Yamakasa Festival

On Friday 15th July it is the Yamakasa festival. This festival is one of the biggest in Kyushuu and dates back to 1241. It commenorates a time when disease was spreading and a priest called Shioichu Kokushi saved Hakata from a terrible plague by being carried around the city on a movable shrine and throwing water....Since that time an annual festival has developed. All around the city large foats are on display, they feature hakata dolls on one side and often have a more local theme on the other, I have seen baseball players at one and even anime at others.

These floats are too big to carry around the city ( they are about 10m tall), so teams of men carry a smaller one ton float (Smaller?!) around the city and temple while crowds of people, up to around a million, gather to watch and cheer them on. The teams are all competing to win the fastest time and spend a lot of time training. They are all dressed in traditional Japanese clothing and often take their children along with them. There is a lot of shouting as the teams cheer each other on in what is really an endurance test. Three men sit on top of the float to urge the others on, they are all chanting "Oissa! Oissa!" as they race through the streets.

Clothing: Shimekomi (underwear) and mizuhappi(a short coat)

The full festival starts on Friday morning at 4: 59 AM, I am not sure whether I will make it so I have been watching the training. They are really very impressive... and yes there are a lot of bare bottoms!

If you want to learn more about the festival try this link
http://kyushu.com/fukuoka/features/yamagasa_1/

Yatai... Hmmm... Yum!

One of the things Fukuoka is known for is its Yatai stalls. These are small mobile restaurants that are rolled out along the streets each night. They are a little like carts but you can pull up a seat and watch as the owners cooks you some noodles.

The specialty here is the ramen. Ramen is a noodle dish, with cooked noodles in a broth. Fukuoka Ramen is special because it is in a milky pork broth, I think the soup tastes a bit like boil up (so long as you haven't added watercress or puha! Yuck!), it comes with some meat and you add spring onions and a special garlic sauce. The trick seems to be in boiling the stock for hours and hours, so I am sure we could master it at home. They taste very good and I have met lots of people here who seem to be addicted. If you go into a Ramen restaurant you even get to choose how cooked you want your noodles. There are Ramen restaurants everywhere you go, but there is definitely something kind of fun about sitting in a Yatai sucking down your noodles. Of course here it is considered good manners to slurp them down... that way the cook knows you are enjoying them!

Hakata Dolls

Last night I went to paint claydolls. Fukuoka used be known as Hakata, and Hakata dolls are well known throughout Japan. They come in many different styles and can be realistic or characters. They are not only women but also men, with many dolls of warriors. The artists who make the dolls have great skill, sadly I did not! While I was there a man was talking to one of the artists about some work he had commissioned. The artist was making a doll of his father in his navy uniform, the doll stood about 30 cm high, sculpted from clay, and they were having a very serious conversation about the buttons on the dolls uniform... and getting the detail correct, can you imagine how small the buttons were?
I needed a bit more attention to detail myself, my poor little doll started out as a boy but ended up as a girl, there some very shaky lines but we all had a good time.

Pick my doll from the "real" thing!

Genuine Hakata Dolls

Tanabata

Today, the 7th day of the 7th month, is the Tanabata festival. This festival celebrates the meeting of the 2 stars, Vega and Altair, and is a time to write down your wish for the future, which, with good fortune will come true. To celebrate, you write your wish on a piece of paper and hang it from a bamboo branch. We did this at school today, making paper decorations for the branch so it looked attractive.

Many big shops have branches outside their doors so people can write down their wishes... it reminded me a little of Christmas, hanging wishes on Christmas decorations outside shops. I noticed on the way home that many house had branches outside their doors.

Some towns hold festivals and place large decorations around the city. I did not notice many in Fukuoka I think that may be as they are preparing for a very big local festival here next week.

Just like we have a special story about the stars for Matariki, there is also a special story about Tanabata. To read the story click on the link below...

Any one for tea?

Toady I went to a Tea Ceremony. Tea Ceremonys are very important rituals in Japan. There is nothing quite like it, that I know of, in our culture, it is a ritual for preparing special powered green tea for guests (matcha), and it takes years of practice to perfect this art.
We were welcomed into a traditional Japanese room with a tatami floor and shooji walls, as well as a special area called a Tokonama, for placing your sacred items such as scolls with caligraphy.
This is a traditional room for tea cermonys, there are even special places that you should sit.

