Recap: Beppu Adventures

Let's take a trip back in TIME to Tuesday.  Mary had to go into school and it was raining pretty hard, which kind of ruled out sightseeing (plus, I didn't particularly feel like getting excessively lost), so I mostly just hung around Mary's place, did some tax stuff, did some paperwork for Fulbright, read a little...it wasn't all that exciting.  BUT that afternoon Tatara-san picked me up so I could go talk to this guy she knows who "knows a lot about Shinto."  As it turned out...he wasn't actually a priest, but rather a guy who wanted to be a priest but instead became a martial artist and masseuse for reasons that aren't incredibly clear to me?  But he was interesting to talk to, and had some...unusual opinions.  I doubt I'll be able to use any of it in my research paper for the end of Fulbright, but it was still interesting and gave me more opportunities to practice my poker face.

Tuesday night Mary and I went to Gyoza Kaikan, which is a restaurant that sells gyoza (potstickers, for anyone who doesn't know the Japanese term), rice, and ramen.  And nobody in their right mind orders the ramen, because their potstickers are SO DELICIOUS OM NOM NOM.  I might have eaten there three times already.  It brings a whole new level of hole-in-the-wall to hole-in-the-wall, though.  Also, the lower level of the restaurant smells very strongly of...sweat-soaked dudes (the primary clientele), I guess.  It's kind of gross, but the food is great, so I don't really care.

Anyway!

Wednesday I woke up Way Too Early to hop on a train to Fukuoka where I was supposed to take a bus with Sara and Alyssa and some of their friends to Beppu.  (You can see Sara's post as well as some other pictures of Beppu here.)  Unfortunately, it snowed a microscopic amount the previous night, which meant that the entire city of Fukuoka ground to a halt in dread and all the buses out of the city stopped running.  ALL THE BUSES.  I'd like to point out that IT WASN'T EVEN SNOWING ANYMORE.

So instead we had to take a train, which was slightly more expensive but took less time, so all's well that ends pretty okay, I guess.

We met Alex in Beppu, where, stepping outside of the station, we got our first taste of the thing Beppu is famous for:

Onsen!

Yep, Beppu is home to some of Japan's most famous onsen!  Which was basically why we were there.

Also outside of the station was this:

...I...I have no words.

Take a moment to drink in this sight.

...I...what.  WHAT.  SHINY UNCLE????

Oh, yay, there are two demon children hanging off his cloak.

Oh, and they're naked.  And apparently boys.

WHAT.

THE.

FORK.

I don't even know whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

So then we went and got lunch at this restaurant with weirdly shaped spoons, but Shiny Uncle still haunted our thoughts.

So theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen we caught a shuttle bus up the mountain to the hotel we were staying at!

It was potentially the classiest hotel I have ever set foot in, not even kidding.  There were four of us staying in one room, but our room could have easily fit 6-8 people.  Also, the view:

Beppu!

We also got yukata to change into in our rooms.

Look at me, failing at pictures whoooo.

So then we went to...THE ONSEN.

The onsen was CRAZY INTENSE.  There were gender-segregated onsen and a gender-neutral onsen that you had to wear a swimsuit into, so we went into the gender-segregated one first.  It was sooooo niiiiice and also HUGE.  It was also an actual factual onsen, which meant that it smelled vaguely of sulfur, so I now understand what rotten eggs smell like.  Anyway, there were a bunch of different pools of varying hotness, and also a cold pool for when you felt like freezing all your skin off before burning it all off again.  There were also a bunch of little old ladies who were SUPER INTERESTED in us, but especially Sara because she is WHITE.  They were all petting her skin, which, I dunno, I'd definitely find that pretty uncomfortable, but Sara handled it very classily.

I have no idea what the boys were doing at the time, but it probably looked like this:

Continuing my glorious tradition of referencing Gurren Lagann every time I go to an onsen!

We also wound up hopping into the gender-neutral onsen later, although the gender-segregated one turned out to be nicer. It was nice being able to hang out with the guys, but wearing a swimsuit in an onsen just feels really weird to me.  It would be like bathing with a swimsuit on.  I don't think I'd mind a gender-neutral actual onsen (with nudity whooo) as long as nobody got weird at me (or weirder than usual, 'cause people are usually kind of weird at me in onsen). I guess swimsuit onsen are pretty okay if you're uncomfortable with being naked around other people, though.  Although then I'd have to wonder why you're bothering going to an onsen and not a heated pool, but WHATEVER.

Our dinner was a Crazy Intense Buffet at the hotel, which had everything you could ever possibly dream of eating in your life.  I ate SO MUCH FRUIT.  And it was all delicious.

