Archive for September 2010

ishioka matsuri


On Saturday, we went with Yuka to her hometown in Ibaraki Prefecture to see the first day of the three day long Ishioka Matsuri, which is famous for its dashi floats (above) and shi-shi tiger dancers (below). It was a great night - I always have a great time at festivals in Japan and this one was especially fun; it's hard not to be in a good mood when everyone else is out in the streets wearing their festival clothes having a great time. So here are too many photos selected from the too many photos that I took - there'll be larger versions of these and more at my photoblog over the next few days.



I'm pretty sure I've been having nightmares about these guys for my entire life. It's not just me, right? They're kind of freaky?


Not that they're any less freaky than the masks above, but the fox mask has always been my favorite.


Pushing a float.



the best playground ever


Just an ordinary, peaceful playground, except for...


GODZILLA!!!!! If I'd gone to school here as a kid, I would have had SO MUCH FUN. 

Yesterday Yuka took us to her hometown to see the massive Ishioka Festival, where we ate lots of festival food (yakitori and kebobs, mostly), miraculously avoided getting crushed in the crowd of parade floats bearing dancers and men wearing lion heads, and basically had an awesome time. This lazy post (taken the next morning as we walked her mom's dog around the block) is because it's taking me some time to sort through the six hundred photos of the festival (anyone who's seen me with a camera at a photogenic event knows that this is not an exaggeration, though I'm sure my hard drive wishes it was). At any rate, many photos (though not six hundred, I promise) to follow (again, for real, I promise). 

kamakura with a holga


These aren't new, but it took me awhile to get these processed. At any rate, here's Kamakura again, except through a Holga (and Fuji Provia slide film, which is definitely my favorite film for Holgas). 




wishes.


A maniacally happy ... dog? dragon? 


oh, ajisai. I miss you.

I want to catch a monkey!

... and no, that isn't a euphemism for anything. "Rogue" monkeys are on the loose in Shizuoka prefecture! Despite the fact that they've been attacking people in nearby Mishima and Susono, Iain's students told us that the reward for trapping one is around ¥200,000 per rogue monkey, which runs somewhat contrary any warnings to stay away from them and their sharp teeth. While there have been no sightings in Numazu yet, Iain and I are keeping our eyes peeled. In the meantime, you too can stay appraised of the current monkey situation by checking in on the  Mishima city webpage, which is posting real time updates on the status of the marauders. And you thought Japan was a safe country...

happy birthday maggie!!


Above: it took me 2 months to get used to driving a motorbike in Vietnam. It took Maggie 10 minutes. 

Happy birthday to my lovely sister Maggie! It's been twenty six years of no longer being an only child, damnit awesomeness and fun and motorbike driving. Okay, the motorbike driving was only for a week when she came to visit in Hanoi, but still. 


Above: When you put lipstick on a pig in Bat Trang, it's still a cheaply made unfired ceramic pig that will crumble into a thousand pieces in your luggage. 

Since I think everyone can agree with me when I say my sister has grown up to be so pretty, I think it's OK to show you this photo of us in her more awkward days. Don't listen to them, Maggie. I think you looked super cute in that stripey red dress. 


Happy 26th Birthday, sisterface! 

bon odori video







above: those two little girls totally would have been me and Maggie back when we were kids. Oh, who I am kidding: that's still me.

Please excuse the video quality, I know it's not great. Apparently, much better video WAS taken that night by a news crew: the week after our vacation, one of my students excitedly burst into class convinced that she'd seen me dancing away on a television travel program about Gujo Hachiman. Though no one else has confirmed it, I do remember seeing the film crew and Kimiko, my student, was able to tell me what shirt I was wearing and how I had my hair, so I have a sinking suspicion that the flailing gaijin she'd seen was, in fact, me. Once the flames of horrified middle-school-esque mortification abided somewhat, I did start to think that it was kind of cool that I have quite possibly been on TV in China*, Vietnam** and Japan now. I know, compared the to the rest of my family, that's nothing, but, still, three times isn't that bad for the camera-shyest of all the Tokuda-Halls :-) And that pretty much wraps it up for our vacation, which was too short and lots of fun. Now I can go back to writing about our day to day lives, which means, these days, about how insanely painfully horribly inside-of-a-supernova hot it has been for the last month. On bad days, it gets to be about 96 degrees Fahrenheight in our kitchen, which makes doing anything - blogging, writing e-mails, studying Japanese, cooking, wearing clothes - feel like an unthinkable ordeal. Fortunately, on Wednesday night, the skies opened up and we got to feel our first typhoon. Iain and I jumped our on bikes and rode down through the pouring rain to the river - past cars uneasily navigating the suddenly flooded streets and the frank stares of the few remaining pedestrians wrapped in full-body raingear. It was *amazing*.




* when I was interviewed at the beginning of our summer camp back in Hai Ning in July 2009. I burbled a lot about teaching children how to express themselves, unaware that I would spend the next four weeks holding up flashcards of farm animals and then allowing the kid who responded fastest to fling a beach ball at the bullseye drawn on the board. They loved that game. 


** when Noa, a soon-to-be-coworker, and I were interviewed at the American Club's Big Day Out back in May 2008. This video may not have aired, thanks to the fact that neither Noa or I had any idea what Big Day Out was and were thus unable to provide any sort of meaningful insight - I'm pretty sure my interview was just me going, "You mean it's like, a thing? In Australia? Not just an excuse for expats to drink cheap beer in front of a giant kangaroo poster?" Incidentally, this was the same day I later met Iain! Fortunately for me, I managed to be a bit more articulate then.

takayama at night


We didn't actually spend that much time in Takayama proper, but the town at night is very pretty, with old fashioned buildings flanking the river. 


Pretty, at least, when it's not having *terrifying* giant nightmare mascot contests:


Above: Once again, I know very little about what's going on here, except that the guy in the red will give me nightmares for the rest of the year. 


Above: the courtyard outside our hostel.

It was a bit difficult to enjoy too much of Takayama's nightlife as our hostel was nestled in the middle of a shrine, which meant a strict schedule of curfews (10:00), lights out (11:00) and wake up loudspeakers (7:00). Still, it was quite cool to sleep inside a shrine, especially since our little tatami room overlooked the gardens - it was definitely the most remote and peaceful-feeling place I've ever stayed in the middle of a big city. 

hida no sato


For the other half of our vacation way back in August, Iain and I went to touristy, pretty Takayama, where the menus come in English, French and Japanese. A few hours away was the World Heritage site of Gassho-zukuri, but, because Iain and I are the lamest (and cheapest) tourists ever (and because we only had a day and wanted to see more things), we went instead to the much closer and much cheaper Hida-no-Sato, an open air museum featuring models of the similar old-fashioned houses. Though not in their original location, the house are, I think, the real things, rather than models, which made us feel a little less lame.


Hida-no-Sato is filled with different kinds of traditional Japanese houses (most of which are assigned imaginary owners, like "The Tanakas' House") that you can explore:


above: Iain, do not even think about using that thatched roofed shed. (Don't worry, he didn't actually touch it). 




Inside, you can see various types of farming equipment used in the area throughout history. The room above was filled with sledges for carrying logs. 


I felt a little silly skipping over the World Heritage site, but I'd still recommend the Hida folk village for anyone interested in a glimpse of old Honshu who doesn't want to spend $90 getting themselves to and in Gassho-zukuri. At the very least, that way you can save some money to try some of Takayama's famous Hida beef, back in town.

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