Public Service Announcement at the End

I'm going to have to pick up the pace a little on this blog posting.  I am only just now getting to Golden Week Part III but there's a lot of stuff that's happened since Golden Week!  And I have a feeling it's going to get even more adventurous for the next few weeks.

So, to speed things up, on Friday of Golden Week, my work friend took me to "Urami no Taki" which is a wild flower preserve/nature trail leading to a waterfall whose name literally translates to something like "View the Back of the Waterfall" because the trail leads around behind the waterfall and you can see the back of it.  Except that part of the trail was closed, so we could only view View the Back of the Waterfall from the front.

We spent the day hiking and exploring the area, and we also went to the New Tea Festival, where they celebrate the first green tea harvest of the year with live music and lots of vendor booths and snow cones.  We took a hike from there across a bridge to a lake where you can ride a duck-shaped boat, but when we got there, there was no water in the lake and no duck-boats either!

But the bridge was cool, and the hike around the dry lake was fun and beautiful.  And we ended the day with an all-you-can-eat dinner.  It was an excellent day!

In the span between this hiking day and today, there have been quite a number of fun bromantic dinners, trips to remote desert ice cream stands, late-night-on-the-town antics, life-saving hard-disk file-recoveries, shopping trips, and work antics.  If I put them ALL in this blog, then I won't have anything to talk about when I get home, so I'm just going to post a few quick pics.

Ice cream.

Bromance.  Italian and Japanese and German, in perfect harmony.

No caption necessary.

Old-fashioned erotica.

This old-timey robot brings us our coffee at work.

Ok, that should bring everyone up to speed.  Now, on with the Public Service Announcement.

I am going to be in Bloomington on June 28th.  This time it will be for more than 12 hours!  I think congratulations are in order.

And that's the real reason I had to bring you up to speed with what I've been doing up to now; my schedule has gotten decidedly busier since all of my friends found out I'm leaving them behind for a while, so I will have lots more photos and antics to post in the upcoming days, I'm certain.

You May Want to Sit Down Before Reading This Post

Hi there.  If you're wondering why in my last blog i said I would post more "tomorrow" and I am only just now posting more, it's because of the time difference.

Golden Week Part II: Wherein the Hero Takes a Bath

On Friday, May 3rd, 2013, We were once again on vacation from work.  So my friend and I took a loooooooooooooooooooong drive.  When w got to where we were going, it turned out where we were going was a castle!  Japan is chock-full o' castles, which is really great because I love castles and I hope to some day live in one.

My friend said "Eh, this castle is kind of small," but I was thinking "How much room do you need?!"  Then right after that I was thinking "Boy it sure would be cool to be a samurai standing out front of this very castle with a big goofy grin on my face."

Shortly after I had that thought, we were approached by a ninja out front of the castle who offered to make us into samurai warriors with big goofy grins on our faces standing out front of this very castle.  I am not joking about the ninja.  But the ninja may have been joking about being a ninja.  But it was that kind of joke where you are dressed like a ninja and you don't say whether or not you're a real ninja and then *poof* you vanish in a puff of smoke, vowing to avenge your family's honor.

Keep an eye on the ninja in purple at the top of the steps.

*Poof* No ninja.

But wait!  I need to back up.  The walkway up to the castle was really quite beautiful.  Here's a photo of it:

And as you approach the top, if you're quiet you might catch a glimpse of the Mother of the Birds in her wild habitat:

Ok, back to me being a samurai:

And who is this right at the top of the castle?  I recognize that face!

Next we had lunch at a nice little place with an old friend of my friend.  Here is a picture of what I ate.  That is a whole crab, some fish eggs, I see most of an octopus tentacle laying there in the middle, I believe that's a raw shellfish just to the left of the tentacle.  It was fantastic!  And I forgot to take a picture of dessert before I ate it, but it looked like little eyeballs.  But it wasn't.

After all that, we finally went to bathe.  As I mentioned at some point to someone in time and space, I have some tattoos so we had to find a public bath with a private room.  Most public baths have signs up that say "No tattoos allowed" or "Please leave your tattoos in your locker" or "Tattoos must be on a leash."  So I thought I would never have a chance to experience a Japanese public hot spring bath.  Then I did.  I should have taken some photos of the room and the view (it was partially outdoors), but by then I was pretty naked so I was feeling too shy to take nature photos.

But here is a series of photos of me in a Japanese hot spring, in case you're curious.  You may want to cover your children's eyes.

After the bath, we visited he ocean and drove the long way around the peninsula to get home and saw a lot of great sights and ate some deep fried potatoes on a stick.

