chiba-kun ambassador, year two!

So as you may know, I spent much of last year visiting different places in Chiba Prefecture and writing blog posts, posting pictures, and more as a Chiba-kun Ambassador. I'm happy to announce that as of earlier this month, I was reselected as part of the program and will be continuing on for my second year!

Fun facts about this year's ambassadors:
 - Out of 20 ambassadors, only 2 are boys! Last year it was pretty even, so this is a pretty dramatic change. I happen to know both of them already though, and they're both great so that's great. :)
 - We come from countries like the US, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Costa Rica, Korea, Burma, Mongolia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. I think this is more countries than last year, which is pretty cool.

Anyway, earlier this month we had our induction ceremony, which was much the same as last year, complete with a photoshoot with Chiba-kun!

On the occasion of starting my second year, I've merged my previous travel/Chiba-kun Ambassador blog with this one, and I'll be posting from here from now on. よろしくお願いします〜！

yosakoi in hokkaido

At the beginning of the month, I went to Hokkaido with my yosakoi team for the Yosakoi Soran Matsuri, which I think is probably one of the biggest yosakoi festivals in Japan (at the very least, it's the biggest one we go to)! It was my first time in Hokkaido, which was pretty exciting, and only my second time performing with my yosakoi team, which was also exciting (and nerve-wracking).

We had 85+ people go, including staff, etc., but since everybody had different schedules we split among several different flights, and I landed on Friday night. We got there a bit later than intended and after checking in and meeting up with everybody who had arrived earlier, a few of us ventured off for some Sapporo ramen. There was a pretty long line even though it was past 10, but it was definitely worth the wait. :D

And then it was up bright and early for our first day at the festival! Basically, we spent the whole day going from performance to performance in different places all over Sapporo, starting with a parade where we performed 5 times in a row. Not only was it pretty exhausting, our second performance was also the judging that would determine whether or not we would go onto the finals, so we definitely started out the weekend with a bang. Then we performed near JR Hokkaido Station, at the Sapporo Beer Garden (which also included a giant screen in the background), in front of Mitsukoshi, and then near Susukino Station, lit up by lots of lights - we even won some beer for being energetic! I think my favorite places to perform were the Beer Garden and the road near Susukino Station. And then we all headed to a restaurant to stuff ourselves on all-you-can-eat Ghengis Khan (a type of dish involving mutton that's famous in Hokkaido)! I'm not really a fan of mutton, but it was pretty tasty.

Then we were up bright and early the next day to repeat the process. Except that the second day it was raining, which put a bit of a dampener (pun intended) on things. After two more stage performances and one parade performance, we finished up day two with another 5-in-a-row parade performance, which was physically and emotionally the peak of the trip. A great ending to the two days. Which was followed immediately by a big dinner with everybody, after which one of my group members and I walked back towards where the finals were taking place on a huge stage. Tickets for the finals had been sold out for ages, but the area around the stage was cleared for walkways. Stopping was forbidden, so we just walked around the stage in circles for a few teams' performances. And then we rounded up the night with another party with everybody.

The last day was just sightseeing! I got up early to help clean up our float (is that what you call it? A giant decorated truck), and then we went to the Asahiyama Zoo, where we saw polar bears and seals and penguins and more. After that was a barbecue with lots of fresh Hokkaido vegetables, including tons of asparagus (another food I'm not so fond of but ate tons of because it was a specialty of Hokkaido and actually tasty). And then it was a rush back to the airport and back on the plane to Chiba.

This is the biggest event of the year for my team and while we didn't make the finals or semi-finals (the top two teams in each block get to go), we did get what was essentially 4th place in our block, which was not bad, I think. A lot of the team seemed dissatisfied with it though, so maybe next year we'll try harder! I should still be able to go one last time before my JET experience ends, so I'm looking forward to it. :)

shikoku shenanigans

So this post is several weeks late, but to be fair the month of June has probably been busier than any other time so far! This is largely due to the fact that for the past three out of four weekends, I've been away somewhere outside of Chiba, starting with this trip to Shikoku!