The hotel, by the way, had potentially the weirdest floor layout I have ever seen in my life.  You would walk and walk and walk for what seemed like miles, up escalators and down escalators and through twisting passageways and past that weird arcade and by that weird cow statue and EVENTUALLY you would get to the entrance to the onsen at which point you would take an elevator up a floor and then walk up more stairs and down more stairs and through more twisting passageways and EVENTUALLY you would get to the changing room.  It was preeeeeeetty weird.  I have no idea how they had all that space.  It took us an insanely long time to get to dinner, because we had to walk and walk and walk and walk.

So after dinner we played Apples to Apples and I was terribly slaughtered but it was still fun, so oh well.  And then we went for one last dip in the onsen before bed.  The funny thing about onsen is that they are EXHAUSTING.  We were laughing because it was 10:30 at night and everyone was exhausted and all we had done all day was ride a train, sit in the onsen, and eat.  Well, and walk through the hotel, I guess.

The next morning!

Sara found the smallest possible cereal spoon.

Also, she makes great faces at 8 a.m.

Alyssa and Bruce squared off against each other at That Taiko Game!

Beppu was really foggy!

I had a really long ride to Osaka, so I bid everyone else goodbye at around 11 and headed to the station.

And then I did this:

...just kidding, I actually went to Osaka, but that will have to wait until next time!

Shimabara adventures

Greetings, from "balmy" Kyushu, where the temperature is approximately colder than is entirely comfortable!  I arrived on Friday night and told bad jokes at Mary and made her spew her tea everywhere.  It was exciting.

Saturday I was feeling a little bit under the weather, so we had a fairly quiet day in.  We did make a chocolate decadence cake though, which was sooooooooooooo tasty, and I attacked Mary with ponies, because I will shakubuku her like WHOA.

Today I was finally reunited with Alyssa, another Fulbrighter, who I haven't seen since orientation in September!  Alyssa is based out of Fukuoka and doing really cool research on pottery and also speaks the most gorgeous Japanese ever.  Whenever she opens her mouth a flock of angels flies out.  JAPANESE-SPEAKING angels.
Alyssa and Mary and I were kidnapped by Tatara-san and taken to Shimabara, which is waaaaaaaaaaaaay to heck and gone, but we drove along the Ariake Sea and it was BEAUTIFUL.  Unfortunately, I got carsick and pathetic on the way there, as I am prone to do.  But we stopped at a convenience store and I bought gum and then I wasn't as pathetic anymore.

Anyway, finally we arrived in Shimabara, where we went to a random hotel with attached restaurant.

And we had shabu shabu, which is where you dump a bunch of vegetables in boiling broth and then you take thin pieces of pork and swish them around in the broth (making a shabu shabu noise) and EAT THEM ALL OM NOM NOM.

And we also had nabe, which is where you throw a bunch of stuff in a pot until it is cooked and then EAT IT OM NOM NOM.

Also, the shabu shabu pot was adorable.

This was the view from the restaurant.

SEA.

As you can probably tell, though, the weather was kind of lame.

Mary and Tatara-san!

They are pals.

The decor was REALLY INTERESTING.  I am a fan of the tree-columns.

...look at me failing to take pictures of the food until after I have eaten all of it.

Zenzai for dessert!  OM NOM NOM.

Mary was enjoying her zenzai way too much.

...or maybe I was making dumb jokes at her.

YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.

This was the front of the hotel.  GORGEOUS.  They had a table that was basically a giant chunk of wood that had been varnished and had a castle wall carved along the top edge.  SO COOL.

Also, GORGEOUS SCENERY.

This is Mt. Unzen, which SUDDENLY EXPLODED 20 years ago and wiped out swaths of land with FIERY DEATH.  Fortunately, a nearby mountain protected most of the town from FIERY DEATH, so only about 40 people died.

Also, it is the cause of the worst volcano-related disaster in Japanese history?  Yup.

This rock is staring at you.

O.O

O.O

O.O

Then we went to a random park where they preserved a bunch of the houses which were hit by FIERY DEATH.

...yes, the ground is exactly where you think it is.

I would not want to be in that house while it was being hit by FIERY DEATH.

...because people will always throw money at things.

I don't even know.

So theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen we went to Shimabara Castle.

BAM, CASTLES.

Suddenly, we were attacked by NINJA and SAMURAI and A GUY DRESSED LIKE A EUROPEAN????

I really like the guy in the back with the spear.

P.S. I totally stole Mary's jacket and it doesn't fit me.

P.P.S. I always seem to steal Mary's clothes when I come over.  HMMMM.

