Irresistable Cuties

Just about everything in Japan has a cute character associated with it - even fighter jets! The most common type though, is the food character. Even "nato", Japan's famously foul-smelling fermented soybean dish has it's own character: Nato-Chan. She brings a veritable taste sensation to your mouth, along with her friends shoyu-man (soy sauce man), negi-ko (shallot-kid), tofu-chan (tofu girl), karashi-chan (mustard girl), miso-chan (fish-paste girl), tounyu-chan (tofu-milk-girl), kinakoko (soy flour kid), yubarin (tofu paper thing). Though it's a bit morbid how the poor little guys are being snapped up by chopsticks and devoured. It's kind of like the sentient cow in the restaurant at the end of the universe that urges you to try out its tastiest bits.

Internet Telephone

I had to call Australia to organise travel insurance, and decided to try using Skype for it. I have used their free service for a while for computer-to-computer calls over the Internet, and their rates for calling actual phones long distance from my computer are very low, so I went online and bought $15 worth of credit with them. They processed the order immediately and I was soon calling Flight Centre in Australia from my computer. The 3 minute call cost me 10 cents! Two minutes after I finished the call, my mobile phone started ringing. It was a call from my credit card company asking if I had authorised the purchases I had just made from Skype and Flight Centre! It was both re-assuring and a little freaky at the same time.

Dontsuku Festival

I recently went to see the "Dontsuku" festival in the quiet seaside town of Inatori. It's on the East coast of the Izu peninsular, which is famous for its natural hot spring baths. I went with my friend Neill, his wife Yuko, two of Neill's middle-aged English students, and some exchange students who were visiting from Malaysia. We took a leisurely 3 hour drive there, stopping by a quiet mountain town in central Izu for lunch at a great Soba restaurant. It felt great to be out in the countryside.

The festival takes place at night, so we wandered around the town looking for a nice Onsen (hot spring bath) to soak in. We found a hotel next to the ocean that had some baths available to the public. They were on the top floor, and both indoor and outdoor baths had great views! I also tried out their automatic foot massage machines - very nice! The sound of music drifted up to us, so we struggled out of the baths and made our way down to the main street where the festival was starting with dancing in the streets.

Then the parade started, which was made up of several groups of people (mainly girls) carrying shrines with statues of the local god inside. I should mention at this point that the local god has a lot to do with fertility and harmonious marital relations. They were working up quite a sweat jumping around with the shrines in time to a leader's vigorous whistling as they paraded, shouting and laughing along the way. One of the things they were chanting was "Don Don Tsuku Tsuku", which means "steadily/rapidly thrust thrust"!

Then the main shrine was brought out by a group of men. They were struggling a bit (that thing must have weighed tonnes) but the audience urged them along with cheering and clapping. It was great to experience such an easy-going atmosphere like this, because it goes against the typical stereotypes of Japanese people being reserved and shy.

After the parade the girls were more than happy to pose for a photo, as foreigners weren't very common in town. (I only saw 3 others at the festival.)
These spirits called Tengu were on many festival decorations.

Then there was some more usual festival entertainments like Shamisen and Taiko musicians, and the obligatory celebrity performance and rice-cake throwing. I didn't rush forward with the crowd to catch rice-cakes this time, but one came flying overhead and I made a fantastic one-handed catch. Too bad my reflexes weren't like that when I was playing cricket!

To finish the festival off, there was a spectacular fireworks show out over the sea, and as a finale a very long niagra (waterfall) firework was set off. It was a long drive back home after that, but we'd had a very interesting day!

Love Thy Neighbour

(I've resorted to catchy titles for entries that don't have any interesting photos to go with them.) I've only seen the lady living in the next apartment once before and she seemed rather surprised when I said hello to her in passing. I've christened her "the elephant lady", and although that might sound mean (she's not that fat) she deserves it in my mind. The walls between apartments are quite thin, and I can hear enough of what she does in the kitchen to form some kind of vague image of the type of meal she's making. Often at 2am. I don't know when she sleeps because at seven in the morning I can hear her stomping around in a rush, slamming cupboards, and then running out the door to work. I've taken to sleeping with my head at the other end of the bed, which helps quite a bit and she hasn't been too bad lately. I haven't wanted to stir up a fuss, so I haven't said anything to the rental agency (I don't know anough Japanese to explain myself properly either), but the other night I was pretty annoyed when she started playing loud music at midnight. I thought she'd eventually turn it down, but it kept going, and even woke up the guy in the apartment on the other side of me, who hit the wall and then started doing his laundry - perhaps as revenge? Maybe he thought it was me playing the music? It was really weird. By 1am I'd had enough, and got out of bed, trying to think of what to say to her in Japanese. I didn't want to be too rude, so decided on "your music is interesting, but it's 1am and I want to sleep". I knew I'd never be able to understand anything if she decided to argue, but anyway I rang her doorbell and stood in front of the peep-hole. Nobody answered the door, though the music stopped, so I guess the message got through without the need for language...

The Gentle Man's Game

Last weekend I met a bunch of foreigners (mostly brits, aussies and new zealanders) who belong to the local cricket club, and on Sunday I played a game with them in the Area 2nd division league. It was a lot of fun, though I hadn't played in around 15 years since when I was in primary school, and my skills were a little lacking - I was bowled out mid-wicket on the first bowl... However I made up for that with some great fielding. More enthusiasm than skill really - throwing myself in front of the ball to stop it rather than scooping it up gracefully.

The people on my team were all very friendly though the other team from Tokyo seemed a little stuck-up. (They arrived together in brand new uniforms emblazoned with dragons while our team turned up whenever their hangovers had worn off, wearing whatever white-ish clothes were at hand). It was a close game and expletives were flying thick and fast (mostly from my team). However we did end up winning, after which we headed off to the clubhouse (a large private room in a nearby pub) for a post-mortem and a beer.