Our host was dressed in traditional kimono and performed a short ceremony for us. A proper ceremony can go for up to 4 hours. It is very important that the person making the tea follows the correct procedure and moves in a precise way. To make the tea you add hot water to the green tea powder in your tea bowl, then you use a bamboo whisk to mix the tea until there are lots of bubbles and it look slightly thick.
The tea is slightly bitter so you are given something sweet to eat before you drink it. We had biscuits that contained a sweet bean paste. When you drink the tea you have to hold the bowl in a certain way, rotating the bowl before and after drinking, as this is all part of the ritual of the tea ceremony.

We also got to dress up for the event... I am not sure I had quite the right size or colour kimono (Although it did match my sunburn!) I am sure you can decide for yourself! Yikes! Not really my thing!

Mad about Manga

In Japan, people of all ages read manga or komikku コミック. (I'm sure you can work that one out!) They are cartoon story books tht are very popular here and now all over the world. They write Manga about all sorts of topics from action-adventure, romance, sports and games, comedy, in fact if you can write a story about it it can become a manga.  Manga characters become very popular and some series have 30 to 40 different books about the characters.  Many of the books then go on to become Anime (Animated movies... you can probably think of a few anime you have seen) Book shops in Japan are full of manga. I have never seen so many books, aisle after aisle of different comics.  Of course you have to remember when you read your book you start from the back and read from right to left which can be a bit confusing!

Fukuoka bookshop

 Everywhere I go at the moment I see posters advertising "One Piece" a very popular manga and anime.  I think there may be a movie about to be released... check out the Promo below and see if you like the look of this manga character!

Manga artists are very talented, their characters are very expressive and they can tell interesting stories using very few words.  The link below will tell you how to read manga, don't worry they have a very good english translation at the bottom of the page!

Pachinko

Pachinko Parlours are through out the city and through out Japan.  Pachinko is the equivalent of a games arcade and gambling pokie machine place combined.  In Fukuoka there is a whole street full of Pachinko Parlours.  As you walk in, you are surrounded by the noise and rows and rows of people playing what look like slot machines.  To play Pachinko you really don’t need to much skill...at least I didn’t!  It is a bit like a pin ball machine and you just hope everything lands in the right place.  Because gambling is illegal in Japan, you only win balls, that you can then change for tokens... but if you go next door you can swap the tokens for money or use them to buy prizes, so that way nothing is illegal.  I have just read online that the Japanese government estimates of the annual turnover of the pachinko industry is in the region of 29 trillion yen (try writing that number! Then see how many $NZ)  Pachinko makes twice as much money as the  Japanese automobile industry!

Pachinko Parlour:

Pachinko Machine:

My school day

Just like you, I am off to school everyday! I can take the train to Tenjin which is one of the city centers.  Even though I leave the house at rush hour there are not too many commuters on the train.  Not at all like Tokyo, where you have to be pushed on board by a station official, and are then jammed in like sardines!
It takes about ten minutes to get to school and by the time I have stopped for a koohii (can you translate?) I am ready for class.  The teachers are great, they only speak Japanese in class so if I am not paying attention it is easy to get lost! All our reading and writing has to be in Japanese so it has been a confusing time, fortunately there are only 6 students in my class... or maybe not so fortunate as the teacher soon notices if you don't understand.  At lunch time everyone goes to the obentoo shop for lunch and then back to class for another 2 hours. It is all very tiring... because you are always trying to understand what is going on around you.  I am sure my Japanese must be getting better, if not because of the classes, then just because I need to be understood if I want to get anything done!

Dazaifu Shrine

This weekend I was a very good tourist and I took myself off to a very famous temple. Dazaifu is an area just outside Fukuoka and was once the center for the Kyushuu government offices. Later it became a place where nobles were sent in disgrace. One of those nobles was Sugawara no Michizane, who was later became a type of God. The shrine stands on his grave and students go there to worship as they believe he can help them succeed at school. Students write down their wishes and leave them outside the shrine for good luck. I probably should have tried something like that myself to help with my Japanese lessons!

Walking up to the Shrine the streets are lined with shops selling omiyage おみやげ, or gifts. It was great to see all the women wearing their kimono on their way to the shrine.

Afterwards I visited the Kyushuu Museum which was very interesting, although the lady that was snoring in the theatre next to me may not have thought so! It made me realise what a young country New Zealand really is, especially when you are looking at artifacts from the 4 century and earlier!

Talking about food...

