the truck. On the way down the hill we came across a Real Live Monkey just sitting on top of someone’s roof, which caused a big stir: around these parts it’s quite common to spot wild boars (no really) and other wildlife but no-one had ever seen a monkey before.
On the day of the festival itself we forced James to embarrass himself pounding the mochi rice. It’s a rite of passage. I did mine last year.
And then we watched as the delegated Year 6 kids lit the bamboo fires with impressive flaming torches, under the watchful eye of the local fire brigade. Bamboo burns very fiercely, not unlike Australian gum trees I imagine, and it gives you some idea (albeit from a safe distance with trained fire-fighting personnel nearby) of how frightening a real bushfire must be up close.
That’s my stick right in the middle!
Afterwards we all sat around and ate noodles in the tents that Daddy had helped set up the day before (what a pillar of the local community). Eleni was on kitchen duty at the time; notice the traditional helping-at-a-festival headgear.
The next day we took the ferry across to the neighbouring island:
and did the obligatory “I’m the king/queen of the world” shot:
The main purpose of our visit to Setoda was to catch some more culture at Kosanji temple:
Actually it wasn’t the culture at all. On top of the hill inside the temple complex is this marble wonderland fashioned entirely from imported Carrara marble (the temple guy was apparently a converted entrepreneur) including a rather nice cafe that serves pizza and coffee. It’s just to the right in this photo:
And the pizza was actually pretty good, but unfortunately it doesn’t really present as a future pizza option given that in order to get one you’d have to pay the entrance fee to the temple (¥1000) plus the fare for the ferry there and back (¥900) in addition to the cost of the pizza itself, making it highly uneconomical. Still, an excellent place to bring friends.
On the last day we took everyone out for Okonomiyaki at our favourite place that luckily has just enough space for eight people (the other three are sitting around the corner):
We also did some Karaoke that night but the videos and photos have been suppressed to protect the innocent.
There were countless other highlights including a bento box picnic up on top of Mt Fudekage against the backdrop of the Seto Inland sea; a session for the girls at the Print Club sticker machines; several expeditions to the mighty ¥100 shops; a couple of trips to the local onsen (even Ruby finally acquiesced); and the quintessentially Japanese experience of sitting around watching a DVD of Flying High (too much fun can be exhausting).
So what a celebration of Sunami life it was. And I’m pleased to announce that we have a steady stream of visitors coming down our way during the year and we’re looking forward to doing it all again, and again, and again. It’s always nice to show people around and you get to appreciate your world from a new perspective each time.
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Akita 3
We’re back now from the land of Man Versus Snow, and what an adventure it was. Such an eye-opener to see a very different way of life; it’s like another country up there. When we got home last night it felt as if we’d been away for ages, even though it was a mere eight days. And that’s the idea of a holiday, isn’t it?
I have to say, we certainly got our fill of the white stuff, including a day’s skiing, some amateur shovelling around the house, snowball fights, a home-made igloo, driving through snow, slipping over on ice, eating snow, shopping in snow. We even made it to Mr Donuts in the snow!
The kids enjoyed Akita and we all loved Eku’s cooking, and we immediately resolved to go back in August to catch the National Fireworks Festival, said to be the biggest and flashiest event of its kind in Japan. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make, given our obsession with fireworks. And it will be interesting to see how the place looks in summer — it’ll probably be unrecognisable without snow.
Here I was thinking that we have extremes of weather down here in Hiroshima but now I realise that we’ve got it easy compared with what they have to put up with up north. Meanwhile, we’re having our own little cold snap this weekend; the weather forecast said minus two last night and a top of just three degrees today, and guess what greeted us when we woke up this morning!
It snowed right here at Sunami, even on the beach!
What a lovely welcome home present, especially as we could just admire the snow as opposed to having to spend half an hour shovelling it away from the front of the carport.
More Akita photos are here.
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Akita 2
It was snowing when we arrived in Akita a week ago and pretty much hasn’t let up since. According to Eku, normally it snows for a few days and then the weather will fine up for a while. That softens the snow and gives everyone a breather from the endless shoveling. But the non-stop snowfalls have reached record levels now. There aren’t enough snowploughs to clear it all away, and they’re running out of places to pile it up.