The castle had a collection of fascinating Hidden Christian artifacts,* including a bunch of statues of the Virgin Mary, which were disguised as statues of Kannon.  They also had these weird/terrifying/interesting stained glass windows which depicted people accused of being Christians being tortured by having boiling water poured over them and being burned to death and being drowned.  Not the prettiest sight.  The whole exhibit made me wish I knew more about Hidden Christians, so I'm probably going to check the Nanzan library for a book on the subject.

Views from the top of Shimabara Castle!

Silly fence, getting in the way of my view.

THE SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEA.

Also, it was really cold.

So then we got back in the car and drove and drove and drove and I fell asleep, and then we stopped and got CLAMS for cooking later, and then we drove and drove and drove some more and got lost in a rice field and then drove and drove and drove and drove and drove and finally arrived back in Takeo.

Man, so much driving.

By the way, this is the chocolate decadence cake we made!  We gave some to Tatara-san (and I also gave her omiyage from Nagoya).

And now I am staring at Mary and wigging her out.

O.O

O.O

O.O

I'mwatchingyou,Mary.

So, yeah, that's what I've been up to!

*The Hidden Christians were people who refused to give up their faith even after the Tokugawa shogunate outlawed Christianity, and came up with all sort of interesting places to hide crosses and statues of Mary and Jesus.

Izumo adventures

Yay, here's the Izumo post FINALLY.  And this time I WILL NOT LET MY COMPUTER BE RIDICULOUS.

But first!

This is what the walkway by the side of Nanzan looks like right now.  SO MANY FLOWERS.

Anyway.  Izumo.

Two of our classmates came up on the night bus, so we met them at the station pretty early on Saturday morning.  We then took a train over to Izumo Taisha station, where

...there was a giant torii in the road.  'cause why not?

Anyway, we headed outside the torii to see the old Izumo Taisha station, which was built in 1912, I believe?  It stopped being used as a station sometime in the 1990s or early 2000s, but the city decided to preserve it as a sort of museum.

Most realistic dummies ever, right?

Don't you wish stations now had random tea rooms?

These are basically the classiest ticket gates.

Izumo has a thing about rabbits.  It's mostly because of a story about Ookuninushi-no-mikoto (the main deity of Izumo Taisha) and a rabbit.  I'll save that story for another time, though.

Tracks toward the mountains!

They had an old engine you could climb on, if you wanted to be a giant dork.

OLD ENGINES ARE EXCITING.

The tracks just sort of...stop.  It's kind of funny, actually.  There's a random sidewalk at the end of them.

It might be slightly hard to tell from these pictures, but there are these weird-looking turtles all over the roof of the station.  That's because turtles were considered to be messengers of the kami, and also because there's a mountain in the area named "Turtle Mountain."

So then we trekked back through the giant torii!

It's really ridiculously huge.

Here's another statue of Ookuninushi-no-mikoto and the rabbit.

The cool thing about Izumo is that there are pictures and statues of various different myths and legends EVERYWHERE.

Here's the shrine!

Everything was pretty dead-ish, since it was winter and all.

This is apparently a statue of one of the myths that I don't know.  Need to do some more reading.

Oh, hey, yet another statue of Ookuninushi-no-mikoto and the rabbit!

...okay, I'll tell you the story.

Ookuninushi-no-mikoto (who, by the way, has about a bazillion names) had eighty brothers,* and all his brothers decided to go to woo an extremely beautiful women.  They made Ookuninushi-no-mikoto carry their bags, because they were great brothers.

Anyway, as they were walking along, they came across a rabbit with no fur.  They told the rabbit that it should go bathe in salt water and then lie on top of a mountain and let the wind blow on it.

Needless to say, the rabbit found this experience incredibly painful, and by the time Ookuninushi-no-mikoto showed up, it was crying in pain.  It turned out that the reason the rabbit had no fur was because it had deceived a crocodile** into forming a bridge from another island to the mainland, by telling him that they should have a contest to see who had more relatives (and the rabbit would count the crocodile's relatives by hopping across the tops of their heads to the mainland).  The crocodile realized the deception right before the rabbit made it to land and skinned the rabbit.

Anyway, Ookuninushi-no-mikoto told the rabbit to wash in the river and then roll in a special kind of pollen. When the rabbit did this, its skin and fur was healed.  The rabbit thanked Ookuninushi-no-mikoto and told him that he would be the one to gain the incredibly beautiful woman all his brothers were going to woo.

When Ookuninushi-no-mikoto showed up with his brother's bags, the incredibly beautiful woman (who may or may not have been a princess) said, "Actually I am going to marry Ookuninushi-no-mikoto," which, needless to say, ticked off his brothers and they killed him twice, but that's another story entirely.

