Seiryu Tosashimizu

From Yufuin I took a bus over the mountains to Beppu and a new hostel there. An advantage of hostels is that there is usually someone who speaks English well enough to answer some questions, give info, etc. An exceptionally chatty Norwegian suggested we get some ramen, and we walked into a place straight out of Tampopo (a classic film).

The hostel also had internet use and I learned how to get out of the Japanese alphabet when I hit a key ...

An incredible day trip from Oita City to Usuki City took me back in time. Usuki swells with the ancient essence of Japan, reminding me of the reasons why I fell in love with Japan so many years ago.

This trip is definately recommended for anyone visiting Beppu or Oita, as it can be done easily from either city, and is affordable!

Access:
From Oita Station or Beppu station take the JR Nippon Honsen Line south to Usuki Station.
720yen (about 8 dollars) from ...

... together and ended up all taking the stairs the last bit up, which, by this time, was not easy.

Finally at the top of the second highest point, Misen at 1974m, we all stopped for some much needed rest and food. Interestingly enough, right up on the top at 1974m, there was a temple, an inn and a restaurant. Very strange.

Despite the chains being ice cold, nearly vertical and quite high, you felt relatively secure, nestled in against the cliff, surrounded ...

... other smaller portable shrines down a very high set of stairs, followed by a brawl to collect the pieces.

I am not really sure of the significance of all this, but it was definitely interesting to watch! I will try to find out more about the meaning behind this festival and make another post about it at a later time.

For the first night of the festival Jess and I walked down to the water to watch them parade around. It was really ...

... so 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!)

... when you are somewhere, where rules and manners are so important. So I often feel weird just snapping away. Especially at things like temples and shrines. I'm not even sure if you're allowed??? I'm going to try and find out though, because there are some beautiful Buddhist temples in Hojo, especially the one, it is just gorgeous.

I am also going to upload images for the journey here entry. So you can check that out if you want.

... attract the fish...which I'm pretty sure is illegal in Canada??? Anyway, the lights and burning lantern thing attract the fish and the Cormorants catch them. When one of them is full ( apparently they can hold up to 16 fish ) the fisherman reals one of them in and sort of chokes them until they cough up the fish.

The boat got us quite close and I got a pretty nice video, which I will try to upload. It was a pretty amazing experience, even if questionably a little cruel.

Ok, so I have a bit more time, I am going to write a bit more detail about my Voyage. I don't have a USB cable with me so I will have to wait to upload pictures.

So after my last Edmonton post, Jess left for Japan, I packed, tried to catch up with friend and moved in with Jess's sister Emily. Em and I had a lot of fun living together for my last couple weeks in Edmonton. I managed to get a lot done, but still felt like there was more to do. Isn't there always ...

At some point through the flight, the entire in-flight entertainment system rebooted. Turns out its running on Linux. Pretty neat - yes I'm a geek - to see every screen on the plane with the little Linux penguin in the top left corner and the kernal boot messages scrolling up the screen.

... them. It turned out that a moderately famous Japanese chef was cooking that night in the hotel and was giving a private meal to these people, giving them samples of his dishes. The chef himself starting bringing us food out and seemed genuinely concerned about whether we were still hungry. His food was great and the cuisine itself was different than what we were used to having in Japan. And to top it all off they only charged us $6.00 apiece for the meal. People in Japan are so nice!