Out the back window of our house the snow has been gaining about half a metre per day; it’s well above two metres by now, and one by one the trees are disappearing into the drift.
You can just make out a bump in the foreground on the left; that used to be a small tree. That thing at the back next to the tree is a light pole. Next week it’ll probably be gone too.
For the first couple of days I was shoveling away snow from the side of the house as it fell off the roof but we had to abandon that too, because there’s still heaps of snow on the roof and nowhere for it to go. The snow could come thundering off the roof and bury you at any moment. As a result, the entire house is now blanketed in a thick layer that goes up one side and down over the other.
As we drive around town I’m amazed that society still continues to function. The roads are in an atrocious state, many of them reduced to one lane. You can’t drive at more than 40 km/h so the pace of life has been halved. How on earth the trucks and delivery vehicles manage to get around is beyond me. Yet it seems to be business as usual at the shops and supermarkets. Speaking of which, going to the shops is a major undertaking. Assuming that you can get the car out of the garage, you have to negotiate your way along roads that you can barely even make out. The poles that used to mark the road boundaries are now all but buried. There are high walls of snow on either side but what with the wind and the swirling snow, sometimes you can’t even see the boundary between road and wall. At the supermarket there is a white lake where the car park used to be. Outside the car of course it’s freezingly cold (top temperature today was -4° C). When you come back you have to brush off a whole new layer of snow from the car, then you have to turn the demister on full blast for a couple of minutes so you can see out the windscreen, and only then are you ready to negotiate the journey back home.
Every morning Eku spends an hour or so shoveling the snow from in front of her garage just so she can get the car out. (Annoying snow fact: the snowplough comes along at 3:30 a.m. to clear the road which is nice, but in the process it piles all the snow up in front of the garages along the way.) Everywhere you look people are shoveling snow: off the rooftops, in front of their homes and shops, off the roads.
The record snowfalls are playing havoc with the trains which is a bit scary as we’re due to leave tomorrow. I rang up the railways and they assured me that we can always catch a later train if ours is delayed but at this rate we won’t get back to Mihara until midnight.
It’s certainly been an educational experience. When we first came up here, we couldn’t get enough of the white stuff. Now, I’m praying for it to stop so that we just can catch our train home back to a normal life. Finally I’m starting to sympathise with those who regard snow as an annoyance; I can see how much effort is involved. Plus when the sky is grey and low and the snow is swirling all around, the world can seem a miserable place. Could we have lived like this for two years? Well, the weather this week has been record-breaking on a number of levels so it’s hard to say. In a normal year, the full-on snow season only lasts for about two months, so I still reckon it would have been fun. But it’s safe to say that winter 2011 would have sorely tested our resolve, just as summer 2010 did.
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Akita
I’m writing from chilly Akita up in northern Japan, where we’ve come to stay for a week with our longstanding friend Eku, who along with her now departed husband Shige was a surrogate parent to us during our Young Person years in Tokyo.
Akita is snow country, and this year Japan has been having record snowfalls (hot on the heels of the record hot summer), and the first thing to say is that there’s an UNBELIEVABLE amount of snow around the place. It’s been snowing nonstop for three days and nights which apparently is unprecedented even in this part of the country.
The first couple of nights we stayed at a hotel located at a popular onsen (hot springs) and ski resort called Lake Tazawako. When the weather is fine you can see the enormous lake spread about before you as you hurtle down the mountain but the view was blocked by all these snowflakes falling out of the sky. In any case the lack of view didn’t matter too much because the kids and I had decided to take up snowboarding, so there was very little hurtling and quite a bit of falling over in the snow. But snowboarding looks like excellent fun once you can get your balance, and we’re determined to get in as much practice as possible before the ski season ends in March.
The hotel had its own onsen, including even an outdoor bit where you sit in the hot spring while snow flakes fall on your head, which was rather nice. The meals were amazing too; the table was crowded with so many little pots and pans of various delicacies that there was barely room to put down your chopsticks.
The next day we caught a cute little local train over to Eku’s place:
At some points the rails were buried in snow and it was quite eerie to be thundering through a sea of white where the lines overhead were almost the only thing visible.
Eku’s station is so small it’s just a platform and this little hut:
(We’re all squinting because the sun came out at that moment.)
