out to the countryside

5/31/05

for the last several days we’ve been hanging out w/ our friend randall. he’s half japanese and he invited us to come down w/ him to visit his aunt and uncle who live here. they live in this small town town near the southern tip of honshu (the main japanese island). randall warned us that there’s really not too much to do down there and that they live kind of in a really rural area, but meeting his relatives and getting to really see how people live here sounded really cool to us. so we hopped on the bullet train…

when we got there, randall’s aunt and uncle picked us up from the train station. they dont speak all that much english, but they can say some words here and there and they can pretty much understand what you say to them. and they are so nice!! the whole time while we stayed there, they were always offering us food, offering us beer, driving us places, and just basically making us feel very welcome. we slept in a room w/ the traditional tatami mats, futons, and sliding paper doors. it was really cool!

pretty much right after we got there, we all had dinner. his relatives were realy worried that we wouldnt be able to eat japanese food. they just couldnt belive that we had actually eaten japanese food back home in america. it’s funny, our guidebook had actually said that this would happen to us frequently… that japanese people always worry that westerners wont be able to handle japanese food. they were also failry impressed w/ how we could use chopsticks as well. heh, they actually told us that our chopstick skills were better than randalls and he got the “X” for his chopstick use. after dinner and a few beers, we were so tired that we could hardly keep our eyes open, so we went to bed.

6/1/05

the next morning we tried to figure out what we would do that day. randall’s uncle was really shocked that we didnt have an itinerary planned. apparently,　when japanese people travel, they plan every little detail of their vacation from start to finish and usually spend the whole time on guided tours. the thought that people could just “wing it” and not really have a set itinerary was a very bizarre and foreign concept to them. we decided to check out these caves that were about 2 hours away, so we all hopped in the van and drove off. driving through the japanese countryside is awesome. it’s so incredibly beautiful. lots of volcanic shaped hills covered w/ greenery and trees. every once in a while you’d get stunning views of the ocean. plus, the architecture here is just so awesome. even the regular plain houses almost look like miniature temples. it was cool to just drive along and take it all in. it’s funny, every once in a while we’d pass construction work. instead of having workers waving flags to get people to slow dow, they have robots that were shaped like smiling people and the robots waved the flags.

eventually we reached the akiyoshi caves. the caverns were enormous. the main path through the cave is over a kilometer. inside there were all sort of crazy stalagmite and stalagtite formations to check out. plus all these really cool pools of water and stuff. it’s weird, caves are often a kind of disappointment for me. they usually end up being way smaller than i expect and there’s really only so much to see. not this cave though.. this one was really damn cool!

statue near the caves

after the caverns, we went to go check out this temple. the temple was pretty cool, and one thing that was especially cool was that up on a little hill near it, there was this huge line of small seated buddha. all of the buddhas were wearing little knitted caps of various different colors. the whole trail going up the hill was lined w/ these little statues. some of them would have other random clothes too.

after the temple, we went to go see this really crazy style of fishing that they do here in japan. they have these small birds that kind of look like storks and the birds are tied to leashes. the fishermen will stand in their boats and have like 10 of these birds on leashes all swimming in the water next to the boat. when the bird sees a fish, it’ll dive down into the water to catch it. but the birds have this little string tied around their necks so they cant swallow the fish. instead, the fisherman snag the fish from the bird. pretty bizarre huh? so today was the start of the fishing season and they had this big ceremony anmd we got to see the boats go out. it was fairly dark so i didnt actually get to see the birds but caryn and randall did. we watched all of this from this really cool bridge that is one of the most famous bridges in japan.

we then went back to the house for dinner. randall’s aunt had bought suishi for dinner and she was extremely worried that caryn and i wouldnt be able to handle eating sushi. they were really shocked to find out that we have sushi back home too. they also serveed us some miso soup and were worried we wouldnt like that too. they assured us multiple times that if we didnt like it, we didnt have to eat it. heh, it was pretty funny. oh, the other funny thing was that they thought that japan was the only country that served beer cold.

*v