Spring Semester Week 2 – 春学期第2週 Part 1

Readings in Japanese Literature 日本文学:

若い読者のための短編小説案内という村上春樹の本を授業にディスカッションを行った。面白いのは『ねじまき鳥クロニクル』という村上春樹の小説について、どのように生まれたかということだ。ただ一行だけから、長い小説ができた。

「その女から電話がかかってきた時、僕は台所に立ってスパゲティーを茹でているところだった」

そして、先生はみんなにこの一行から一人ずつ一行を挙げてほしい。結局その話はすごく面白くなった。とても楽しかった。それに、その経験は僕がYNCの時に思い出した。一行から、いろいろな可能な方向を考えて、少しずつ話を進む。

We had a discussion about “A Reader on the Short Story for Young Readers”, a book written by Haruki Murakami. We learnt how the book “Wind Up Bird Chronicle” came about, from just one line into a long story.

So as an activity, we took the first line from the book, and Ito sensei asked us to contribute one line per person. In the end, we came up with a pretty hilarious and interesting story. I enjoyed it a lot! Also, this reminded of times back in YNC at the Lit Collective, and I thought about how good it’d be if we did it again haha.

Creative Writing クリエティブ・ライティング：

クリエティブ・ライティングの授業に、もうすぐ小説を書こうとしているから、このコツを使うかな。先週『雨傘』の話を少し話したが、その話はこうなる。彼氏のお父さんが転勤することによって、彼氏が家族めぐり他の町に引っ越しするので、二人の恋人が別れようとした。そうする前に、写真屋に写真を撮りに行った。二人きりで、恥ずかしくて、あまり話していないが、その過程で、何気なく、二人間の感情がはっきり現れた。

とても感動的な小説だと思う。

そのあとで、僕は新しい小説のあらすじを書いた。これは本当に悩んでいた。どのような一行がいいのか。「風があまりなくて、くらくらさせる厳暑の中に、彼女がドアをノックした」そんな感じかな。他の文を考えないといけない。

In the Creative Writing class, we are about to start writing a short story, so I guess I could use the tip we learnt in Literature class haha. I talked about the story “The Rain Umbrella” we read in class back in the previous post, but this is how the story went. It’s about a couple who’s about to break up because the guy’s dad got transferred out of his workplace to another city, so they have to move house as a family. So they go to a photo shop to get their photos taken. They were really embarrassed and didn’t really talk to each other but through the process, they subconsciously showed their feelings through to each other.

It was a really moving story.

After that, we had to write the outline for our short story. I really wrecked my brains on this one. How should the first line go? “In the dizzying heat of summer, with hardly any wind, she knocked on the door”. Something like that? I need to think up of more stuff.

Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language:

その授業でアクセントに関して勉強した。僕にとって一番びっくりしたのはルールなのだ。初級の時にそれをあまり勉強せずに済んだから、どのような発音が正しいか、ほとんど雰囲気で決める。しかし、日本人でもそれをはっきりしない。とても有名な例は、「はし」という言葉だ。例えば、はしを渡る。はしで食べる。端にある。何の違いがあるのかな。その言葉だけではなくて、そのすぐ後の助詞は高低かどうか決める。「橋を渡る」と「端にある」の「はし」は同じ高低アクセントでも、「橋を渡る」の「を」は低くて、「端にある」の「に」は高い。

大ざっぱに言えば、日本語のアクセントの規則は何なのか？二つある。一つ目は、第一音節と第二音節では、必ず高さが変わる。二つ目は、一つの中では、高いアクセントは1か所しかない。そして何のためするか？意味を区別して、語のまとまりを示す。語のまとまりといえば、例えば「毎日新聞を読む」それは「毎日新聞」を読むか、あるいは「毎日、新聞を読む」それはアクセントで決める。

大変重要なポイントだ。先生になることであれ、学生としての勉強であれ、これは身につけるべきなことだ。

I learnt about accents in Japanese in “Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language class”. I was really surprised about the rules. When I was a beginner, I never really paid much attention to it, so I just went by intuition as to whether a pronunciation was right or not. But, even Japanese people aren’t so clear about this. There is a well-known example of the word はし and it has 3 pronunciations which are pretty hard to take apart if you’re not used to hearing them. I’ve written it above, so take a look!

