chiba-kun ambassadors year two, tour one!

A few weeks ago was the first Chiba-kun Ambassadors tour of the year... and I slept through the first half of it. -.-' I have no recollection whatsoever if my alarm going off, just waking up at 8, looking at my watch,  and thinking,  '...wait, 8?!' Luckily somebody else was due to join the group at lunchtime, so I just met up with her. Hopefully this will be the first and last time I oversleep for a tour!

In the morning the ambassadors visited the Iris Festival at the Suigo Sawara Aquatic Botanical Garden and also got to ride boats, which I was really looking forward to and was sad to have missed. :( But at least I still managed to make it in time for lunch, which was in Sawara, at a restaurant called Chiyofuku. My first impression of the restaurant (besides being viciously attacked by mosquitoes in the two minutes I spent waiting outside the entrance) was that it was very classy/fancy (for lack of better words), though not in an intimidating way. The outside looks very traditional, but the inside is pretty modern. Of course, the food was delicious, too! Tempura, sashimi, pickles - all very traditional food.

Chiyofuku
Address: 1720-1 Sawara, Katori-shi
Access: 12-minute walk from JR Sawara Station
Closed Mondays

Our next stop was the Suigo Sawara Dashi Kaikan/Float Hall, where you can learn about the dashi (floats) that are used in the Sawara Festival, which is one of three great festivals of the Kanto region (for some reason in Japan they always list top things in threes). It's also apparently an Important Intangible Cultural Property (says their flier). Though I will say these floats are different from any others I've seen, as they have giant figures on them. The Float Hall had several of the actual floats on display, where you could see them up-close and also try on happi, the traditional coats. To be honest some were a little intimidating, but they were still pretty impressive. The floor above also had some exhibitions with musical instruments and wooden sculptures. Pretty cool. I can only imagine what it must be like to see them all lit up at night in the parades, complete with music and crowds of people!


Suigo Sawara Dashi Kaikan (Float Hall) 
Website: http://www.city.katori.lg.jp/dashikaikan/index.html (Japanese only)
Address: 3368I Sawara, Katori-shi (inside Yasaka Shrine grounds)
Access: 15-minute walk from JR Sawara Station
Admission: 400 yen for adults, 200 yen for elementary/junior high schoolers
Closed Mondays


Next we had some free time to explore the town, which is famous for its traditional-style streets. I've heard you can also rent kimonos to explore with, which is something I'd like to try sometime. There's a little river that flows in between some of the historic streets downtown, and it's very picturesque. You can even ride boats here too! There are also lots of souvenir shops with cute/traditional items, which I had fun exploring - I also found one that sold high-quality earpicks (aka made of fancy wood and costing hundreds of dollars), haha. And of course there are places to eat, traditional/historical buildings, and also a museum (that I didn't go to) dedicated to Ino Tadataka, who made a map of Japan in the 1800s that is almost identical to maps nowadays (in other words, incredibly accurate for the time).

Finally, we went to Katori Jingu Shrine, which is famous enough for me to have heard of it before this tour, for what that's worth. I will admit (again) that I don't know much about Shintoism or shrines, but it was a really beautiful and quiet place - the road leading up to it was lined with trees that were big and green and shady, and after we went into the temple and were given a brief introduction by somebody who worked there, I wandered around the back by myself and it was very peaceful. 

Katori Jingu Shrine
Website: http://www.katori-jingu.or.jp/ (Japanese only)
Address: 1697-1 Katori, Katori-shi
Access: 10-minute walk from JR Sawara Station
Admission: 300 yen for adults, 100 yen for elementary/junior high schoolers
Closed Mondays

And so ended our first tour! I'm still sad that I missed the first half (though I guess it's my own fault, or rather my alarm clock's), especially since I'm sure everybody did self-introductions on the bus, but there are still three more tours for us to do as a group, including an overnight one, so hopefully I'll get to know everybody soon anyway!

national professional stuff

So I may have mentioned that June was incredibly busy and that I spent three out of four weekends essentially away from home (though looking back, apparently I thought my Shikoku trip was in June instead of the end of May -.-'). I wrote about the (actual) first weekend (my yosakoi trip to Hokkaido), so here's what I did for those other two weekends!

The first one was National AJET changeover. I'm sure I mentioned here that I was elected onto the AJET (Association of JETs) National Council as the CIR representative, so we all met up in Narita to meet each other and the outgoing council and learn about our new positions. I was actually scheduled to take the Business Japanese Proficiency Test during the second day of changeover, but I decided to attend both days since it's pretty much the only chance for us all to meet (since we're all over the country). So I spent the weekend learning about National AJET and being the CIR rep and Project Manager (which is my secondary position on the council), which was a lot to absorb at once but also pretty fun! Most of us spent the night in the same hotel and we had dinner at the hotel buffet (including all-you-can-eat crab legs!) and hung out afterwards. Being on the council is definitely going to be a lot of work (it's already keeping me pretty busy) and involve lots of new experiences, but I think I'll enjoy it. :) I also took part in the AJET opinion exchange with CLAIR and the three Ministries that run the JET Program the next day, which was official but informative.

