My Very First Japanese Bus Tour

Sakamoto-sensei treated me to a bus tour that took us to the Tottori Flower Gallery, a viking (that's what Japanese people call buffets) lunch, the Adachi Museum which is home to the Number One ranked Japanese Garden for 9 years running, and an okashi shop (a store that sells food gifts). I have a very cool Japanese tutor. We were joined by her friend, Araki-sensei, and her student Hannah-san, who is Canadian but has lived in Japan for four years so her Japanese is great.

The Tottori Flower Gallery is a botanical garden and will be really impressive in 6 more weeks. For now the highlight was the giant dome green house. It was full of perfect looking orchids. The outer edge of the garden is surrounded by a covered walk way so one can enjoy the flowers even during a summer rain. The huge glass dome and covered walk-way made me think a little bit about what a colony on Mars would look like. You could also get your picture taken with owls. Unlike in the west, where owls are a symbol for wisdom, in Japan they are a symbol for happiness and people were lining up to get there photos taken. I tried to find out if they were rescue animals but that concept was way too much for my Japanese and, even though Sakamoto-sensei's English is really good, beyond what she could understand.

We discovered something interesting while on the tour. Our guide would give us the time to be back at the bus and our group of four were always the last people to board. We were never late, usually we were five minutes early but always last. It even surprised Sakamoto and Araki-sensei (this was there first bus tour too). It seems like most of the people got off the bus, snapped their pictures, and then got back on the bus. We walked around, chatted, and took our time. Araki-sensei's English wasn't very good but she was one of the most talkative, out going, loud-in-a-good-way, Japanese women I've ever met. I think she and anyone with her (who could understand her) would have a good time anywhere, and be the last people back to the bus.

After we had our fill at the viking (I do miss American style salad bars - here there is shredded cabbage, shredded carrots, lettuce, a couple types of seaweed, corn, and maybe two dressing options) we drove to the museum. This is what Sakamoto-sensei and I were really excited about. However - here is the secret for being the number one ranked Japanese Garden – don't let the tourists walk around on your perfectly raked gravel. The garden surrounds the museum and you get to look at it through windows – a little disappointing for all of us. There was a pretty cool exhibit of Japanese art in the museum to ease our disappointment.

After that we headed to the okashi shop and ate too many free samples of Japanese sweets. I also picked up a seaweed condiment for Craig – apparently it is very healthy and he really likes it.

Here is Hannah-san at the Adachi museum, we were both encouraged to pose like the statues there.
Number One ranked Japanese Garden.
Hannah-san and I back lit from a window out to the graden.

Sakamoto-sensei, Hannah-san, and Araki-sensei.
Sakamoto-sensei in the flower dome.
One of the happy owls, I'm guessing the beak is under all the feathers.
The Mars style architecture.


Orchids and more orchids.
Me in front of the statue.
Sakamoto-sensei and I with orchid dresses.


Sakamoto-sensei and I with the owls. Behind us is a staple of any Japanese event or tourist destination, adult-sized, costumed, characters for little kids to high-five.
Here we are with flower kimonos on.
One last photo of me posing like a statue.

My Dinner with Sakamoto-sensei

Sakamoto-sensei invited me to her home while Craig was traveling and we (I really just watched) made quite the dinner. There was quiche, sushi, adzuki rice, tempura, rice with salmon, ginger, shiso leaves, egg, and nori mixed in, and almond cake for appetizer :)

Sounds like a lot but this is Japan and serving size is what's important - for example the quiche had only one egg in it. The sushi was tuna and she prepared it with olive oil, black pepper, wasabi, and soy sauce. I've never had sushi with olive oil and it was pretty delicious.



Her house was very nice and Western; there was one Japanese room with tatami mats.



This is the fruit of her labors and I think I can make everything she showed me - as quickly and efficiently, probably not.



She knows I don't drink green tea so she served sakura cha, cherry blossom tea. The cherry blossoms were dried and salted so the tea smelled really good and cherry-like but the flavor was salty.

Karaoke!!!

Last Saturday night we finally went to karaoke and it was fantastic. It was me, Craig, James-san from my Japanese class, and Natsuke-san James' coworker. The way it works here is you rent a room appropriate for your group size and only sing in front of your friends. There is also no stage, you just pass around wireless mics (which were packaged in plastic when we got there, cleanliness first). Our room was shaped like a space pod and even had neon light detailing. In the front was a big flat screen were the words would flash up, this is what everyone is looking at in the pictures. There were also images, usually bikini clad Japanese women frolicking on the beach; we've asked around and that's not uncommon - the images used, I don't know how often Japanese women frolic.

The top picture is Craig singing Paranoid by Black Sabbath. He even did an accent but said it was more Oliver Twist than Ozzy. I thought it rocked. James-san was clearly getting into it.