Roughly speaking, there are two rules for accents in Japanese. The first one is that the first and second syllables can’t be of the same pitch. The second, is that there is only one higher pitched syllable in any word. So what’s the purpose of accents? First is of course to differentiate between meanings of word with the same hiragana, but the other is to round up the end of a word. Example is above!

So it’s a really important point. Whether you are going to be a teacher or simply just a student, it’s something to take seriously.

University Preparatory Japanese 大学進学準備UPJセミナー:

一番役に立つのは文法の勉強だ。そして、「〜を皮切りにして」という文法は好きだ。頭にすぐ浮かぶイメージはリンゴの皮をむくということだ。本当の意味は何か起こって、次に起こったことはさらに発展していくという意味だ。

そして、「〜や否や」と「〜が早いか」の違いを明確するために、30分でいろいろなビデオを見たり、自分で考えたりしていた。結局、その違いは、「〜や否や」というのは、前後の出来事はほぼ同時に起こる。最初の出来事が起こった瞬間に、次のがすぐ来る。「〜が早いか」というのは、最初の出来事が完全に終わった瞬間に、次のがすぐ来る。ニュアンスが本当に一見に見えない。

Learning grammar for N1 was pretty useful. I liked the one with 「〜を皮切りにして」It had a very strong imagery for me that was easy to remember haha.

Also, I tried to differentiate between the meanings of 「〜や否や」and「〜が早いか」which roughly translates to “no sooner than” and “as soon as”. The nuance of the meanings are so close, that I took about 30 minutes to get the differences clear in my head.

Tea Ceremony 茶道：

お茶を飲んだり、和菓子を食べたりする授業だね。今週食べた和菓子はきんとんという和菓子だ。

そんな感じだけど、黒ごまとあんこが入っていて、すごく美味しかった！

ちなみに、その授業はこういうものをするに限らず、どうやって雰囲気を作るのか大事なのだ。最初に、布巾や、お箸や、おじきや、などのマナーを学んだ。全部を覚えるのは大変だけど、スムーズにすると、とても繊細な雰囲気を感じた。

Well, it’s often said that the tea ceremony class is just a class to drink tea and eat snacks. Not too far from the truth actually haha.

I ate this thing called kinton, and it had black sesame and red bean paste in it. It was so so so good.

But well, we don’t just eat snacks and drink tea, but we also learn how to observe and maintain the atmosphere of a tea ceremony. We learnt how to handle the napkin, the chopsticks, bow and other mannerisms. It was a little hard to remember everything, but I really felt the refined atmosphere of the room.

つまり、以上述べた授業には、どうやって想像力を生かせるのか、どうやって綺麗な日本語を話したり、書いたりするのか、という前提として考えた。最後に、雰囲気を優先するというとても日本的な考え方を学んで、これから、自分の行動をもっと意識すべきだと気付いた。

Essentially, what I did in class was really how to make use of my imagination and how to write and speak beautiful Japanese. Also, it’s a very Japanese thing to put the atmosphere of the situation first, and from there, I became really aware of my movements, whether it be a slight move of the arm, or a twitch of the thumb.

Good week I say?

 

 

 

Spring Semester Beginnings（春学期の始まり）

春学期が始まった。

The spring semester has begun.

授業 (Classes)

僕は今学期７００という一番難しい日本語の授業を取るようになった。その授業の目標は、従来溜まった悪い癖を消して、すらすらに、間違えなく書けるようにすることだ。三日間が経っても、それを強く感じた。３人の先生のうち、一人の岡田先生は発音がとても気に入っている。僕はいつも自分の発音が問題ないと思うけれども、結局話すときに、一つ目のシラブルにたまにアクセントが強すぎて、英語の話し方になってしまうという癖を先生に指摘された。さらに、その授業では、習った文法をよく復習する中で、ニュアンスや使い方をはっきり説明してくれる。コミュニケーションの授業はこのポイントをよく感じた。例えば、「〜の危機に瀕しています。」というのは六つの言い方がある。〜の危機に直面しています。〜の危機に陥っています。〜の危機にあります。〜しようとしています。〜しつつあります。確かに習った文法があったけれども、表現を言い換えるのは大事だ。そして、毎日色な言い方を覚えといて、いつでも言えるようにするという力を育む。

I’m in NIJ700, the most difficult level of Japanese here at Nanzan. The goal of the class is to get rid of all the bad habits that we’ve built up learning Japanese, and be able to speak and write fluently in Japanese without making too many mistakes. I felt that really strongly even after just three days in. Amongst the three teachers, one of them, Okada sensei, is really particular about pronunciation. I never thought that my pronunciation had any problems but in fact, she pointed out that when I talk, I tend to place my accent a bit too strongly on the first syllable of the words and sounds like when I’m speaking English. Also, during classes, we go through the grammar we’ve learnt pretty thoroughly, going through nuances and the ways of using them. I felt this during communication classes, for example, we had to do 6 different ways of expressing the phrase “impending danger”. Won’t go through them here, but you get the idea. So, indeed we do stuff that we’ve learnt before, but the important thing is how to rephrase, and how to use them as though they were on your fingertips.