Anyway here we are now ensconced in Eku’s house which is surrounded by a metre or two of snow all around. Every morning I go outside to shovel away the snow that’s fallen off the roof during the night. Some days there is so much that it reaches right up to the roofline.
This morning we went for a walk through the world of pure white. The houses are all covered in a thick layer of soft fresh snow like icing on a wedding cake, that droops from the eaves and occasionally falls to the ground with a huge thud. (Akita fact: don’t walk near the roof line as a huge lump of snow could come crashing down on your head at any time.)
The Akita visit has special significance because this is the place where we were originally planning to spend our two years in Japan, before Eleni unilaterally declared that it would be too cold. Living by the sea in Sunami is lovely too, but the kids and I have never quite forgiven mummy for depriving us of the joy of snow and we’ve been using every opportunity possible this week to point out how beautiful it is and how much fun we could have had.
Although I have to admit that the novelty of shoveling snow every morning might wear off after a couple of months.
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Kyoto
OK strap yourselves in, it’s going to be a big one.
Last weekend we took a three-day trip up to Kyoto to fulfill a longstanding promise to give Ruby an ancient traditional cultural geisha dress-up experience.
I must admit to having been a bit apprehensive about the trip for weeks beforehand (the journey there, that is, not Kyoto itself) due to the prospect of tackling the Japanese freeway system, which is prone to chronic congestion as we discovered during Golden Week. However I’m pleased to report that there were no traffic jams at all and we were able to sail straight into Kyoto with minimal driver frustration in the very reasonable time of about four and a half hours, which puts Kyoto well within reach for future visits.
Now it just so happens that last weekend was one of the busiest weekends on the Kyoto calendar, right up there with the cherry blossom viewing in April. And the reason is that it’s that part of autumn where the leaves on the trees (possibly certain specific species of trees, maybe Japanese maples although I couldn’t be sure) turn a beautiful shade of red. The Japanese go mad for cherry blossoms as we all know, and it turns out they go almost equally mad for the Red Leaves of November. For instance, inside the Mihara station building in town there’s a little chart showing the best Red Leaf Viewing Spots in the local area, complete with colour-coded indicators that suggest the best time to go for maximum viewing pleasure.
So, having found ourselves in the midst of an Important Cultural Event by default, we felt obliged to take the only honourable course of action which was to snap 1,000,000 photos of the things. To this end, following our triumphant arrival by freeway just after lunch, we headed straight off to Tofukuji, which Eleni had been advised by one of her students was the best place in Kyoto to view them.
Here then are some of our our digital offerings:
Felix models the Red Leaves on his head for extra added effect:
And on his hand. Botanists among you should be able to work out the species from this photo.
At one point within Kofukuji there is this special platform for viewing the Red Leaves where you have to pay an extra ¥400 and wait in line with hundreds of other visitors and then inch your way out on to the platform and then fight one another for access to the prime photo positions with the reddest leaves. So we decided to give that one a miss, but for the sake of posterity here’s what the viewing platform looks like from the other side:
After that we abandoned the kids for a while in order to check out a nearby rock garden in peace and solitude, notwithstanding the hundreds of others attempting to do the same.
Eleni’s over there somewhere:
Oh, and here’s another one. Can’t get enough of them.
By this stage it was getting late so we picked up the kids and did a quick whiz around the other Old Things at Tofukuji, including this rather nice edifice:
When we got back to our hotel the kids were very excited to find that despite being lowly budget accommodation it was fully equipped with a heated toilet seat with built-in bum washer AND a lid that automatically flips up when you open the toilet door. Definitely the highlight of Day 1.
On Day 2 we headed off to a very fine castle called Nijo-jo as recommended by our friend Yumi. (As you can see, we’re happy to be told what to do and where to go: visit here, take photos of those leaves, whatever. It’s so much easier than having to read the books.) Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take photos inside Niji-jo Castle although I accidentally did snap this one before Eleni alerted me to the huge No Photos You Idiot sign at the entrance.
And out the front of the main building. Felix now fancies himself as a photographer which means that I get to get my head in a few more shots these days.
Nijo-jo is famed for its nightingale floors which emit a little squeak when you step on them — apparently this was to alert the occupants to the presence of intruders if they stole in during the night. Of course there were thousands of us trooping through the building that day so it was hard to tell if it really was the floorboards squeaking or, as Ruby suggested, little nightingale speakers mounted under the floor, but it sounds cute in any case.