Last night I went to a great restaurant... well maybe not the greatest but very cool for those who can't speak Japanese because they had plastic models of the food outside. This is a fairly common feature in many restaurants, in fact in Tokyo they have a who street devoted just to selling plastic food for restaurants... and it is not cheap. And it really does look real. Check out these pictures...

I had the tempura from the first photo and yes it did look just same... and tasted great too! おおしい！ So all my ordering problems are taken care of now just as long as I choose the right restaurant. Although there is another style of restaurant that makes my life easy as well. At many ramen or noodle restaurants they have a vending machine out the front, choose your dish, you pay your money, take a ticket and then wait inside. I love it when life... or at least eating, is made so simple!

Can you work out the prices in $NZ?

What's for lunch?

On e of the great things about Japan is the food and the fact it is so easy to get take aways. They do have Makudonarudos and Kentaki Chiiken but that isn't as good as an Obentoo おべんと box. You can pick one up in any convenience store, supermarket or from 100s of tiny restaurants. They are boxes divided into small parts and each part has something different to eat. For the most part they are delicious. And the good thing if you cant read a menu is at least what you see is what you get! I have only had one small mistake so far... it looked like chicken but definitely wasn't chicken! I am still not sure what it was but I will not be picking up that one again soon. You usually get some vegetables, meat? or chicken, some salad and some pickles and of course a good helping of rice.

I found this video on the net of some children singing before they sit down and eat there bentoo... maybe we should try this before lunch?



The last bit of the video is where they say Ittadakimasu いただきます, it is like saying thanks before you eat. Also you will hear Gochiso-samadeshita ごちそさまでした which means thank you for the meal... listen carefully you should be able to work out who they are thanking!

Money Money...おかね！

My pockets are rattling with coins, I am yet to see the equivalent of an eftpos machine as everyone just peels off the cash. The coins are 1,5 10,100 and 500 and then you hit the notes.

Things are generally more expensive but I will let you work that out... see if you can find the exchange rate and calculate the price.
One of the best ways to buy a drink is to use a vending machine. No matter how far you may be away from the main shops you can always find one, usually drinks, or cigarettes, sometimes whiskey and beer (I don't know how the machine knows if you are old enough?!) Some even sell eggs or rice, although I haven't seen any of those around my neighborhood yet!
A can of drink will cost you 150 yen from a machine... I noticed that cigarettes are 410 yen for ten. Is that cheaper than at home? Do you think that could be why many Japanese people smoke? It costs me 250 yen to take the train to school everyday... so you do the maths!

Vending machines around my hostel:

Home sweet home!

I have just had Whaea Janice on Skype taking a tour of my new room. There is very little to see as you can really only turn around but there are parts of the room that do have a definite Japanese feel to them. As you walk into the room there is a step where you stop to take off your shoes, it is very bad mannered to wear your shoes inside and even at school today we removed our shoes and put on slippers for class. (Then if you go to the loo you have to change into special toilet slippers... I did spend a bit of time obsessing about whose feet had been in there before mine!) The other very Japanese part of my room is the bed, I have a futon mattress, which is a little bit like a slab of concrete and a special pillow, only small, that is filled with beans, which is like another slab of concrete, I am sure it is all very good for my back!
The bathroom is very small, about 1.6m x 1.6m. In Japan they have small but very deep baths (well compared to NZ anyway) The idea is that you wash yourself before you get into the bath. Many Japanese people would be disgusted to know that NZ people just sit around in dirty bath water and then think they get out clean! They could be right!
So that is my little space in Fukuoka. I had another walk around the town and you can see some pictures. Check out all the bikes. I have almost been run over several times as people ride all over the place then leave their bikes at the train station. There is very little crime here and many people don't even lock up thei
r bikes... and they are still there when they get back!

Bikes outside the station

Department store window, selling kimono for the summer festival

Lost in Fukuoka

I made it! It was a long way here but planes, trains and then getting very lost in a taxi, I was finally delivered me to the door of my hostel. I had forgotten the address system over here that makes finding your way around a bit tricky, there are no street names just a series of numbers and if you are unfamiliar with how things work you can get a bit confused, just ask my taxi driver, and he was a local! Anyway I have since made several trips back to the train station, all taking a different route and think I may have finally nailed the way out of this rabbit warren, at least I have knocked a good 10 minutes off the walking time! The main streets are just like at home but once you get into the residential area they are very narrow and one way, as a driver you spend a lot of time backing up roads or tooting to make sure you don't meet anyone on a hairpin bend.

The train "home"

The view from my bedroom window

Click here to learn more about Fukuoka City