Here we are!
Pretty fun stuff! The mochi was good - chewy, but tasty.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Tachiarai Shogakko Mochi Festival
We made a quick trip to Tachiarai Elementary School today, and caught the last of their Mochi Festival. Will got a taste of the swarming children I am graced with every Friday, and we both tried our hands at pounding the rice and water mixture...
Pretty fun stuff! The mochi was good - chewy, but tasty.
Pretty fun stuff! The mochi was good - chewy, but tasty.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Yufuin weekend
We spent last weekend in and near the town of Yufuin, in Oita prefecture. At a higher elevation, the leaves had mostly already changed, but not all of them, and it was much colder than Tachiarai.
We travelled in style, and took the train for 1 1/2 hours to the town of Yufuin.
This is the view from the station, and we arrived with about 2-3 hours to kill until a big bus came and picked us up at the station. We wandered and had a nice lunch. When the bus arrived, there were some other ladies on the bus, and it drove us over an hour up through a mountain pass, and down into another valley - it was really beautiful.
The valley was all low hills and meadows, surrounded on all sides by mountains. The above photo is looking back towards the mountain range we went over to get into the valley.
All the leaves had mostly all changed at that altitude, so it was at that stage just before winter, when everything's kinda brown and gray. The mountaintops even had light sprinklings of snow on them, and we got some flurries in the late afternoon.
The sun peeked through the clouds and shone rays of sunlight onto the valley here and there, but wow, it was cold. Must've been in the 20's at least, I'm just guessing, and with wind.
The place we stayed was pretty nice. Nothing too fancy - sort of a cabin-like motel feel, nothing really Japanese, except that there were hot springs.. mostly just hot water pumped into baths that you can reserve for an hour at a time. The night included dinner and breakfast, which were delicious.
Dinner
For dinner, we had lots and lots of different stuff, served seperately, one after the other. We started with a daikon salad, a small crab-cake thing, some beef shabu-shabu on our own private little burners, and a salty custard thing that Will says had chicken and squid in it, but I didn't get past the first 2 bites. Let's see.... then we had a small square of some sort of bread-beef-mix, cooked, very good, with a thin slice of duck on top, with a circle of hot mustard, which was delicious. Everything was close to bite-size. We also had a small piece of smoked fish wrapped inside cooked, hardened leaves, miso soup, a small bowl of soft tofu, rice... I must be missing something. Anyway, it was really delicious, and we had a small carafe of hot sake at the end to top it all off! "Sumimasen, sake no atsui o ippon kudasai!!" :) (Excuse me, a bottle of hot sake, please!)
Then it was off to our private onsen, which had an inside and outside place to relax in the hot water. How it works is, you take everything off in the small changing room, which has a bench, a sink, etc. Then you go into the tiled onsen room, which has an area with shower heads and faucets and 2 small buckets, plus soap and shampoo, which you use to rinse off before you get into the onsen. Then, it's into the hot water, and you're on your way to relaxation. We sat outside for an hour, staring out at the dark valley below. It was fantastic!
Also, our room had a fancy "kotatsu", which is a coffee-like table that has a blanket draped around all sides (tucked under the table top), and this one had a hole in the floor and a big heater underneath that you could put your feet on. We were nice and toasty!
Breakfast
We had breakfast the next morning before our second round of onsen:
Salad, honey-crusted "mountain potato" wedges, sausage, funky scrambled eggs, raisin bread-pastry, yogurt with strawberry sauce, miso soup, rice, and a raw egg (Will had that one, after I .... egged him on... Heehee!)
Then later that day we got back to Yufuin, and with 3 hours to kill, we found a small street lined with little touristy-shops, and packed full of... yes, tourists. Japanese tourists though. We haven't seen more than 10 European tourists yet! It was nice though, although it was really cold, and we wandered around until the warm train came and swooshed us back to Kurume.
The small neighborhood, and in fact the whole town of Yufuin, is presided over by the huge mountain, Yufe-dake.
The volcanic activity in the area is pretty obvious when you see these little natural hot-water thingys everywhere. Mmmmm... hot water.
(Close-up view, with a little jizo statue in the background. It could be a Buddha too, I'm not sure.)
Oh ruler of the town.