I could post a million photos here of our trip, but I won't this time.  I think you've seen enough.  But keep in mind this was only day 1 of our 4 day weekend.

See a Picture of a REAL Monkey!

Let's see now, where did I leave off?  Oh yes, blowfish.

The sightseeing trip with my old college buddy around Fukuoka (pronounced "San Diego") was really a blast.  And we spent one evening up by Shimonoseki/Mojiko in a swanky jazz club (not live music) reminiscing and catching up and talking about how weird it was that 12 years after the last time we saw each other I was working in a small town a mere train ride from her home.

Speaking of train rides, I am always terrified to ride the trains by myself in Japan.  I always think I'm going to get on the wrong one.  I have yet to make a single mistake, but I'm still always afraid.  Come to think of it, I'm always scared to ride the city buses in Indiana too for the same reason.  

Now since I said the word train, here's a picture of trains!  That one that looks like it could go really fast goes really fast.  If I got on that one by accident, in minutes I would be in Canada.  So I always arrive at the train station 28 hours early so I have plenty of time to make sure I paid for the right ticket and I'm standing on the right platform.  

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Mijoko is famous for bananas.  It's where the bananas first landed when they discovered Japan, like the Japanese version of "Plymouth Rock" or the East Indies version of "America."  So below, I have included a picture of bananas. And since the first thing you think of when you think of bananas is little street performer monkeys, I have also graciously included a picture of one such monkey.  I didn't catch his name, unfortunately.  But we did exchange glances.

Absolutely bananas

Actually, that monkey's wearing a dress.  I think he might be a she.

Then there's this guy.  He was in a museum full of things I wasn't allowed to photograph, but there was a sign on his chamber that said "You may photograph only this statue."

I also saw the birthplace of Einstein.  Actually, I can't be sure he was born there, because he seems to be German.  

And also, this building had nothing to do with Einstein, it was a different building that had anything to with Einstein at all.  But I can't seem to find my picture(s) of that building.  However, just so you believe me, here's a picture of a picture of Einstein in said building.  He's at the head of the far table.

I'm going to end this post here because I have company and he's probably thinking "get off the dang computer so you can get back to watching TV with me!"  And I know anyone who reads this is anxiously anticipating the bath photo, but I haven't gotten to that trip yet.  This post, however, concludes the review of my first Golden Week trip.  Stay tuned for reviews of trips 2 and 3, which include bathing, the sea, a remote desert ice cream stand, and more.

Oh, here's another picture of blowfish:

Well THAT Was Different

So, here in Japan there is this thing called "Golden Week" which is a great week in which a thousand holidays fall within a few minutes of each other and everyone has nearly the whole week off.  Originally, when I got my work calendar for the year, I was working at my company and so I thought my holiday week was split into two long weekends.  But then I started training at our sister company, and they had the WHOLE WEEK off!  So I started thinking about making bigger  plans.  Then the day before vacation, the president called and said that during the 3 days when our sister company was off, I should go back to our company and work.

At any rate, what ended up happening during my holiday was some of the most fun I've had since I got here.  I met up with my long-lost friend from Ball State, Keiko.  She lives in Fukuoka.  Here we are at the top of Fukuoka Tower.  Well really this is just her.  I'm the one taking the picture, so you can't see me.

Luckily, Keiko works with groups of college exchange students and organizes sightseeing trips for them while they're going to the school she works for.  So she knew all the best places to take me.  See photos below for said "best places."

Sushi served on big ol' leaves!

Big Tall Light-Up Parade-Thingy.  People carry it by hand during the parade.

Only put toilet paper in the toilet, not people.

Fancy after-church lunch with Dad (who also went to Ball State in 1976) and Mom

Canal City

One night while I was in Fukuoka, I spent the night in a Capsule Hotel.  If you're picturing rows and rows of small sleeping chambers or "capsules," one after another all up and down the hall, you're probably picturing the 2nd and 3rd floors of the hotel:

I, however, got a deluxe room on the 4th floor.  My room has a tiny desk and an accordion-style sliding cloth door.  And my sleeping capsule glows with the eerie light of the afterlife.

Also I ate blowfish.  The raw blowfish is the almost completely clear mass on the upper half of the blue fish plate on the upper right corner.

Now I don't want to kill anyone with sensory overload, so I'm going to end here.  But as a sneak preview of tomorrow's post, AFTER I went back to work for 3 days, I had a 4-day weekend during which I got to go to one of the public baths you hear so much about.  Actually, I had to get a private room at the public bath, because I have tattoos.  But here's a sneak preview of me in the bathtub: