My first matsuri (festival)

On Saturday night, I joined my friends Jenn & Melissa to visit one of Melissa's students house.

We had dinner there with the student's family and friends.

The man of the house was very kind and generous.

He even gave me a fan that he had painted the design on.

During dinner, there was a festival going on outside. One of our guests, Shinya, was taking part in it. So when he joined us, he was fairly drunk.

After dinner, we went outside to see the different floats that each neighbourhood in the area had in the festival.
We were even luck to be able to join and help pull one of the floats.
I was lucky enough to get to get a picture in one of the floats at the end of the parade.

And also get to play the drum that was on the float.

Forest Park

On Saturday, I went with my friend to Forest Park, which is a very large park with lots of trails.

There was also a suspension bridge there that gave you a great view of the area.

There is also an area in the park called Birdpia which has guided nature walks every Saturday. Since it was slightly raining on that day, I decided not to go on the walk since there wouldn't be many birds out. I'm sure I'll be back to that park lots in the future.

Interesting bicycle/tricycle

There's lots of interesting bicycle designs I've seen in Japan so far. Here is one I saw yesterday.

Wacky signs

There a number of signs in different parks with funny pictures for those of us who can't read Japanese yet. The one below is telling you not to leave unwanted kittens in the park.
(sorry, the picture is a bit fuzzy)

Saturday night

After going to the temples on Saturday, I met up with some of my students from one of my company classes. They took me to a restaurant that had about 30 kinds of sake so I could try different types and see if I liked more sweet or dry sake or sake from the north of Japan or the south of Japan.
We then met up with some other friends at a karaoke place. With the better song selections and better drinks, I'm starting to like karaoke much more than I did in Korea.

Hokoji & Ryotanji

This is a long weekend since Monday (today) is a holday. On Saturday, I went with some other teachers to two temples just north of our city. The first was called Hokoji which has lots and lots of beautiful buildings and landscapes.

The above photo is of a dragon that is carved out of wood. The picture is only of the front half and it took 6 years to carve. There are 3 more similar dragons on this one building.

The next place we went was Ryotanji. We went about 7 pm since they had a special event where the temple was open at night time (which it usually isn't) so that people could view the harvest moon. We also given special green tea and treat there.

Cell phone

Yeah, I finally got a cell phone yesterday. It took me exactly a month to get all the documents and things needed, but finally it's done.

It has lots of useful things on it like messaging with lots of cute icons, and a japanese/english dictionary and a camera. it also has lots of things that I don't think I'll really use like a radio, a TV and the internet.

Hanko

So the above image is my name stamp (called "hanko" or "inkan" here). The 3 symbols spell out the name Andy, which I use as my name here. Each symbol also has its own meaning here which I'm not going to go into here. I need my stamp to used along side my name for such things signing up for a phone, documents at the bank, etc.
So now that I have my name stamp, I was also able to get a bank account and a cell phone.

Korean food

On Friday night, I went to a Korean restaurant with friends. It's just down the street from our apartment. The food was tasty, although the owners couldn't speak Korean very well and they charged us for every side dish we had. We paid $5 even for kimchi. So I don't think I'll be going there very often.

Private classes at Honda

I wanted to show a classroom I use for teaching private lessons at Honda. I'm actually teaching in what they call the clubhouse. It seems more like I should be eating a nice meal there than teaching a class.

Sake

Since I've been in Japan, I've found that my favourite drink here is sake. There a number of types and qualities, so I'm hoping to get better at distinguising them. I've already found out that the quality is closely matched to the price. You can buy either small or large bottles at liquor stores such as the small ones below:

At bars I've tried both hot and cold sake. Hot sake is much smoother although the taste is much more subtle. For cold sake, they sometimes but a glass in a square wooden cup and then pour sake into the glass so that it overflows into the square wooden cup. This is suppose to show you that they are giving you so much that it overflows the glass.