On the way through the castle gardens we chanced upon a falconing demonstration near a perimeter wall, and Felix wormed his way through to the front of the crowd and then, when they called for four children to take part, shot up his hand shouting “Mepleasemepleasemeplease” and got picked and had a falcon land on his hand and everything.
And all that before lunch! Next stop on the agenda was a walk through the rather lovely backstreets of the Gion area:
through to the place where we got Ruby tarted up for her geisha experience. It took about an hour and a half to do all the make up. They take a few photos in their studio, then she gets to walk around for 60 minutes. Yumi’s daughters Chisato (13) and Mito (6) had rented kimonos for the afternoon, so we headed up the road to begin our photoshoot.
No sooner had we stopped than a crowd began to gather around and the girls found themselves being apprehended for photo opportunities by random passers by.
Felix also got to wear an ancient traditional cultural mens kimono:
I have to say, the transformation is quite amazing. The geisha makeover makes a person look so very elegant:
(who are those people stealing things inside the shop??)And Ruby handled herself with aplomb, posing for endless photos for random onlookers and maintaining a beatific smile throughout:
Having said that, I do love this classic shot right at the end when the girls were waiting to get the makeup removed:
On Day 3 we decided to take the kids to visit another temple. After all, Kyoto is choc full ‘o’ culture so I figure at least one item of culture per day is necessary for a good return on investment. Kinkakuji is covered in gold so we thought the kids would appreciate the connection: gold, rich, famous, pop stars, pop music, iPods, the meaning of life etc.
No no, it’s over that way guys.. etc.
Then we went for a walk through a nice bamboo forest that yet another friend had told us about:
and wound up at a stunning gorge up north of Kyoto called (I think) Arashiyama. Despite the number of visitors it was wonderfully peaceful — a huge wide shallow river with sheer mountains on either side covered red, green and golden colours, so shallow that you can see the bottom, boats being paddled along by guys with poles, no cars or motor boats, everyone just taking it easy. Even teenagers.
To top it all off we found a little place for lunch right on the river where we could gaze out at the serenity while tucking in to some noodles.
It was a wonderful end to an action-packed 48 hours of Kyoto.
And on the return trip we stopped in at one of the massive great parking areas on the freeway where there was a Starbucks and I got to have an extra-large cafe latte. Perfection.
For more Kyoto photos click here.
Incidentally I was very excited about the green tea Kit-Kat that we found in Kyoto. Click here for picture.
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Niimi revisited, unplugged, etc
Last weekend we went back up to Niimi (pronounced “knee-me”), a tiny little hamlet tucked away in a distant corner of Okayama prefecture, and once again had a ball.
Niimi is the ancestral home of Mr and Mrs Kobayashi, parents of Hironori, the guitarist in that legendary Tokyo band of the 1990s called The Moment that featured yours truly on bass. Mr and Mrs K are endlessly kind and welcoming, so much so that going up to Niimi has become rather like visiting distant relatives in the countryside.
The first thing that made it really great is that unlike the last time we went up, which was during the traffic madness of Golden Week, this time the freeways were virtually empty and the whole trip took barely two and a half hours. What a glorious feeling to sail straight through (in a couple of minutes) that stretch of bumper-to-bumper hell where we spent a good couple of hours the last time and nearly ran out of petrol in the process. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun on a freeway before (except maybe when I got to do 170 in a hire car on a freeway in Italy once, but I shouldn’t really mention that).
Also instead of 17 people like last time there were just the four of us staying overnight, which if nothing else meant we all got a good night’s sleep. Niimi is just so peaceful and quiet. I made up a video; excuse the daggy subtitles but I didn’t want to spoil the serenity.
And the other really great thing about Niimi is the genuine farm experience. On Sunday morning Felix and I were awake before the girls (funny that) so we joined Mr K in a stomp through the grapevines, Felix still in his pyjamas and dressing gown, and picked off some bunches for breakfast. Later in the day Felix got to ride on the back of a motorbike and do a spin of the hamlet, and also had a turn in the back of the truck. Eleni learned how to shell chestnuts, which turns out to be extremely time-consuming but in a peaceful kind of way, and I found out how to make rice:
• Grow the rice in a paddy
• Harvest it and hang it out to dry
• Put the stalks in a machine that separates the stalks from the rice grains
• Put the rice grains into another machine that rips off the husks (producing brown rice)
• Put the brown rice into yet another machine that polishes it into white rice.As you can see you need a fair bit of machinery to make rice, even when it’s only for your own personal consumption. But if you haven’t got your own rice polishing machine, no need to worry, for dotted around the countryside are these dinky little Auto Rice Polishing Stations (ARPS) that look like photobooths but are actually there for the benefit of small-time growers with not enough machinery (or perhaps no barns to put them in). We’ve seen them heaps of times and for ages couldn’t work out what they were for. Felix at first thought they might be places that gave you free rice. Tragically the world doesn’t work like that, son. No, you put in your healthy brown rice at the top, chuck in a few hundred yen and out pops the lovely polished white rice at the bottom. Isn’t technology wonderful!
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Submarine museum at Kure
I’ve never been a big one for museums, but this one caught my eye. After all, I’ve never been inside a real submarine. So off we headed last Sunday to Kure, about an hour and a quarter away along the coast. Kure is a massive shipbuilding city that was Japan’s second largest naval base during the war or something like that.
We got down there after lunch and were moseying along in front of the department store looking for a place to park and all of a sudden there it was:
Japan must be about the only place in the world where you can park your car next to a sub.
It was a great museum, although most of it is actually a large building next door and they only let you walk through a small part of the submarine at the end. But it was still worth it.
Felix made sure to try out everything on offer including the beds:
the hatch:
the periscope:
and the radar equipment:
The submarine was only decommissioned in 2004 and it’s funny to think of navy dudes running around inside it until recently. There are a few old-timers on hand inside to make sure that no-one touches anything untoward but they didn’t seem to mind us taking photos or examining the equipment at close quarters.
In the museum part there were medals from various countries including Australia:
Which makes you wonder: how did they got hold of all these medals anyway?
There was also a series of panels explaining how they got the sub up out of the water and carried it across the road into the middle of the night and plonked it on its special holders, which looks to have been quite an amazing operation in itself.
And finally, in the department store next door to the sub we found a rather nice Italian restaurant where they do a mighty fine pizza, and Felix discovered some extra-special rails for his plastic train set. This is his latest obsession; he even goes on YouTube and watches endless videos of trains going around massive complex tracks and crashing into one another, like this one:
At least it keeps him off the streets I guess.
Anyway so Kure was deemed a huge success and we can’t wait to get back there and eat the pizza and buy the plastic rails and check out some more naval history. Plus there’s a nice cafe listed in our cafe book that we have to check out. What more could you want from a day out?
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The end of the hols
The last week of the holidays is upon us, and though we’re feeling a bit sad, I’m satisfied that we’ve given the holiday period a jolly good shake. This week Ruby is actually meant to be practicing with the brass bandat school every morning but she bravely fronted up to her teacher and said that she couldn’t make it. (Admittedly the practices this week are designated “voluntary” although we all know what that means in the Land of Fitting In and I’m sure that everyone else will be duly turning up in the mornings.)
So we took the opportunity to host a couple more friends from Australia for a few days and do a bit of island hopping, putting the cars on the ferry over to Ikuchijima where we all went for a swim on Sunset Beach, an accredited beach resort (this means it has tinny music blaring out of speakers all day long and you have to pay for the showers) with views of the mountains in the distance which impressed our friends no end.
On Thursday we zoomed down to Miyajima, that place with the big red ancient traditional cultural gate thingy in the water, touted as the most photographed site in Japan (How do you measure that anyway? Do they stop people at random and go through their cameras?). In the finest Japanese tradition, the gate itself has already been rebuilt eight times and judging from the decrepit state of the wood near the bottom I suspect an upgrade to Version 9 is due pretty soon. The whole area including Gate 8.0, the shrine and the nearby forest, is World Heritage listed but you can wander around at will.
We stayed at a really great ryokan inn tucked away literally in the middle of this World Heritage forest. Such a wonderful place to stay. Plus our room had its own private pond complete with big fat slow-moving carp, Felix’s favourite fish:
The national park is full of little nature trails and cultural thingies such as this bridge, located on the walk up to the ropeway.
