Hotel Patio Dogo Matsuyama

... continued all night long. And when I say all night long I mean it didn't stop until the next morning around 6am. This happened the whole long weekend and though Jess can sleep through anything I cannot and barely got a wink of sleep. I didn't let this stop me from enjoying the festival though.

On Saturday night was the big smashing ceremony and that was really the highlight of the festival. It was amazing how many people came too, from all ...

... that I can regularly update you with some photos and information!



I will try and backlog later, adding in Tokyo photos, and some other events.

For now, just a quick glimpse into life in Hojo!

(More photos to come....more of our apartment (after I finally bought some curtains), my school, etc!)

... and there is a massive parking lot overflowing with bikes. So, I decided I had to buy one and a couple of days ago I finally did! It's called "Tea Cup." It's a beautiful cream and brown beauty and I love her. So today I took a nice shot of her and road around snapping a few ( very few ) pictures of the neighborhood.

I plan to take more, but the thing is, when you are just a tourist somewhere it is a lot different than living there ...

... 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.