Us walking down into the throngs of chilly shoppers...
Oh look! Another hot water tap!
This was a wall along one of the side streets of the small neighborhood. Nice, huh?
A cluttered shop.
"Omiyage" (gifts) for all those friends and co-workers back home.
This is a typical yakitori stand I just thought you might like to see. Ah, street food is always the best!
Some pots for sale.
Yes, that's 'Europpian' Crepes... sugar pizzas!
And low and behold, let us all pray to the one and only, the infamous, all-mighty.....
HELLO KITTY!!!
Is this not consumer-mania at it's finest??
It's her rival!!!! Slot-machine kitty!!!! Oh, the evil-ness.
Ah, that's better. Don't we all feel much better now?
Hey! It's a REAL kitty!!! They are rarely friendly on the streets here (Sara - not like Greece!), and so Will got to pet it.. aw!
And... then he was told politely to stop. Might as well go back to worshipping Hello Kitty.
And, the last photo of the day is one of some interesting drain pipes on a house.
"Catchy", huh?! :)
Love you all!!
We travelled in style, and took the train for 1 1/2 hours to the town of Yufuin.
This is the view from the station, and we arrived with about 2-3 hours to kill until a big bus came and picked us up at the station. We wandered and had a nice lunch. When the bus arrived, there were some other ladies on the bus, and it drove us over an hour up through a mountain pass, and down into another valley - it was really beautiful. 
The valley was all low hills and meadows, surrounded on all sides by mountains. The above photo is looking back towards the mountain range we went over to get into the valley. All the leaves had mostly all changed at that altitude, so it was at that stage just before winter, when everything's kinda brown and gray. The mountaintops even had light sprinklings of snow on them, and we got some flurries in the late afternoon.
The sun peeked through the clouds and shone rays of sunlight onto the valley here and there, but wow, it was cold. Must've been in the 20's at least, I'm just guessing, and with wind. The place we stayed was pretty nice. Nothing too fancy - sort of a cabin-like motel feel, nothing really Japanese, except that there were hot springs.. mostly just hot water pumped into baths that you can reserve for an hour at a time. The night included dinner and breakfast, which were delicious.
Dinner
For dinner, we had lots and lots of different stuff, served seperately, one after the other. We started with a daikon salad, a small crab-cake thing, some beef shabu-shabu on our own private little burners, and a salty custard thing that Will says had chicken and squid in it, but I didn't get past the first 2 bites. Let's see.... then we had a small square of some sort of bread-beef-mix, cooked, very good, with a thin slice of duck on top, with a circle of hot mustard, which was delicious. Everything was close to bite-size. We also had a small piece of smoked fish wrapped inside cooked, hardened leaves, miso soup, a small bowl of soft tofu, rice... I must be missing something. Anyway, it was really delicious, and we had a small carafe of hot sake at the end to top it all off! "Sumimasen, sake no atsui o ippon kudasai!!" :) (Excuse me, a bottle of hot sake, please!)
Then it was off to our private onsen, which had an inside and outside place to relax in the hot water. How it works is, you take everything off in the small changing room, which has a bench, a sink, etc. Then you go into the tiled onsen room, which has an area with shower heads and faucets and 2 small buckets, plus soap and shampoo, which you use to rinse off before you get into the onsen. Then, it's into the hot water, and you're on your way to relaxation. We sat outside for an hour, staring out at the dark valley below. It was fantastic!
Also, our room had a fancy "kotatsu", which is a coffee-like table that has a blanket draped around all sides (tucked under the table top), and this one had a hole in the floor and a big heater underneath that you could put your feet on. We were nice and toasty!
Breakfast
We had breakfast the next morning before our second round of onsen:
Salad, honey-crusted "mountain potato" wedges, sausage, funky scrambled eggs, raisin bread-pastry, yogurt with strawberry sauce, miso soup, rice, and a raw egg (Will had that one, after I .... egged him on... Heehee!)
Then later that day we got back to Yufuin, and with 3 hours to kill, we found a small street lined with little touristy-shops, and packed full of... yes, tourists. Japanese tourists though. We haven't seen more than 10 European tourists yet! It was nice though, although it was really cold, and we wandered around until the warm train came and swooshed us back to Kurume.