The top of the ropeway is Mt. Misen, I believe the highest point on the island, where you can get stunning views of the Seto Inland Sea — possibly even better than the views from our very own Mt. Fudekage at Sunami, which caused me to experience a minor dose of View Envy. The kids decided that it was appropriate to utilize the scenery for some wacky perspective shots such as Ruby holding up an island:
And Felix with an island up his bum:
Us Orstralians, we know how to appreciate Culture.
The idea of staying overnight was to appreciate two aspects of the big red gate thingy; tide in and tide out. In the afternoon on the first day the tide was out so we were able to wander right up to the hallowed object.
After a while Ruby got bored and wandered off to do a Lady of the Lake impression:
For some reason everyone tries to throw rocks up onto the horizontal crossbar. No idea why.
That night we found a local pub type restaurant where all the men were drinking out of this amazing beer keg tower thing:
It looked like fun but unfortunately only Kaz and I were drinking beer so we couldn’t try one out for ourselves.
Here for no particular reason is a photo of our meal (I kind of like the overhead shot):
After dinner we wandered back in the dark to our forest hotel and I attempted to get some arty shots with our shiny new camera:
(NB: Eleni’s back is still hurting hence the pose.)
This one actually shows the kids sitting on the sea wall. You can hardly make them out but hey, it’s an Arty Shot.
The temple scrubs up pretty well at night-time:
The following day we wandered around a bit more and went inside the temple and I would love to be able to show you 10000000 more shots of the Red Gate surrounded by water at high tide but tragically the camera battery went flat. (The strain of the Arty Shots must have worn it out.) However our friends took heaps of photos for us so don’t fret, they’ll be up here one day.
Miyajima is just one and half hours away from home so we plan to come back again, at least for a day trip if not an overnight stay. Apart from the cultural stuff it is actually a really nice place for walking and I plan to give Mt. Misen a go when (if) the weather finally cools down.
Click here for more Miyajima photos.
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Best Festival Ever
We went to the Pirate ‘n’ Fire Festival on the nearby island of Innoshima last night, and all agreed that it was our best festival to date, even edging out the award-winning Naked Man festival, for the simple reason that rather than just having lots of people dancing around (as in the Yassa Matsuri) or a long line of stalls stretched along a street for no particular reason (like the Shinmei-ichi festival), this one actually had a sense of purpose to it.
It turns out that Innoshima used be a stronghold of pirates operating in the Seto Inland Sea area. There is a castle on the island and a pirate museum and so on, and the three-day pirate festival is held every summer to commemorate the island’s pirate history. (And bring in much-needed tourist revenue, ahem.)
This time our planning was impeccable. We caught the ferry over in the afternoon (a road trip via Onomichi would have been quicker but Eleni loves taking the ferry; she’s got a thing about ferries). On the ferry our resident teenager was very grumpy so I took a photo of her:
I actually think she looks better grumpy.
On Innoshima, we were careful to park our car near the exit of the carpark so as not to get caught in the mad rush at the end as happened after the Yassa Matsuri fireworks. The event itself was held on the very fine local beach (Note: must go back some day soon for a swim) which provided a great setting with heaps of seating so everyone could sit and watch without getting squashed, which was nice for a change.
When we got there the bonfires were already set up on the beach and there was lots of loud banging going on which turned out to be men dressed in ancient traditional cultural armor firing off ancient muskets or blunderbusses or whatever they’re called. I’ve heard that these are notoriously unstable and can blow up in your face but there were no unseemly incidents other than the guns occasionally failing to fire on cue. They made a tremendous noise and flash of light when they went off, which I’m sure would have been enough to give the enemy pause for thought regardless of where the bullet ended up.
On the left in the above photo you can see the massive torch thingy that gets set alight at the end of the night, and on the right is one of the many bonfires that were dotted along the beach.
After that there was an endless succession of dance numbers put on by local schools and community groups and so on and this was possibly more fun for the participants than the spectators but it gave us a chance to wander around and check out the festival stalls. Then there was a wadaiko drumming display which was once again a joy to watch. Eleni and I are now completely smitten by traditional drumming (her from a professional perspective, him as a student not a tourist) and can’t get enough of it. That and fireworks. Oh, and okonomiyaki too.