My classmates bought omikuji, and all of them got ranked as either the highest or the secondest high luck and apparently all of them are likely to get married this year?

Izumo Taisha is, if you remember from the Kaminazuki discussion before, where all the kami go for their big meeting in October.  Needless to say, that's A LOT of kami packed into a not very big space.

(Although, the main section of the shrine was under construction, so we didn't get to see it.  Story of my life.)

This moss was dripping freezing water and flecks of ice everywhere.

Sometimes I take pictures of weird things.

You can see the construction tent back there...

SO MANY EMA.

Also, Izumo Taisha is a LURVE SHRINE.  Well, to be entirely correct, it is THE lurve shrine.  If you want to get married, this is where you go.  Basically everything in the area has enmusubi written all over it.  I mean, I bought some tea, and it turned out to be ENMUSUBI TEA.  Some of the shops were selling ENMUSUBI ZENZAI, which had heart-shaped mochi in it.  (It also cost more than normal zenzai.)

...but even at love shrines you can find things like this.

Sake!

Here's that statue from before, just close up this time.

I really need to figure out what story this is.

So then we headed over to the History of Izumo Museum, which was more like the Really Old Stuff from Izumo Museum.  Also, they allowed pictures, hurrah!

This is apparently what Izumo Taisha used to look like.

SO MANY STAIRS.

At this point we went to see a movie which was a compilation of Ookuninushi-no-mikoto stories.  It kind of looked like part of it had been made by some B students in an animation class, part of it had been made by some C students in a green screening class, and part of it had been made by some pretty okay students in an acting class.  The actors (with the exception of one) were all real people, but the sets were either clearly CG (and not good CG; think computer games 10 years ago) or rotoscoped pictures.  And the rabbit was CG.  And I could only really tell it was a rabbit because the narrator said it was a rabbit.  But it was a kind of fun movie, in a really cheesy yet sincere way.

And then it was back to the museum!

Really old hammers!

This was a movie about life in ancient Izumo.  This dude is dumping this lady because she is not hot enough.  It is really sad.  The lady should go out and find dudes who are more appreciative of her singing skills.

Really old bells!

Really old (from the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE) swords!  REALLY OLD.

Swords from the 6th century CE!

Well, you have now seen stone tools from Shimane 30,000 years ago.  I hope all you archaeology people are happy.

Anyway, after that we got lunch (Izumo soba, which is meibutsu and also DELICIOUS) and then hopped on a train where I fell asleep and my entire class moved to the other side of the train without bothering to tell me so when I woke up I freaked out and thought they had left without me.  But they hadn't.

So then we went to the Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum in Matsue, where Hearn lived for 14 months (and met his wife).  It was small but really cool!  I learned a lot about Lafcadio Hearn.

Then we went for a walk through Matsue...

OH MY GOSH SNOW EVERYBODY DOWN

Oh, hey, look, it's Matsue Castle!  I guess we can go up there...

SHRINE.

CASTLE WHOOOO

But it was closing as we arrived, so we couldn't go inside.

The sky was really gorgeous.  I think I'm just used to the sky in Nagoya, which is really grey and kind of depressing, so whenever I get out of Nagoya I get obsessed with how pretty the sky is.

And here's the shrine at the bottom of the hill again.

Definitely one of the cooler lion-dogs I have seen.

Snow and plants on the roof!  What more could you ask for?

So then we headed back toward the station...

SKY.

So then we headed back to Izumo, got dinner, and bid the guys taking the night bus back to Nagoya farewell before heading off to bed ourselves.

The next day!

We went HERE.

I would talk about the significance of this random rock in the middle of the beach, but I don't really know, except that it's sacred.  I think it's linked to one of the myths I haven't read, 'cause I kept seeing pictures of Ookuninushi-no-mikoto dragging a rock from the sea onto shore...

The weather was really weird.  First it snowed and then it snowed and rained at the same time and then it was raining on one side of the street and snowing on the other...

OCEAN!

So then we went wandering through the surrounding town and found a little museum of a bunch of pottery from the area.  It was really gorgeous!  I really liked the museum.

And then we headed back toward Izumo Shrine/the bus stop:

Hard to tell from this picture, but there's snow on the mountains.  WHOO, SNOW.

Anyway, after that we got zenzai and then took a bus back to the station where we caught a train to Okayama where we caught another train back to Nagoya.

And that was the end of the Izumo adventures.

*"Eighty" could just mean "a lot."  In older Japanese, big numbers that start with eight usually just mean "a lot."  Like the term 八百万の神々 (eighty thousand kami) is used to signify that there are a lot of kami in Japan, not that there are literally eighty thousand.

**Or a shark, depending on who you ask. Or sometimes a sea monster.