内容に関して、結構面白いと思う。最初のトピックは文化の多様性と日本には味わいの分かれ目だ。分かれ目と言えば、味わいの分かれ目は関ヶ原という町だと読んだ。歴史的に言えば、京都の公家文化と江戸の武家文化の違いによって味わいが別れた。具体的に言えば、公家文化の政治家は薄いものが好きで、武家の料理は濃いのだ。しかし、なぜ数百年前のことが今まで受け継がれているかというと、やっぱり日本人は保守的な人という判断ができるかもしれない。今や日清という会社の開発チームが東京から大阪まで行って、一駅ずつその駅の近くの食べ物を試して、やっぱり関ヶ原だった。僕は本当に知らなかった。

The contents are pretty interesting. The topics we did were on cultural diversity and divisions based on taste in Japan. About divisions, we read that the divisions of taste in Japan is at this place called Sekigahara. More specifically, it’s cause of the difference between the court nobles in Kyoto and the warring class in the Edo period. However, why is it that the split still happens hundred of years after, till today? It’s probably that the Japanese are conservative when it comes to taste. Even now, as the development team in Nissin, a food company that does your cup ramen, went to each station along the train line from Tokyo to Osaka to taste the food around the station, they found that there was a clear split at Sekigahara. I really did not know that.

他の授業も面白そう。クリエティブ・ライティング, 日本語は外国語として教える, 茶道、大学進学準備, 日本文学という授業を取っているけど、本当に他の授業を取りたかった。とりあえず、クリエティブ・ライティングの授業は小説を書くのだ。楽しいのは色々な現代作家の作品が読めて、結構いい勉強になることだ。川端康成の「雨傘」を読んで、どんな短い小説でも、とても感動的な作品だと思って、いつかこのように書けるといいねと思った。そして、茶道はとてもいいらしい。皆はただお茶を飲んだり、お菓子を食べたりする授業だと思うけど、僕にはとても気にいることが多い。例えば、食器のこだわりや、禅はどのように茶道に受け入れられるのかなど。

The other lessons are pretty interesting. I’m taking creative writing, teaching Japanese as a foreign language, tea ceremony, University preparatory Japanese and Readings in Japanese literature, but I really wanted to take other courses. (Courses this semester are really interesting dayum). In any case, the creative writing course I’m taking is essentially a novel writing course. The fun thing we get to do is read works by modern writers, and get to learn a lot from them. I read “The Rain Umbrella” by Yasunari Kawabata, and even though it was a short story, I really felt moved by it, and one day, I hope to be able to write like that. The tea ceremony course seemed pretty good too.  People think that it’s just a course about drinking tea and eating snacks but I’m pretty interested in a lot of things within it, like the philosophy behind the utensils they use, and how zen is incorporated into the tea ceremony.

一番難しい授業はやっぱり大学進学準備のだ。それは日本語能力試験一級のため、全部の資料は自習すべきだ。僕は一回自分で勉強してみて、結構時間がかかってしまった。きちんと勉強したら。すべてのニュアンスや、使い方をはっきりわかるようにするのは難しい。しかも自分ですれば、もっと難しいと思う。とにかく、頑張る！

The most difficult course is after all, the University preparatory course. It’s really a prep course to take the JLPT N1, and we have to study for them ourselves. We just come to class and discuss answers, but we do the main readings on our own. I tried doing it myself once, and it took a heck of a long time to study it properly. To capture the nuances, and uses of the expressions is pretty difficult. Also, to do it yourself is even more difficult. Anyway, I’ll work hard for this!

