Wondering While Wandering: August 2004

Travel Tips

This will be a section on places I have visited that I like. Some of the names of sights may not be listed due to lack of knowledge or Japanese language ability. This is kind of for my own records but if you are interested in visiting Japan, enjoy!

1. Hagi- Hagi city has many places to do your daily shopping. The city is known for its fine pottery. There is an area of town that I believe contains old samurai residences. At the end of this area there is a nice shrine. My favorite area is the Hagi Castle Town. Again, many famous residences and the next block over contains galleries of artists that have created the Hagi pottery. I enjoyed this area most and I found a fabulous gallery with a restaurant attached (definately off the beaten path).

2. Tsuwano (Shimane-ken)- Tsuwano is a town set deep in a valley in Shimane-ken. You drive down a winding route 9 until you see a large Torii at the side of the road. You drive through this Torii and it is a gateway to the town. You can see on the other side of the valley a large Shinto shrine built in the mountain side. You can climb up to this by stairs covered with 1100 torii. When you reach the top there is a little village of red, white , and green Shinto shrines. This is called Taikodani-Inari-jinja. From there you can take a rickedy chair lift to the summit of the mountain and walk to the castle ruins (unfortunately I missed out on the ruins because I couldn't read Japanese and didn't realize they were over there! Down in the town there are many tourist shops that are quite nice. Along the main road there is a canal that holds over 60000 coi or carp. There is also a catholic church in the town that has tatami mats rather than pews.

3. Yanai- The main purpose if this little weekend trip was to visit my JET friends on the south coast of Yamaguchi. Yanai is your average city, comparable to suburbs of Columbus or Cleveland. Tons of shopping, but nothing too outrageous or out of the ordinary, places to eat and drink but nothing too fancy. It would be a nice place to live and my friends Katherine (Manchester) and Lauren (York,UK) are lucky enough to live there. In the surrounding towns I have a few friends Ellen (Melbourne, Aus) and Kirk (Oakland, CA) that were able to hang out as well. In the evening we went to a neighboring town called Kuga that has a wonderful little tourist trap. It is called Sanzoku Toride (or Bandit Fortress) it looks kind of like a pagoda set in the mountains. I don't think it has any historical value. This venue is full of restaurants serving fabulous food, the most popular dishes being yakitori (grilled chicken on a stick) and onigiri (rice wrapped in nori-seaweed with little treats shoved in the middle). There are also little tourist shops to buy Japanese crap (for lack of a better word). After that we went to a quaint little bar called "Gotcha" which is owned by an English guy and then off to karaoke. Excellent hyaku-en shop (dollar store) there!

Japanese Enkai

Here is a description of a Japanese enkai or office party. I have had 3 so far and they have all been equally enjoyable. The first enkai I had was at my BOE in the party room upstairs. This was to celebrate the fish caught by the fishermen. The second I had was my welcome party and it was held at the golf course which was very nice and a bit more formal. Finally, we had an enkai in Masuda at a restaurant. I will try to give you the main happenings at an enkai.

First of all you arrive (of course) and someone shows you where to sit. Sometimes seats are assigned other times not. By the end of the party everyone has switched seats to talk to the others. There usually is a speech given by someone thanking them for food or whatever the occasion may be. Then comes the kampai (the toast). Someone will pour you a glass of beer and you must wait for the kampai before you take a sip. From then on the night is full of eating and drinking. You must never pour your own drink, but don`t worry there is always someone around to pour you more beer even if you haven`t taken a sip out of your glass. If someone does offer you more beer you kindly take a sip out of your full beer and allow them to pour you more. Needless to say, you can get quite drunk at an enkai. Finally at the end of the night everyone stands up throws their arms in the air and yells "bansai"!

Summer Vacation

My summer vacation consists of sitting either at the board of education or at the junior high school writing emails and studying Japanese. All of the teachers are required to be at school during their summer holiday and most of the students show up. During their break they show up wearing their gym uniforms and continue to clean the school each morning, study and practice their sports. Now what is the point of this so called summer break? Absolutely nothing! All of my coworkers have a yasumi (paid holiday) coming up and I still have to go the the BOE and do nothing. Again makes no sense.

Despite this short ranting, I really don`t mind. Being at the school and BOE has given me the chance to get to know my coworkers and even hang out with them. We have had several enkais (soon to be described) and other fun activities. They even invited me to go to Tokyo with them in February.

During my summer vacation I have had the opportunity to have some very nice weekend trips. The two nearest large cities are called Hagi and Masuda (Shimane-ken). I have two friends from New Zealand that live in Hagi named Dan and Rosie. We often go there for dinner and shopping (hyaku-en shop and DIK). Masuda is usually my one stop shop for groceries and many other necessities. You will all be hearing these cities a lot. I should mention my other friend Christine who is from Vancouver and lives about 8 minutes away. We see eachother a lot during the week. There have also been weekends where I have been able to see JETs from all over Yamaguchi-ken. Just last weekend we all met for a day of bowling and then out to eat at a Korean BBQ. Everyone seems very kind and fun. So this has been my summer vacation, nice eh? Gochisosamadeshita!

Welcome to the Blog

Hi Everyone!

I am actually unsure how this thing works but I hear this is a great way to share information and hopefully photos. Consider this first post a test.

I will tell you that I am living in Japan in a little town called Tamagawa-cho. There are 3800 people that live here and they all seem fairly friendly. The town has all the necessities: a grocery store, post office, bank, schools, spa and golf course. It is right on the Sea of Japan in the mountains with a river running right through it.

The only problem so far is the language barrier. Luckily my co-workers are trying their best to accomodate my suffering Japanese abilities. They are constantly teaching me phrases and vocabulary words. I am trying to do the same with English, after all, that is my job. Well I hope you all enjoy this blog!