The first song of the night was our duet of Hotel California. We also did Rebel Yell, Smooth, and Paradise by the Dashboard Light (although it was edited down and I feel robbed). James-san, an Australian, picked songs by INXS and Men at Work.
Natsuke-san picked P-P-Poker Face, which we all joined in on, and a famous Japanese song the rest of us bopped our heads to. I can't wait to go again!

Inoshishi Matsuri (Prepare to have your mind cuteness blown)

Some of you might remember that we traveled to Sasayama months ago once I discovered there was a place that specialized in wild boar cuisine. Well, a couple weekends ago was an entire festival dedicated to Inoshshi. The festival consisted of two things - inoshishi races and food made with inoshishi.

Here is a ridiculously cute sight - a little dog dressed up as an Inoshishi. I asked his owner if I could take the picture using Japanese.


Three action shots of a race. The entire race track was probably only 50ft. The participants were actually baby inoshishi. The track was completely fenced in, it turns out inoshishi can jump pretty high. They began in a crate and had to run out a door onto the actual track when the race started. However, they never wanted to leave the box so it would take a few minutes after the starting gun (just a recording of the sound played on the sound system) before they appeared.

At a local souvenir shop there were piles of inoshishi inspired stuff to buy - these were the cutest.
Sweet bread shaped like inoshishi.
Less than half of the line waiting to buy roasted inoshishi.
And - roasted inoshishi. It looked pretty appetizing but not enough to wait in that line. We had inoshishi sausages and burgers instead. Those little babies were probably scared to leave the crate because they could smell their older brother on the spit.

Hiroshima

In order to combat holiday loneliness, we decided to take a trip right after Christmas. Traditionally, New Year's Day is when you visit family. It is also important to go to shrines and temples early in the new year so that's when people take vacation. We planned our trip to beat the crowds and left for Hiroshima the Monday after Christmas. We took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to the city and the overnight bus home. Our train was an unheard of 100min late. We've been told if the Shinkansen is running just a few minutes behind schedule it is news worthy, so stations must have been interrupting people's soap operas to tell them about our train. We still don't know what the hold up was. It only took us an hour to reach Hiroshima. It was sort of like being on a plane but without security screening and way more leg room. The night bus took 5.5 hours but cost half as much.

Because of the delay, by the time we found our hotel and checked in almost everything was closing for the day - remember things close at 5pm or earlier here. We walked around the Hiroshima castle grounds. There were a couple of trees that survived the atomic bomb and marked with plaques but most stuff had to be reconstructed, repaired, and regrown. This is true for the city, not just Hiroshima castle.

Then we walked over the the A-bomb Dome. This is the epicenter of the attack, the atomic bomb exploded 600 meters above this building. The city keeps the remains as a monument to peace and the hope of one day there being full nuclear disarmament.

That evening we had Hiroshima style okonomiyaki. Every Japanese person who knew we were going insisted we had to try Hiroshima style. We're used to Osaka style where people mix cabbage into a pancake-like batter, fry that up, put some kind of topping on, and then slather it in sauce. In Hiroshima things are in layers. There is a bottom pancake, cabbage, noodles, top pancake, topping and then the sauce. I think both are equally delicious.

The next day we took a ferry to Itsukushima island, specifically Miyajima. This island is famous for being one of the three great views of Japan, a list that was established in the 1600's. The Itsukushima shrine has a giant torii gate which is out in the water during high tide and easily approachable during low tide.

We decided to climb to the highest point on the island via stone stairs. It was literally an hour and 40min of walking up stairs. There was a shrine on the top and a 360 degree view of the island.

The shrine at the top had lots of what we refer to as Japanese putti.

We opted to take the cable car down the mountain and were able to walk up to and touch the torri gate at low tide.

We went to Shukukeien gardens and the Peace Memorial Park and Museum on our last day. The gardens were originally established in 1620 and had your Japanese garden staples – stone lanterns, koi (carp) pond, trickling streams, elegantly placed stones, tea house etc. You could buy food to feed to the carp and they would pile on top of each other to get to it. We've decided that we are no longer going to refer to over eating as “ate like a pig” but rather “ate like a koi.”

After the garden we walked through the Peace park and took about 3 hours going through the museum - everything was written in Japanese and English. The museum began with a history of Hiroshima up to the bombing, then it went into the historical development of the bomb – they even mentioned Lise Meitner but gave Otto Hahn too much credit. They then showed and described the aftermath. This was the gory section. There was a photo of a woman who was wearing a kimono with a black pattern at the time of the blast. All of the black sections were burned into her skin from the heat of the explosion.

Every time a country does any nuclear testing the current mayor of Hiroshima sends them a letter expressing concern and a desire to end all nuclear weapons programs. Copies are hung in the museum and there are way too many of them.