Hotel Patio Dogo Matsuyama

... shabu, etc! We went to the grocery store a few times and I'm really looking forward to getting that box! <br><br>We also made sure to visit the onsen (hot spring) a few times. There's one on island that ************e goes to anymore, since there's a newer facility. It's great b/c there's no one there and I can fully relax. <br><br>Family/friends, food and onsens are what I miss most about Japan...<br><br>...W<br>

... photos.<br><br>Anyway, we finally got back to Misen and began our descent down at around 2:00pm. The trip home was much more solemn and much much quicker. We finally arrived back in Joju at around 4:30pm and virtually collapsed from exhaustion. We got back to the bottom of the rope-way at around 5:00pm, just in time to get tickets, share a few laughs and catch the 5:22pm bus back to Saijo, where we just barely caught the last train back to Hojo. We crashed and went to bed.<br>

This weekend saw quite an impressive ( though sometimes annoying ) Autumn Festival here in Hojo.<br><br>The festival basically consists of many many Hojo residence, getting together and building these strange portable shrines and carrying them around town banging on bells and drums as loud as they can all day and all night, dressed in traditional Japanese clothing and getting really really drunk. All culminating in a spectacular event of throwing ...

... by hand and I spend a good five minutes behind a group of Germans who were determined, DETERMINED, to capture every single angle of the craftsman dipping the candle. The wax business made several families rich and in turn we get to admire their houses today. Unfortunately, the big deal house is under renovation so I had to make do with taking pictures of the lesser manors. The town also has a nice kabuki theater which ...

... and it seems like only women work the grunt jobs there, only men are the managers. Tests seem to be fairly common here. Japanese people seem to love the idea that you have a piece of paper that states that you're capable of successfully jumping thru flaming hoops like a tiger with a string of cans tied to it's tail. My students also tell me that it is impossible to move up into upper management positions at their jobs unless they're able to score a 700 on the ...

... the sun would be setting soon and I would probably be hiking in the dark...with no flashlight. I also had no idea how long it would take me to make it back to the bottom. Well, the Gods must've taken pity on me...because as I was making my way to the path...this Japanese man was coming down the mountain. He stopped when he saw me standing there consulting my map. He pointed at me and then pointed down the mountain and said "desu ka?" 'Desu ka' is how ...

... since I wanted to make sure it didn't have some crazy defensive mechanism, like spraying laser acid from it's abdomen or something. Ok, so maybe it might have just made a lot of noise at night, I just didn't want to be woken up.. you get it.. Good. Anyways, turns out these things are totally harmless (as most of the crazy wild super huge beetles in Japan tend to be). And the noise they make is not that loud. BUT ...

... traffic and not stress about it + why I like to shower in the night + my love of 100 Yen Shops + my obsession with having every tool possible before I start a new anything + my history of having bad hair cuts + not brushing my hair in the morning/acute bedhead + the strange desire to sit down when I shower + my love of corn soup I honestly don't know if these are common tendencies in Japan, but I like to think they are to make myself feel less odd. (^_^)

... cash. By this time we had been in Japan for several hours so it was a relief to actually have some money to hand. The following day, after doing a bit of sightseeing in Fukuoka, we caught the train using our newly acquired "Japanese Rail Pass". This is a tourist's rail pass (that you can only buy outside of Japan) that allows unlimited train travel for the period of validity, which is 2 weeks in our case. Arriving in Kumamoto we had ...

... about 5 minutes but they followed you around looking for food which is ok when it's the little bambi like young deer but not so cute when it's the, my head belongs on a lodge wall, adult ones. Of course Fiona "Steve Irwin" Bennett wouldn't go anywhere near them so I got a few minutes entertainment watching her run away from them. We wandered around the shrine looking at some of the amazing buildings. We spent a couple of hours there before it was time to head off and get ready for our trip to Kyoto.