料理 (Cooking)

僕には、料理は大事なものだ。今年一つの目標は健康的に、さらに和食の作り方をきちんとしたいのだ。なので、『基本の和食』という料理本を買って、そこの説明に沿って完璧なご飯が作れるようにしている。今までひじきのおかずを作ったけど、材料はかなり高いから、１週間一回試すことにした。今週お鍋を作って、来週ジャガイモの料理を作ろうか。

Cooking is really important to me. One of my goals this year is to eat healthily, and prepare Japanese food properly. So I bought a book called “Fundamental Japanese food” and am trying to prepare the perfect meals following the instructions in the book. I’ve made a seaweed dish called Hijiki and cause the ingredients are really expensive, I’ve decided to try one dish each week. This week I made a hotpot, and next week I might make a potato dish.

Nabe

 

Hijiki Side dish

 

Ramen with half-boiled eggs

パーティー (Parties)

ここでは、パーティーは楽しい。大変な一週間が経って、遠慮なくパーティーするのはやっぱり解放感が感じているよね。少しテンションを上がって、溜まったストレスを全部解消する。家でパーティーするのは居酒屋より安いし、何を言いたいことが言えるから、本当にいい場所だね。

Parties are fun here. After a tough week, it feels good to let everything loose, and let all the stress pent up from the week go. It’s cheaper than an Izakaya and we can definitely say whatever we want to.

Photo Credits: Ryotaro

アルバイト (Part-Time Job)

僕は英会話の先生としてアルバイトをしている。それは発音を中心にして、生徒たちをコミュニケーションがスムーズに取れるようにさせることだ。僕には教えるのは嫌な感じがするけれども、四ヶ月間ずっと教えていて、好きになった。なぜかというと、自分がネーティブの先生だから、生徒たちは僕が何を言っているかきちんと聞いて、ずっと努力している。シンガポールの学生に比べたら、態度が全然違うなと思う。そして、中学生と小学生の違いがはっきり見える。小学生たちはよく自分の意見を言ったり、自分の感情を表したりしているから、分かりやすい。中学以上の学生たちはそんなにはっきり反応していないから、もっと励みが必要だ。まあ、全体として考えると、達成感が強く感じられるアルバイトだ。

I’m working part-time as an English conversation teacher here. I place an emphasis on pronunciation and make sure my students can communicate fluently. I didn’t really feel like teaching at first, but after 4 months of teaching, I can say that I’ve come to like it. Maybe since cause I’m a native speaker teacher, my students pay close attention to what I have to say and really put in the effort to speak properly. Compared to students back in Singapore, their attitudes are really different! Also, I could see a big different between middle school and elementary school students. Elementary school students just say what’s on their mind, and express how they feel, so they’re easy to read, but once they are 13 years old, they aren’t very responsive so they could use a little encouragement. Well, taking it as a whole, it’s a part-time job I can say I feel a strong sense of accomplishment.

もうすぐ１週間の休みだ。白川郷に行く予定だが、まだ計画していない。雪が降っているから、絶対に綺麗だよね！楽しみにしている！雪と言えば、名古屋に雪が降っている！南山が綺麗になった笑。

The 1 week break is approaching soon! We’re planning to go to shirakawago, but we haven’t made any plans. Because it’s going to snow, it’s going to be really pretty! Looking forward to it! Speaking of snow, it’s snowing in Nagoya, and Nanzan is looking really pretty now.

 

It snowed in Nanzan

 

The pathways are really pretty when they’re lined with snow

 

鹿児島 Kagoshima Part 3

Food is a big thing in Kagoshima. The quality of food is really high, and I enjoyed myself so much.

Introducing the places I went to and also the ones I should’ve tried:

鳥花（とりはな）Torihana

The name of the izakaya

The front of the izakaya

The taste profile of foods in Kagoshima is sweet. The soya sauce is sweet, so all the foods have a tinge of sweetness in them. It’s always usually mixed in with other tastes so you also have sweet & sour, sweet & salty, sweet & peppery.

The best thing I liked about this shop was the Chicken Nanban, a fried chicken dish with tartar sauce and Nanban vinegar. Both sweet & sour tastes balanced nicely, the juiciness of the chicken was irresistible. I could eat 2 plates of this if I could. Tasty all the way to the last piece.

Chicken Nanban

My next favorite was Satsuma Age, a type of deep fried minced fish cake that you can find in South of Kyushu. Satsuma is the name of a province a couple of hundred years ago, and it was famous for the Satsuma rebellion that changed Japan from an exclusivist country into an open one, so there are tons of things in Kagoshima named after Satsuma. Even the name that comes before Torihana is Satsuma Jidori, so it’s a pretty important part of Kagoshima to remember. But back to food, and it was unlike any fish cake you’ll taste in Asia, that the flavour of the fish is pretty strong.

