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1)So yeah last week I mentioned Golden Week. This is the Japanese's excuse to pack up shop and go on holiday for 5 days to various religious places, famous sites and of course, Cairns. I didn't get to go back home of course but I did get to go to the southern island of Kyushu and see amazingly huge spaces of greeness where I thought I would never see them in Japan.
My holiday started at 5:30 on Monday morning which in itself is evil beyond all compare. We all got into the car, that's six people, and drove the one hour to Matsuyama to board the ferry. Now those that know me will know that I-hate-boats. I just cannot abide being adrift in the ocean. The swaying motion, the pitching of the ground beneath you, the smell of diesel fumes...ergh...I don't feel so good now...*burp* just give me a minute...........
So yeah, as you can see, even thinking about boats gets me a little urpie. Seasickness runs in the family of course and mum and I both suffer terribly on the high seas. Its even worse when you're down below so when I had to sit of a enormous barge for three hours with little food in my stomach in a small room with my host-dad smoking two meters away from me, it was all that I could do to roll into a ball in my bunk and pray that I would be delivered at the other end with my stomach contents intact.
But I made it and finally set foot on Kyushu for the first time since that frightening excapade at the Fukuoka Airport (see weeks one and two).
After that we drove several hours up into the mountains above the city of Beppu and stopped at a fantastically rustic restaurant perched precariously at the edge of a valley that just seemed to drop down forever and get absorbed by the greenery. This restraurant was so cool because the outside was on the inside which meant stone stepping stones, small gardens with fountains and a fish pond brimming with fat ruler length fish swimming around in a melee of black bodies tail to snout. I however later found out that these fish were for being turned into the grilled fish on sticks thats everyone was delicately biting into and after watching how they made them I was frankly a bit shocked at the insensitivity of the chef. They take the fish out of the water, alive and flipping, shove a pointed chopstick down its mouth and through its sides so that it looks like its still swimming then place it over hot coals to broil, sometimes alive as I found out, watching the tails flutter and gills move frantically as the skin blistered in the heat. I know that this is probably very gruesome for you to read but please understand that if I am going to do this immersing-you-in-my-life thing properly you have to suffer as well as learn with me.
So yeah, didn't eat that one.
I myself had a bowl of ramen with BBQ smoked chicken and a scoop of the most delicious tofu I have ever eaten in the whole world. I wasn't much of a cold tofu with soya sauce fan in Oz but here I love it and honestly this stuff was so good that I was in danger of crying. It kinda just cleaved when you pushed your chopsticks into it and fell into big chunks to be pushed into your mouth as fast as politeness allowed. As the Japanese say, oishiiiii! and hold one cheek and look like they're about to cry. I know the feeling.
Due to the rapidly descending clouds in the sky we weren't able to go and see the volcano like we planned but instead went to the famous monkey park, the one with the monkeys in the hot springs with the red faces and watched a monkey show. There were two monkeys, Tomato and Kijiro and they performed various tricks for the oohing and aahing audience. The one monkey, Kijiro was wearing a Netherlands International Soccer jersey which won me over as this is my favourite European Team. The number printed on his back was his height in feet and inches too which was real cute. I know that these shows are technically cruelty to animals but I also found myself laughing and cheering with the crowd when Kijiro walked around on three meter stilts. But I guess in the end, this is Japanese culture and there wasn't really time or sufficient Japanese for me to explain that my family's morals prevented me from seeing the show.
When we finally got to the hotel it was wet and raining and a thick fog had descended on the mountains around us. Actually the mountains weren't part of a range but a giant caldera (usually a sunken volcano crater but thankfully this one wasn't)(I heard something about something from space, whatever that means) which ran in a gargantuan ring for miles and miles and encompassed in its diameter at least three towns and a dozen large dairy farms sprawled out on the rolling green hills. Not unlike Atherton really.
So yeah at the hotel everyone promptly grabbed their towel and dashed off the to the hotel's onsen (hot baths) to soak away the pains of the trip. I myself had a worrying pain my shoulders resulting from two hours of punching and holding a fist at Karate. I must say that sitting in a pool of warm water with no clothes on and only a towel to protect what small about of modesty you have left is great way to bond with a new host family. There are no secrets in an onsen.
This was followed of course by an enormous dinner, customery after a stint in the pools to chase away the roaring hunger. But I must admit that after about half of the food was eaten, even I was getting full, ashamed as I was after years and years of intensive conditioning at family banquets and Christmas lunch (the chinese sure can eat)(and eat)(and eat). Then back to the room to rest where I found out on the news that 9 people had died in the particulary vicious car accident I saw on the highway getting to the Hotel. There is something very grounding in actually seeing a crash where people are killed, especially when you see the ambulance driving away that you know is holding the bodies, as I later found out. (Sorry if this gross, but this is from a girl that eats her dinner while watching CSI)(mmmmm, steak).
The next day we packed up and drove off to Beppu again to take the ferry home. However on the way we got waylaid by a Japanese dairy farm, with man in smiling cow-suit included of course, and ended up spending unspeakable amounts of money on bread, yoghurt and marshmellows (well me marshmellows) not to mention two whole cakes and four cones of icecream (amongst all the children of course, not just me). After finally extracting my host mum from the shop we finally got going again.
Along the way we also visited a small geyser (my first ever in Japan) and also a 'blood pond' which is infact a hotspring rich in iron oxide so that the water coming out of it is blood red. They also had a foot onsen where you could paddle in the water. It was so hot! The water itself leaves the spring at a steady 78 degrees and enters the onsen at 47 degrees so after about ten minutes my feet were bright red leaving a line where skin had touched the water and where it hadn't. Yeoowch! However it was very funny and my sister and I looked like were were imitating lobsters.
When we finally got to Beppu again we missed our ferry with its reserved room. *sigh*
No problems, this gave us a chance to go to a beppu onsen instead which is much better. Beppu means volcanic hot spring and with its steaming chimneys every three houses along and steam rising out of the very gutters along the road, Beppu City is not called Beppu City for nothing. (See above photo)
The onsen itself was not unlike every other one except for its rustic-ness and telltale mineral growths everywhere. The facilities consisted of several normal bathing pools, one of stone and one of wood, a pebble foot bath (it relaxes and massages in one easy step), rustic outside onsen pool with waterfall delivering fresh hot water (so very very hot that I started to turn a worrying shade of red - being the only foreigner in the pool - and my sister had to suggest we get out) and of course, my favourite, the falling streams of water, great for teasing out Karate knots. Outside in the common gender area there was also facilities to boil your own egg in the water directly from the spring (ick, egg) and pipes where you could inhale the steam. They claimed that it had beneficial qualities for sore throats but really it was like inhaling from a rotten egg.
After that we finally made it home at like 11pm. On the way back because we couldn't get a room we had to sleep/rest in a communal room which basically had raised platforms along two walls with individual futons and a TV. Kinda made me feel like I was in the Titanic, which for someone that hates boats is not good. Didn't want to be ending up at the bottom of the Japanese Sea having conversations with Octapi in broken Japanese.
But as you can tell, I survived. I am so sorry that this report has become so late. I basically have been just going to school and sleeping (along with one other adventure, but thats next week's story) all this last week and a half so I really just haven't been able to rally myself to sit at a computer long enough to write about it all. So very sorry. But I hope its long enough to satisfy the more devoted amongst you and as always I would appreciate feedback (of mostly the constructive kind) as well as letters which you can send to 3-4-4 Minamihori-chou, Imabari, Ehime-ken, Japan 794-0043. Thanks guys for putting up with the lateness. Smiles everyone ^-^