November 3, 2008
My life in Japan has normalized. I’m not fluent in Japanese, but I make my way around. I don’t know every nook in my town, but I know how to navigate my way around the area. And while Japan does sometimes surprise me, it’s not exotic anymore.
In August, the new ALTs arrived, including Victoria, who’s from Canada. Watching Victoria, it’s sort of a revelation on how much we’ve learned in a year. When she remarks about the foot deep open gutters at the side of the road or can’t find her way from the library to the supermarket or asks me for help on how to transfer money using the ATM, I remember (fondly) how I had to adjust to Japan only one month ago.
Enough nostalgia. Since August, nothing big has happened to me. The weather has, of course, cooled down, to the point where I’ve had to close my windows and wear gloves when I ride my bike to school in the mornings. But it’s not cold enough for the teachers to bring out the kerosene stoves.
In the meantime I had a few enkais (drinking parties) with teachers from my school, I’ve taught lessons on grammar and holiday and writing postcards, I’ve been to a Vietnamese concert. In October Vickie hosted a Canadian Thanksgiving party (apparently they have it a month earlier than we do). I made mashed potatoes. We didn’t have turkey, but we did have stuffing and a sweet potato casserole and cute little pumpkin pies. Oh, and an actual, normal-sized, homemade apple pie. It was absolutely delicious. I ate it with vanilla ice cream and thought of my grandpa.
But recently the most exciting news I’ve had is going to Ibusuki over a three day weekend. Ibusuki is a small town in my prefecture. Imagine Kagoshima Prefecture as a pair of pants straddling the Kinko Bay. My town of Kanoya is on the right pant leg, what is called the Osumi Peninsula. Ibusuki is on the left pant leg, called the Satsuma Peninsula. I had wanted to explore the Satsuma Peninsula, but, being that there’s a large body of water blocking my way, it did take a little planning.
The trip was a little unusual for me in that this time I didn’t go alone. I mentioned my trip to Victoria and asked her if she wanted to go. To my surprise, she said yes. Apparently she wants to do as much traveling as she could in Japan, but she does have a little problem: she speaks almost no Japanese. I do, but, as you know, I don’t have a car and that makes it hard to get around in the…ahem…more rural areas (such as Ibusuki and the Satsuma peninsula). Vickie has a car, so it was a good trade-off—I handled the translation and she handled the driving.
On Saturday, November 1st, we left the house at 9:00 and drove south along the coast until we came to the ferry. It was a scenic drive and a nice boat ride. We arrived at the Satsuma Peninsula at around noon and drove to Ibusuki. After a café lunch of soy-sauce flavored rice with chicken and mushrooms, we walked down to the beach, where the major attraction of Ibusuki was. What Ibusuki is known for—it’s reason for being—is the sand baths.
Sand baths. We paid a fee, changed into yukatas (light Japanese kimonos), and walked down to the beach. Under a covered tarp, many workers were scooping out shallows for people to lie in and covering them with sand. They showed us how to wrap our small towel around our head so as not to get sand in our hair. Then, quickly and efficiently, they shoveled sand onto us, until everything but our heads were buried.
The first thing I noticed about the sand was that it felt heavy. It felt as if my body had been sucked into one of those air-tight containers and I couldn’t freely move. I wiggled my toes just to assure myself I could move.
Although the sand had been only lukewarm, it started to feel very hot before long. My body began to sweat. We weren’t supposed to stay in the sand baths longer than fifteen minutes, but to be honest, I don’t think we stayed longer than ten. Time seemed to expand. I was a bit uncomfortable, but in a meditative sort of way. I felt my pulse through my body, pounding within the sand. It was very strange.
We rose from the sand like Frankenstein’s monster rising from the grave and then we went to the public baths. It was Victoria’s first time in a public bath, which, as you know, is segregated by sex, but everyone is naked. Vickie adjusted quickly, even washing her hair before entering the bath. The public bath was actually the opposite of the sand bath—it starts off scorching hot, but if you sit in it a while, eventually you get used to it.
We were very refreshed after our baths. I have to say one thing about Japanese baths—it may seem strange, but man it makes you feel good—very healthy and relaxed. We hunted down our ryokan—our Japanese hotel. Do you know, I had no map, no instructions and had to call the ryokan the day of to get directions (in Japanese)? But it turned out to be surprisingly easy to find; it was right next to the sand baths.
After that, we pretty much called it a night.
The next day was our big travel day. We drove to Chiran, another small town, about 40 minutes away. I was so glad we had a car. After a year and a half of getting by on public transportation, it was a revelation to drive wherever we wanted, whatever time we wanted, no worrying about bus schedules, stopping whenever we felt like it. The freedom of it! And it was so relaxing—for me, anyway—I wasn’t driving.
The first place we went to was the Peace Museum for “Kamikaze” pilots. Of course, I knew about the “kamikaze” (“divine wind”) pilots who would fly into U.S. ships and blow themselves up—chilling to think about, especially after 9/11—but I had never really thought about where they came from. Somewhere. But little did I know that in my very Peninsula, in this small inconsequential town, these young pilots gathered and were later deployed for their last mission.
The museum had many uniforms, letters, and even full planes. But it was probably the pictures that were saddest. They were so young—in their twenties or their late teens. I saw one picture of a pilot who was 17. There were a few letters translated into English. Those were sad to read. What was interesting was that they talked about everyday things, sort of mundane. If you wrote a last letter, what would you say?