The small neighborhood, and in fact the whole town of Yufuin, is presided over by the huge mountain, Yufe-dake.
The volcanic activity in the area is pretty obvious when you see these little natural hot-water thingys everywhere. Mmmmm... hot water.
(Close-up view, with a little jizo statue in the background. It could be a Buddha too, I'm not sure.)
Oh ruler of the town.
Us walking down into the throngs of chilly shoppers...
Oh look! Another hot water tap!
This was a wall along one of the side streets of the small neighborhood. Nice, huh?
A cluttered shop.
"Omiyage" (gifts) for all those friends and co-workers back home.
This is a typical yakitori stand I just thought you might like to see. Ah, street food is always the best!
Some pots for sale.
Yes, that's 'Europpian' Crepes... sugar pizzas!
And low and behold, let us all pray to the one and only, the infamous, all-mighty.....HELLO KITTY!!!
Is this not consumer-mania at it's finest??
But WAIT!!!....
It's her rival!!!! Slot-machine kitty!!!! Oh, the evil-ness.
Ah, that's better. Don't we all feel much better now?
Hey! It's a REAL kitty!!! They are rarely friendly on the streets here (Sara - not like Greece!), and so Will got to pet it.. aw!
And... then he was told politely to stop. Might as well go back to worshipping Hello Kitty.
And, the last photo of the day is one of some interesting drain pipes on a house."Catchy", huh?! :)
Love you all!!
Friday, December 01, 2006
Marshmallows and trips
Hi all! (From Serenity)
Well, I just finished my weekly Friday Elementary-school fiasco. They are getting easier, as I'm more comfortable in front of the kids, and am not in such a flurry. Recuperation time is lessening!
Today the 6th grade teachers set up a bamboo pole with strings hanging down of different lengths, and they tied marshmallows on the ends. I reviewed directions in English with the kids, ie., "Go straight, left, right", "Stop", "Down", "Go back"...
Then the kids paired up and one person in each pair was blindfolded, and their partner had to guide them to a marshmallow, and get them to eat it off the string, using English. Hilarious! They loved it, and everyone had fun. Sometimes the kids would get two different people aiming for the same marshmallow, and I tried to teach them "kiss!!". I could've sworn it was going to happen, but it didn't. At the end, there was one marshmallow left, and three different blindfolded boys were trying to get it with their mouths, and one of the kids yelled "attack!!"... well, it IS an English command!!
Fun stuff, fun stuff.
We're off to a Japanese-style "ryokan" this weekend up in the mountains, for a little retreat, and to relax in an onsen! ("hot spring" -- extremely popular here, and they're everywhere, especially on Kyushu).
It's getting colder everyday here, and the mountains are beautiful with bright colors.
Oh, and we just booked tickets to the southern-most islands of Okinawa for our New Year's holiday!!! Oh man, I'm sure it'll be rough. We're staying on the island of Ishigaki for 3 nights, then on Iriomote for 3, then back to Ishigaki for the last night. The islands are only 270km from Taiwan. Coooool.
And, it's only 2 hours to the main island (Okinawa) from Fukuoka, and another 35 minute flight from there. On Iriomote, there are no roads that go through the interior of the island, and no airstrip to speak of. Not that it keeps the droves of ferry-goers away, but it's a 50 minute ride, anyway! We're hoping to hike the 10-mile trail across the island, and/or canoe up the river, through dense jungle and lots of waterfalls. The average temperature there in late December is 61-64 degrees. Not too bad. Better than the already-45-degrees in late November here!
Love to everyone, and don't be afraid to reply or post comments on this site! Just click on "comments" at the end of this post... which is
now!!
Well, I just finished my weekly Friday Elementary-school fiasco. They are getting easier, as I'm more comfortable in front of the kids, and am not in such a flurry. Recuperation time is lessening!
Today the 6th grade teachers set up a bamboo pole with strings hanging down of different lengths, and they tied marshmallows on the ends. I reviewed directions in English with the kids, ie., "Go straight, left, right", "Stop", "Down", "Go back"...