By about seven o’clock dark had fallen (there being no daylight saving in Japan) and it was time for the main event, which involved the ancient traditional cultural soldier dudes returning with Indiana Jones style flaming torches and setting fire to the very large torch that had been brought over and placed in centre stage.
Then a whole lot more people armed with flaming torches arrived by boat (including a party of foreign students dressed up for the occasion) and were welcomed on shore; by the end there must have been about a hundred of them all waving their fire around the place.
Earlier in the evening I’d seen some of the Young Foreign Things drinking very determinedly and I was a bit worried about them being given a huge ball of fire to look after but no-one seemed to get burnt.
All the while there was a commentary going on which added to the sense of occasion and was no doubt very meaningful and historical to the locals, but unfortunately my Japanese vocabulary is sadly lacking when it comes to history so I couldn’t really work out what it all meant.
At the end of the night there was the inevitable fireworks display. Although advertised as “only” 1,400 fireworks it went on for ages and some of them were very fancy. Felix was most impressed. However in a bid to avoid the madding crowds we had to get on the shuttle bus back to the carpark while the fireworks show was still in progress but this created a cultural bonding atmosphere of camaraderie on the crowded bus as everybody craned their necks to get a good view of the fireworks display from the bus windows.
And to top it all off, we exited the carpark in style and encountered no traffic whatsoever on the way home.
So all in all it was a really great festival experience and we’re determined to go again in 2011. Hopefully we’ll be even more organised and catch the full-on pirate parade and boat race too.
Click here for more festival photos.
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Let the hols begin
Last Monday was Ruby’s long-awaited brass band performance, after two and a half solid weeks of rehearsal during the holidays (including weekends). We all trooped in to downtown Hiroshima to see the Regional High Schools Brass Band Competition involving some 68 schools. Each school had just ten minutes (one piece) to strut their stuff. And I have to say that Ruby’s school acquitted themselves quite well, given that about half of the band had never played their chosen instrument before, including Ruby, who was forced to take up the trumpet against her will.
But the point of all this is that the holiday period has now officially begun and our kids are free. Apart from the mountains of homework of course. And the two “compulsory attendance days” that are, perversely, scheduled by both schools right during the middle of the holidays. Plus the voluntary school clean-up days, both conveniently on Sunday mornings. Such a fun summer activity for kids and parents alike! (We have decided to be away on these days. Even if we’re not away, we’ll be away, if you get my drift.)
So last week the kids were able to laze around the house in the time-honoured manner. Ruby spent a great deal of time on the computer and Felix played with his New Best Friend, a Year 6 boy called Shigeta who lives 15 minutes away in town but appears here every holiday period when he is unceremoniously dumped at his grandfather’s place in the next street.
And on Sunday, we headed off to Nagoya to visit Miyuki, a friend of Eleni’s from the Tokyo days. We took advantage of a special ticket called the Youth 18 ticket, which despite the name is open to all ages. For about $30 you can travel as far as you like anywhere in Japan for an entire day but — and here’s the catch — using only local trains. Nagoya is about 450 km away and takes about three hours on the Shinkansen, whereas on the Youth 18 ticket it’s more like seven hours all up and you have to change trains about six times. But you save about $300, which is kind of nice.
We broke up the trip by stopping off along the way at Himeji Castle, said to be one of the finest original castles in Japan. (Mind you, that’s not such a big deal when you consider that virtually all of them are concrete replicas.) Tragically half of it was closed for reconstruction works but this was possibly just as well as we’d only allowed two hours and that was never going to be long enough for a proper tour. Nevertheless the bit of it we did see was very nice (and not made of concrete), and along the way we managed to run into a couple of ninjas:
When we finally rolled into Nagoya that night Miyuki whisked us off to Nagoya Castle (concrete) where there was a big festival on to commemorate 400 years of something-or-other. Ruby and Felix played a couple of those festival games where you win plastic, and Ruby duly scored a set of plastic flashing ears:
As part of the festivities they had set up a huge stage and we witnessed a very impressive wadaiko drumming performance (see video snippet below). So, two castles in the one day! Pretty good effort that.