After that, Victoria and I went to a collection of samurai houses, the other major tourist attraction in Chiran. Although “houses” is sort of misleading—they were really more like samurai gardens. The gardens featured many “dry waterfalls,” stones whose shape was supposed to suggest a waterfall. Personally, I would have preferred a real one. The gardens were pleasant, but nothing spectacular.
Lunch was spectacular. The restaurant was in our little samurai village, one of the old houses, with a roof that looked like bundled trees and garden filled with potted bonsai trees. There was an art in that garden of making new things out of old broken ones. Like a tuft of flowers growing on a wave-shaped broken pot. Or the wall made of plastered wavy tiles.
The inside of the restaurant was a tatami mat room. But our table was a giant cobalt vase with a flower growing in it and a sheet glass put over it as a surface. We were charmed, even if we didn’t have enough room to fit both our meals on it at the same time. (They gave Victoria a raised tray that sat on the floor near us.) The food was simple, delicious, and reasonably priced.
We drove back to Ibusuki. On the way back, we dropped by Lake Ikeda. Lake Ikeda is—how should I say it—it’s a very pleasant tourist trap. The lake is inhabited by large eels and supposedly a monster (a la Loch Ness) that they’ve dubbed Isshi. From the edge of the lake, we could see neither eels nor sea monster, but all the souvenir stands provided us with real eels and plaster sea monsters. One also had a waterfall and a family of tanuki statues. I bought a soft serve ice cream cone, sweet potato flavor (the specialty food product of all Kagoshima Prefecture). I prefer the seaweed flavor from Tokushima. Vickie bought some black somen noodles for her mother. I read the kanji. “Baboo charcoal” somen. Weird. But intriguing, like so many things Japanese.
We went to Mount Kaimon, the “Mount Fuji” of Kagoshima Prefecture. Most mountains in Japan are round and sloped, more like glorified hills, really. Mt. Kaimon, like Mt. Fuji, is a triangular mountain off. The contrast is striking, as it sits by itself, rather than as part of a mountain range all. We went to the mountain, but didn’t hike it. We saw some goats on the way back.
Our last trip of the day was to the archeological museum, which somehow got the name COCCO. They had videos that played when we walked past and a recreation of an ancient hut. But my favorite part was a 3D interactive vase puzzle. The vase was broken and the pieces scattered. Press a button and surface was magnetized so that the pieces would stay in place. You had one minute to put it together before the effect ended and the broken pieces would come crashing down. It was fun. Near the museum was a park with reconstructed ruins. In the rain, Vickie and I flitted in and out of the houses and took pictures.
That was our day. If we had wanted to, we could have taken another trip to the sand baths. But once we got settled into our ryokan hotel, we didn’t want to leave.
There is a small island just off the coast of Ibusuki. When the tide is right, a natural sand path appears, connected the island to the mainland. A narrow strip of land with the ocean on either side. Vickie wondered people were allowed to walk across. I pictured everything that could go wrong, from the water rushing back right as you were in the middle of walking the path. Or getting stuck overnight on a deserted island. Who knows what could happen.
Anyway, it was a moot point, because the tide was not right when we got there, early the next morning. We could see a lump of sand in the middle of the sea—part of the path—but that was it. We also saw a fisherman and a couple of Japanese men, who tried talking with us, first in English, then in Japanese.
From there, we went to Nagasakibana and to an animal park. How can I describe this odd little place? It was sort of like a small zoo, with a few monkeys and lemurs and less exotic animals—pigs, donkeys, dogs. There were birds—some exotic, some not—that were allowed to roam freely. Vickie liked it, because she worked in a pet shop and missed all the animals, especially the birds. I liked the view it had of Mt. Kaimon. We took plenty of pictures and saw the rat show.
For lunch we went to a restaurant called “Tosenkyo Floating Noodle” (according to the English pamphlet) or “Tosenkyo Somen Flow” (my own translation). It was mentioned in my guidebook, and mentioned on the blue road signs. Not advertisement billboards. The prefecture signs, which also pointed to Mt. Kaimon, Lake Ikeda, and Chiran.
It was not exactly what we expected. First, we had to climb down a staircase embedded into the hill. The first thing we saw was a small shrine sitting in the water. The water was filled with large fish—not koi. To the left was a path through a series of buildings. On the side of the path was a strip of water filled even more with fish—these ones smaller. When we came to the restaurant, I began to suspect the fish weren’t all just a part of the scenery. On the menu, one of the featured items—was a small salted fish on a stick.
The other prominent feature is, of course, the somen, a very thin white noodle that’s usually eaten chilled. It was 600 yen for a bowl—very reasonable. A man who spoke flawless English met us and explained how it worked. We bought a ticket for our food and chose our table. The eating area was half inside, half outside, with a giant waterfall in the back. We sat next to the waterfall.
The tables were round and in the middle was a ring of water which was flowing round and round. When our noodles came, we dumped them in the water. They flowed round and round, until we stuck in our chopsticks. In a matter of seconds our chopsticks were heaped with thin white noodles, which we then dunked into the sauce. Not only was this incredibly fun, it also made eating extremely easy. The water was crisp and cold; I could taste it in my noodles, and it was delicious.
We did all this and still got home before dinner. Our trip was over.
