I anticipate having to answer this question a few times at work tomorrow, when I make my first appearance in the office since the end of October.
And I anticipate more than a few surprised looks when I answer "I was in Japan visiting my boyfriend." This response inevitably conjures up more questions and a bit of discomfort on my part. While I understand their curiosity, my relationship with Keizo is far more complex and emotional than I feel like discussing with my co-workers. Additionally, what for many would be the trip of a lifetime has become an annual event for me, with sightseeing being less of a priority than just being together. Hiking up a small mountain to see a giant reclining Buddha statue is great, but so is wearing sweatpants and eating pizza on the couch with someone you love, especially when you don't get to do it very often.
However, the former appeals to a wider audience and makes for much better photos opportunities than the latter, so without further ado, 日本Fall 2013--Part I: The Sights
I arrived in Japan on a Tuesday evening, and quite conveniently Keizo had the day off on Wednesday. We drove about an hour from his house to the mountainous town of Sasaguri to go apple picking. As luck would have it, Sasaguri is also home to a large reclining Buddha statue, so when our apple picking took only a short time to complete, we had something else to do to make the drive worthwhile. We poked around the various shrines dotted around the bottom of the hill and traipsed up to the top to gaze at the truly large statue. I am still curious as to how it was installed; I assume it was built elsewhere, but then puzzled as to how it was moved up the side of the mountain. All of the interpretive signage was in Japanese, but Keizo appeared too too distracted by his rumbling stomach translate them for me. We stopped for lunch at the bottom of the hill, and I enjoyed the udon noodle set pictured above.
After lunch we decided to continue our day of outdoor adventuring at Uminonakamichi Park. The weather during my trip to Japan was unreal, in the high 60's-low 70's and sunny almost every day. We have visited this park before, but arrived too late to rent bicycles to go exploring and only saw about half of it. It's pretty big and has a real variety of things to do/see.
This time we arrived with plenty of time to rent bicycles and tool around. We stopped at the field of cosmos flowers, spent a few minutes at the zoo checking up on the monkeys and rode nearly all the way around the perimeter to the amusement area in search of the snack bar where we could cash in our coupon for a 50 yen discount on ice cream. After our snack, we ignored the signs reserving the play equipment for elementary school aged children (which even with my limited Japanese I could understand) and went down the long slides and tried walking on the white mound visible in the back of the top photo. The mound was kind of squishy, and bounced a bit if you jumped on it (another thing prohibited by the signs and completed ignored by everyone, not just us!) After that, it was time to return the bicycles and head home.
On Friday afternoon, Keizo and I took the train into Fukuoka City in search of a neko cafe. Stepping off the elevator and through the entrance was a bit of an assault on the nasal passages, but soon we both adjusted to the aroma of 20 cats in a relatively small space and made a few furry friends. I don't recall where I first heard about the cat cafe in Fukuoka, but it was one of the few things I really wanted to do on this trip. The concept is intriguing, if not slightly unappetizing (this cafe served food and drinks) and observing the human social etiquette was nearly as fun as playing with the cats. The cats pretty much came and went as they pleased, although there was a woman sitting on the floor who very popular with the most cuddly ones. I tried to entice more cats towards me using a shimmery butterfly toy on a stick and had some fleeting success. After about 90 minutes of feline fun, we decided it was time for some fresh air and gathered our things to leave, taking full advantage of the lint roller hanging from wall by the elevator.
We walked around Tenjin, the busy commercial district near one of the major train stations, browsed Forever 21 and H&M, two new additions since my time as an English teacher, took purikura and enjoyed a dinner of small plates at a yakitori restaurant. The train back out of the city was pretty full, but nothing like the photos of the trains in Tokyo.
Saturday afternoon was spent watching the Japan vs. New Zealand rugby match on TV. New Zealand won of course, but the final score represented the smallest spread ever between the two teams. After the game, we made a visit to my favorite used clothing store and a stop at the new shopping mall, which on November 2nd was already festooned with Christmas decorations and playing Christmas music at much too high a volume (I am all for Christmas music in December...all December if you must, but am strongly opposed to it anytime before Thanksgiving, especially in Japan!) I bought more smiling kitchen sponges for myself, and Keizo got a snazzy new pair of pants.
Keizo was out of town on Sunday for a game in Hiroshima, but got back in time for dinner at his favorite tempura restaurant. It also gave him the day off on Monday, so we had lunch out and rented an electric assist bicycle outside of the local train station. We biked around town and I never ceased to marvel at the complete lack of resistance when starting to pedal from a dead stop. The bike was really quiet, and definitely helped on longer, less steep inclines. I didn't notice too much of a difference on the steepest slopes, although Keizo begs to differ.
The following Wednesday afternoon was Keizo's last afternoon without work during my stay and we kept our adventures local before driving down to Kurume for dinner with my calligraphy teacher. We had omuraisu for lunch followed by ice cream at my favorite local shop (see Part II of the recap) and a walk around Munakata Shrine. The shrine happened to be in the middle of its kiku matsuri or chrysanthemum festival, a small portion of which you can see pictured above. The flowers were quite lovely, ranging in size from the small bonsai to the softball sized blooms in the photos to large displays featuring various sizes, shapes and colors.
The sunset was from my last night in Japan, when we went to try out a new seaside restaurant in Keizo's city. We had stumbled upon it earlier in the week during lunchtime, only to be turned away since we didn't have a reservation. Keizo called ahead for dinner on Friday, which ended up being completely unnecessary to be seated since we were the first people to arrive, but was important since doing so informed us that sunset was at 5:30 and enabled us to witness what you see above. While dinner was good, the crowd at lunch time leaves me to assume the lunch buffet is even better. Since we ate so early, we had time after dinner to finish up my souvenir shopping, drop the car back at the apartment and walk to a quiet neighborhood bar for some drinks to round out the night. Then on Saturday morning, it was up at 4:30 AM to catch flight one of three back to Charlottesville.
Stay tuned for Parts II and III featuring the culinary delights from the trip, coming soon!
What a great trip it was!
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