The next day we trooped off to Monkey Park, a combined monkey zoo and fun park that Ruby and I had visited three years ago only to discover to our bitter disappointment that the roller-coaster was closed for repairs. It looked so fantastic winding in and out of the trees that we were determined to come back again. This time around the roller-coaster was in operation and, amazingly for the middle of summer, there were no queues whatsoever, so we went on it several times. Here’s Felix coming around the bend:
The other main reason for going to Nagoya was to eat pizza. It’s a long story. Naho is a longstanding friend who we met by chance during our stay in Italy in 2003. She was at that time married to Alessandro, who ran our favourite Bar Appennini in downtown Sansepolcro. Alessandro turned out to be feckless/gormless/witless and Naho returned to the family home in Nagoya with their baby son Giovanni. She has since hooked up with another Italian, a very handsome Calabrian dude called Adamo, and together they have opened a pizzeria on the outskirts of Nagoya. So of course we had to go there.
And it was without a doubt the best Italian meal we’ve had since Sansepolcro, which caused us to be not only full to the point of bursting but also terribly nostalgic for the heady days of 2003. If only Nagoya weren’t so far away. Sigh.
On the way back we stopped off at Inuyama (which means Mount Dog — love that name) to visit Inuyama Castle, which I only found out about by chance the previous day when I saw a sign while waiting at the train station for Monkey Park. It turns out that Mount Dog Castle belongs to the select club of non-concrete castles in Japan and is a designated National Treasure. Having had my appetite for Real Wooden Castles whetted at Himeji Castle, I was very keen to visit another one. And I’m so glad I did — the massive beams, the smooth wooden floors, the creaky old ladders, the big tatami rooms, the smell of cedar, plus little chutes in the walls for throwing rocks down at your enemies as they try to scale the walls, which add a nice touch. It’s a cute little castle too, not too big and not too small, not many visitors, with that off-the-beaten-track feel to it. Highly recommended if you’re ever up north of Nagoya.
On Wednesday we headed off to Kyoto, a mere three hours up the road. Miyuki had the bright idea of hiring a car rather than buying five sets of train tickets, so we cruised over in air-conditioned style along the expressway. However when we arrived in Kyoto it was 36 degrees and we ended up cowering inside our air-conditioned apartment for the afternoon, only daring to venture out at about five o’clock to see a few sights. Here’s Ruby (sporting new sunnies) and Felix in the Shijo shopping district:
This morning, the last day of our holiday, I tried to go for an early morning walk around Kyoto but it was already stiflingly hot by seven-thirty. Clearly there was no point trying to do the tourist thing for another day. We bought some bento boxes at the department store and splurged on Shinkansen return tickets and zoomed back to Mihara, arriving by about three o’clock. The house was like the proverbial oven — 35 degrees downstairs and 40 upstairs — so we spent the afternoon in the upstairs office with the aircon on full blast and ate fruit salad for tea.
All in all, it was an action-packed five-day break and we had lots of fun…. but it was just soooo hot. At Monkey Park we had to admit defeat by about two o’clock; we didn’t even get to see the monkeys. Sightseeing in Kyoto was reduced to a matter hours. Really, the heat is your enemy when you want to get out and see stuff (or it is when you’re a Class A thermophobe like me). So we decided that next summer, we wouldn’t be going anywhere. After all, the logical thing to do in summer is to go to the beach, right? We already live at the beach. We don’t need to go anywhere. You know it makes sense.
To finish off with, here’s a video of a few random things from our holidays.
The first part is from the local festival held at our very own Sunami Heights park just up the road last Saturday, the night before we left on our holiday. This was a low-key affair much like the one where Eleni’s drumming group had a workout a couple of weeks back. Felix had been invited to join in a couple of rehearsals with other local kids for dancing to be performed at the festival, but he’d dismissed it as too daggy. However on the night they said he could just join in anyway and follow the others. Ruby took great delight in capturing his performance on camera.
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The next bit of the video is the spectacular wadaiko drumming performance that we saw at Nagoya Castle.
And the last bit is just some random shoppers walking along in the Shijo area of Kyoto.
This blog is about the adventures of a family of Australian barbarians spending two years in the islands of southern Japan. Stay tuned for regular updates on the food, the culture, the earthquakes, the wacky festivals, the school system and more. 
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