I've heard there are also sake bars, so I'm hoping to try going to one of those sometime. There's also a sake festival in a month or so which I'm hoping will be a fun time.

Entetsu

The ikebana show I was at was on the top floor of a department store called Entetsu. When I first arrived in Japan, I heard that it was a department store for people with money and that if you wanted to impress somebody, you should give them a present in an Entetsu bag.
Here's the view from the top floor, looking down at the central bus terminal for city buses:

After the ikebana show, we went to the basement where you can buy food from lots of stales selling all kinds of food. They had the most wonderful collection of various foods I've ever seen. A number of them had free samples which were great to try. In the end I bought some expensive kimchi (with octopus and small shrimp in it) and a bento box with 3 varieties of rice in it.

The next photo is of takoyaki which is balls of fried octopus and is very delicious. The woman behind the window was very good at turning the balls quickly to make them cook evenly.

Ikebana

On Sunday, I went with some friends to an ikebana exhibit. I was expecting to just see flowers arranged in different ways, but there was a lot more variety there than I was expecting. Some ikebana artists were using other materials in their works (including beach balls). I found out while I was there that there are a number of schools of ikebana, thus a variety of styles being shown at shows. It was definately more interesting than I was expecting.

Photo from past karaoke night

The following photo is from Andrea's (who's in the white top) farewell party and karaoke night:

Week wrap-up

Well, I've wrapped up my third week in Japan. Things are starting to become a bit more routine now. I'm fairly relaxed at driving on the left side of the road. I'm also getting better at driving along narrow roads with a large car as well as knowing some of the major roads in the city.

I received my foreigner card on Friday. I was hoping that I'd be able to get a cell phone now. Unfortunately, having my foreigner card is one of the 3 things I need to get before being able to get a phone. I still have to get a name stamp and a bank account still. I chose which Chinese characters I wanted to use for my name stamp on Friday. When I received, I'll explain more about it and show you a picture of the stamp.

A typhoon came through on Monday, but the south of Japan got the worst of it. We just got a good strong wind and a bit of rain. No problem. It's still 30 degrees C and humid here everyday. I've moved to sleeping in the living room at night where I can sleep in front of a screen door, which is giving me much better sleep at night. Today was sunny and clear, so I hung at the beach with a friend, Ayako, for 3 hours. We didn't go swimming but I still got too much sun. There were a number of surfers out today, and so that might be a hobby I picked up in the future.

That's all the news for this week.

Sento

On Wednesday after work, I went to a bathhouse (sento) . I was interested to see how it compared with the ones in Korea(mogyoktang), which I often enjoyed visiting. We had to drive about 5 minutes from home to get this large bathhouse. Unfortunately, there are none near my apartment, except for a brothel bathhouse. I enjoyed always having a bathhouse in my neighbourhood in Korea. This bathhouse in Hamamatsu is very large and beautiful. It had 3 different bathes and a dry sauna inside and then another 3 bathes and a wet sauna outside. It was definately more beautiful than the ones I visited in Korea, although I wasn't impressed that I had to bring my own modesty towel and regular towel. In the end, there were pluses and minuses when I compared this bathhouse to the ones in Korea. I left feeling more relaxed from this bathhouse but not as clean as when I was in Korea.

Turtle info

Here's some information on trying to help the turtles and where they go. Well, you can look at the pictures at least.

Releasing turtles into the sea

At the beach on Sundays in August and September, there is a chance for the public to release baby turtles into the sea. There's a group here protecting the eggs of the turtles until they hatch and then teach the public and raise funds by allowing the public to release the turtles. The eggs are buried in the sand in a large fenced area.

First, you can watch the men in the cage digging up the turtles:

And putting them in buckets to take to the beach:

Next each person who paid to release a turtle gets one:

Next we all went to the beach and got ready to release them:

And then we release them:

It was amazing how fast and strong the turtles' desires were to get to the water. And the seemed to do fine with the waves:

(I know it's not the best photo, but all the black dots near the waves are turtles ) ^^