And then the next weekend was IJET 25, or the 25th International Japan-English Translation conference! I actually heard about it from a fellow JET who was going, and since it was in Tokyo for the first time ever I thought it'd be a good opportunity for some professional development and signed up. And it was! I'm pretty horrible at networking so I'm not sure how much of that I managed (I did come back with lots of business cards though), but I met a lot of professional translators/interpreters and got to attend some interesting and informative sessions, so I think it was definitely worth it. I even met some other JETs (besides my friend) from other prefectures, which was pretty cool. The next one will be in Edinburgh, though, so I doubt I'll have the time/budget to attend. Oh well!

The last weekend of June was spent at the Chiba City Museum of Art with my friend Chris, and also on the first Chiba-kun Ambassador's tour! But more about that in my next post. :)

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

yosakoi yosakoi

So last month a joined a yosakoi dance team, and it's slowly but surely taking over my life really really fun! Yosakoi is a type of Japanese dance, and the style that my team is, yosakoi soran, only has two rules: that the dancers dance while holding naruko (clappers) and that the song includes lyrics from soran bushi, a famous traditional song. Other than that, anything goes, so yosakoi teams all have their own unique styles and interpretations.

The team I joined is called Chiyoren Hokutenkai, and I think it's one of the bigger and well-established teams in Chiba Prefecture (though since I've just joined I'm still learning about it). There are probably 50-60 active members of all ages, and it's super fun! Everybody has been very welcoming (apparently I've joined at a time when they manage to recruit lots of new people like college students) and I already wish I'd discovered them earlier!

Anyway, a couple of weekends ago I helped out as staff (since I hadn't learned the dance yet) at a yosakoi event called Yosakoi Kisarazu Buson, which took place for the 13th time this year and included over 30 teams and 1000 dancers! Yosakoi soran originally started in Hokkaido before spreading all over the country, so I think it's pretty cool that there are that many people who do it here in Chiba.



The event took place in Kisarazu, which I don't think I've been to before, but is apparently famous for tanuki (raccoon dogs), judging by the giant statue of one near the station. I was in charge of photography for the day, so I followed the team around during their performances, both on stage and in parade style. I didn't get to see that many performances of other teams, but I did see all of their introductions in the opening ceremony and admire their flags (yosakoi teams aren't just dancers but also include people who wave giant flags around in the background - it looks much cooler than that sounds, I promise).

Anyway, my team made it to the finals and eventually got 1st place, which means we got to take home a grand prize of 1000 packages of nori (dried seaweed). I didn't do anything to help them get there, but I did get to take some too. :D

I think there will be several more yosakoi events taking place in Chiba this summer (actually there's one this weekend but I'll have to miss it), and now that I've officially debuted and can dance with the team, I should be able to post some more exciting updates! Stay tuned. :)

taiwan travels

This year for Golden Week, instead of staying home and dancing all week, I took a trip to Taiwan with a couple of friends! Well, I say 'with', but actually we all had different flights/schedules and only had one day where all three of us were together, but I got to spend the whole time with at least one companion and it was great. :)

Here's how my itinerary ended up:

Day 1:
 - arrival in Taipei in the evening and meeting up with my friend (who was kind enough to take me to my hostel because I am bad at directions, haha)
- dinner at Din Tai Fung (a restaurant famous for its xialong bao, which were amazing)
- clubbing (there was supposed to be an indoor waterfall but we couldn't find it, sad)

Day 2:
- hopping on a train to Tamsui, where we wandered along the wharf, bought street food, shared a coconut, and tried (and failed) to find a certain fabled beach
- stopping by the Taipei Expo Park on the way back and exploring the area around it, which was open and beautiful and included things like an indigenous people's museum
- meeting up with our friend and heading back to Din Tai Fung for round 2 (because we decided the night before we had to take her there), which was just as delicious
- going up to a fancy restaurant/bar near the top of Taipei 101, which used to be the world's tallest building. We weren't at the very top and the only place I could see a view was in the bathroom, but it was still pretty cool.
- wandering around Shilin Night Market! In retrospect I think I should have shopped and eaten more while we were there, but just exploring and seeing all the stands and people was lots of fun

Day 3:
- taking a dubious but persistent taxi driver's offer to drive us up to Jiu Fen, the place that was the inspiration for the town in Spirited Away, where we stopped at a tea house and explored the narrow streets, taking lots of pictures on the way
- going to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial, which is flanked by the National Theatre and Concert Hall, all in a huge open space, where we also happened to see the changing of the guards and see some exhibits
- a brief visit to Ximen, which was so full of Japanese restaurants and chains it was almost like we hadn't left at all
- going to a puzzle cafe! What a great idea, and such a sense of accomplishment (even though we only did two smallish ones in about an hour and a half)

Day 4:
- visiting the National Palace Museum, where we lined up for 20 minutes to see a jadeite cabbage (among other interesting and beautiful things)
- trekking out to eat beef noodles, which were great (though I think my mom could give them a run for their money)
- visiting Longshan Temple, which was full of people who all knew what they were doing (unlike us)
- making another special trip to go find a certain pineapple cake shop, where everybody who goes there gets to sample a cake and enjoy a cup of tea (before buying pricey but actually very tasty pineapple cakes)
- wandering around the area, which was full of little and interesting stores and cafes - if I lived near there I would definitely want to explore more thoroughly (though I suspect it's a rather expensive place to live)
- getting some frozen yogurt at Taipei Station before heading out again to some new night markets in search of omiyage for our coworkers

And then I got up super early to go back to Japan, with a decent amount of Taiwan dollars left over - proof that I should have bought/eaten (mostly eaten) more while I was there, but also an incentive to go back sometime! Definitely a great trip. :D