I planned the trip as a way to use up some of my expiring vacation days (which I have finally reduced to a number where they can all roll over to next year, yayy) and also reunite with some TOA friends before one of them left Japan. It was one of the longer trips I've taken in Japan and also one of the best! It was really great to see my friends again and to see three new prefectures (managed to visit all of the ones on the island except for Ehime, oops), bringing me to 20 out of 47 prefectures visited. :)

So here's what I did, with a general (unplanned) theme for each day!

Day 1: walking
  I spent pretty much this whole day walking, from a 30-minute walk to the bus stop at 4:00AM to get to the airport to a kilometer+ down the pier in Takamatsu and back again, not to mention back and forth all over the city in between.
 Ritsurin Park (gorgeous and giant green park/garden in the city) --> up and down the shopping arcades (which are apparently the longest in Japan) --> wandering around JR Takamatsu Station and having the famous Kagawa udon for lunch (it was delicious) --> Tamamo Park (with some castle remains and pretty views) --> more wandering until meeting up with my friend Thomas after he got off work and saved me from more walking with his car

Day 2: art
  This day was mainly spent admiring all kinds of art both in and outside of museums on Naoshima, an island not far from mainland Shikoku, and admiring the scenery from my electric bike (which was the coolest thing ever, as far as biking up hills was concerned). I think I did almost everything touristy there is to do on the island (except maybe the James Bond Museum? and some other things), which was a lot! Reminded me of Hakone a little bit, in the sense that there's just museums and tons of things to see everywhere, but what I liked was how you could come across random artwork in random places.
  Chichu Museum --> Lee Ufan Museum --> Benesse House Museum --> Naoshima pumpkin --> Art House Project (a series of normal houses that were art spaces inside, including one full of glowing numbers and another where you sat in almost complete darkness until your eyes adjusted and you could walk out) --> Ando Museum --> I <3 Yu (a bathhouse whose name is a clever pun on 'you' and '湯', the word for hot water)
  And then after then I went out for conveyor belt sushi with Thomas and his friends, followed by card games in his apartment before getting to bed in preparation for the next day!

    

Day 3: rafting
  This was actually the reason I scheduled my trip for this particular weekend - my friend Thomas was planning to go whitewater rafting with his friends in Tokushima and invited me along!  It wasn't my first time rafting (I think) but it was tons of fun, despite the fact that while 'surfing' on a rapid I lost one of my contacts and subsequently had to spend the next three days with clear vision in only one eye (because I didn't have spares and forgot my glasses -.-')...the staff was friendly, the group was great, the lunch was tasty, and above all the scenery was amaazzinng. And then Thomas and I met up with our friend Martin back in Tokushima and went out for dinner with his friends, followed by a quick trip to an onsen.

Day 4: driving
  We spent this day driving to Kochi Prefecture and Cape Muroto, seeing sights like a traditional street area, a lighthouse, some abandoned buildings, several temples of the 88 on the Shikoku pilgrimage, and many more Lover's Sanctuary areas than I expected. My favorite place by far was the Muroto Geopark, which was full of rocks and ocean and cats! Afterward Thomas headed back to Kagawa and Martin and I wandered around Tokushima. Apparently it's famous for LEDs, so there's a series of bridges on the river that are lit up with LEDs and are really pretty. My favorite was the Milky Way on the footpath of one of the bridges, which was just tons of little tiny lights and was really beautiful.

Day 5: water
  This was my last (full) day in Shikoku and also the only day when it rained, boo. It was drizzling as we walked to rent a car, went up Mt. Bizan (which still had a great view), ate lunch, went to another onsen, and visited the Naruto whirlpools, which were not as cool as the pictures (that Martin informed me several times were taken of whirlpools that only surface once every 10 years or so) but still definitely worth visiting, if only to walk a ways out into a churning ocean with some see-through bridge sections. And then it was back to Takamatsu in preparation for my flight early the next morning.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip. :D