Then the kids paired up and one person in each pair was blindfolded, and their partner had to guide them to a marshmallow, and get them to eat it off the string, using English. Hilarious! They loved it, and everyone had fun. Sometimes the kids would get two different people aiming for the same marshmallow, and I tried to teach them "kiss!!". I could've sworn it was going to happen, but it didn't. At the end, there was one marshmallow left, and three different blindfolded boys were trying to get it with their mouths, and one of the kids yelled "attack!!"... well, it IS an English command!!
Fun stuff, fun stuff.
We're off to a Japanese-style "ryokan" this weekend up in the mountains, for a little retreat, and to relax in an onsen! ("hot spring" -- extremely popular here, and they're everywhere, especially on Kyushu).
It's getting colder everyday here, and the mountains are beautiful with bright colors.
Oh, and we just booked tickets to the southern-most islands of Okinawa for our New Year's holiday!!! Oh man, I'm sure it'll be rough. We're staying on the island of Ishigaki for 3 nights, then on Iriomote for 3, then back to Ishigaki for the last night. The islands are only 270km from Taiwan. Coooool.
And, it's only 2 hours to the main island (Okinawa) from Fukuoka, and another 35 minute flight from there. On Iriomote, there are no roads that go through the interior of the island, and no airstrip to speak of. Not that it keeps the droves of ferry-goers away, but it's a 50 minute ride, anyway! We're hoping to hike the 10-mile trail across the island, and/or canoe up the river, through dense jungle and lots of waterfalls. The average temperature there in late December is 61-64 degrees. Not too bad. Better than the already-45-degrees in late November here!
Love to everyone, and don't be afraid to reply or post comments on this site! Just click on "comments" at the end of this post... which is
now!!
Sunday, November 26, 2006
The Other Side of the Valley
We headed out on our bikes again to explore the surrounding valley yesterday, and decided to ride to the "other hills". Yes, the ones on the other side of our valley!
Luckily, the sun shone for most of the day, and the weather was just perfect for bike riding. The first picture we came across was the sun beaming down onto some greenhouses, as we neared our mountainous goal.
We also came across this old canoe in a small tributary of the Chikugo River. We thought it looked particularly Asian.
We crossed this pedestrian bridge, over the Chikugo River.
And when we arrived in a tiny little neighborhood at the base of the lovely mountains, we came across lost of pomegranite orchards!
Hey, those rock walls look a little familiar! This orchard was set among rows and rows of rock walls going up a hillside. It was really a wonderful spot.
I think...
Someone had been working there that day.
We also came across some beehives near the orchard, set against the fall colors.
And a stalk of bamboo caught our eye.
Yes, the leaves are changing.
And they're particularly interesting with small shrines amid the leaves!
We also came upon more Sego Palms -- they grow so easily here!And so, our bike ride to the mountains made a great Saturday outing, once again.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
All Japan Kinma Championship
We attended the All Japan Kinma Championship last weekend, and had a great time! Will was part of "Team Gaijin", and competed with over 60 other teams in pulling 880 lbs of hay down a track around a tree, and back again! Meanwhile, there were food stalls galore, and a hearty crowd.
The crowd.
TEAM GAIJIN!
THE KINMA.
THE JUDGES.
COMPETITION 1
COMPETITION 2.
"So this is it". The team investigates their Kinma.
Turning it around.
Ready, set, go!!!
!!!!!
Rounding the tree...!!!
Rounded the bend, just before one teammate went down! Unfortunately, Serenity was too busy laughing to take a picture. Ah, too bad!!!!!
The final stretch!
...and the finish line!!! Yes, it was over incredibly quickly, although maybe it didn't feel like that to the team!
Not record-breaking, but not bad, either!
TEAM GAIJIN and friends.
The crowd.
TEAM GAIJIN!
THE KINMA.
THE JUDGES.
COMPETITION 1
COMPETITION 2.
"So this is it". The team investigates their Kinma.
Turning it around.
Ready, set, go!!!
!!!!!
Rounding the tree...!!!
Rounded the bend, just before one teammate went down! Unfortunately, Serenity was too busy laughing to take a picture. Ah, too bad!!!!!
The final stretch!
...and the finish line!!! Yes, it was over incredibly quickly, although maybe it didn't feel like that to the team!
Not record-breaking, but not bad, either!
TEAM GAIJIN and friends.It was a great time, and a good laugh. For more photos of the day, make sure to go to Serenity's flickr site!
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