Satsuma Age

Kibinago, or silver striped round herring, is a dish that you’d have to get used to, but I loved it from the start. It’s both sweet and bitter and I took to the bitterness cause it was a good contrast from all the other food I had. Apparently it is used as fishing bait in other countries.

Kibinago, or Silver-striped round herring

A blast back to the past was this pig trotter dish. It reminded me very much of the pig trotters in vinegar that I always had back in Singapore but this was flavored slightly differently. First, the vinegar was just used as a dipping, there was no ginger, but instead spring onions and a slice of lemon to squeeze over. The umami flavor was strong in this one.

Pig Trotters with Vinegar

To round off the night was this dish called Chanko Nabe, rice with tons of side dishes. There was seaweed, shredded chicken, carrots, mushrooms, egg, takuan (a kind of pickled vegetable), and spring onions. And then you pour some dashi, and the dashi really makes the dish.

Mixed Rice with Dashi!

I’d definitely recommend coming here. And here’s the location.

黒カツ亭（くろかつてい）Kuro Katsu Tei

According to Seimi, there’s a place better than this called 開花亭（かいかてい）Kaikatei, but because that was about 30 minutes away, and that it’d be so much easier to go somewhere near the chuo station, we chose to go to this place called Kuro Katsu Tei, a tonkatsu place pretty well-known in the area.

For those less familiar with tonkatsu, it’s a fried pork dish, and usually served with cabbage, rice and miso soup. The best thing about Kagoshima is the rice, and it’s soft, fluffy and really tasty, like I could just have thing by itself and I’d be fine. Another great thing about this place is that like other tonkatsu places, there’s free flow of rice and cabbage, so I helped myself to them. Definitely a must go while you’re there.

Tonkatsu goodness

Kuro Katsu Tei

豚トロ（とんとろ）Tontoro

Meaty, thick, rich broth is how I’d describe it. There’s a lot of garlic too, but the star is the pork. It’s the belly that they use, and it melts in your mouth. I think that’s the star quality of good Japanese cuisine. The burst of flavor, the melting pork and I was in heaven.

鹿児島 Kagoshima Part 2 – A photo essay

There are 3 places in Kagoshima that are really beautiful to me. Shiroyama 城山, Senganen 仙巌園, and Sakurajima 桜島. I’ve had the chance to go to Shiroyama multiple times, and each time a different experience.

鹿児島 Kagoshima Part 1

I started my time with a trip to Ibusuki. My Japanese 4 classmate Jessica happened to be in Kagoshima doing her JET program, so we decided to go to the sand bath at Ibusuki! We went to the sand bath at this hotel called Ibusuki Iwasaki Hotel, about a 15 minute walk away from Ibusuki station.

別府 Beppu

Beppu is a place for onsens. There honestly isn’t much else about this place, but the fact that it ranks no. 2 behind the Yellowstone National Park for having the tallest hot spring fountain in the world, and that the city pretty much relies on its onsens to rake in revenue says a lot about how important onsens are to Beppu.

I went there after the trip to Nagasaki and Kumamoto to take a break from all the traveling, and so really all I wanted to do was relax. I checked into my host’s place somewhere north west of the JR Beppu station at around 6pm, my host’s friend picking me up at the station itself.

Straight off, I went to the onsen nearby called Teruyu Onsen (照湯温泉). It cost just 250yen to enter, and I was puzzled. The onsens I went to previously were all at least 500yen and above, but as I entered I immediately knew why. There was hardly any separation between the main bath and the changing area, and there were no showering equipments at all! So I ended up having to ask someone else for a little of their soap and shampoo cause you can’t go in without cleaning yourself properly.

The difference between a sento and an onsen is that the water in an onsen comes direct from the water source which is usually hot and bubbling. The ones in a sento are artificially heated, so you can feel the water cooling down before the thermostat kicks in. So as I entered the onsen, it was really warm, and showed no signs of cooling down.

And that felt so good. As I got out, I realised I hadn’t had any food to eat, so I headed down the slope to grab some soba, but the soba shop was closed at like 8.30pm, so I had to check out the ramen place next door. It wasn’t the best ramen, but I was content. Having ramen after an onsen just felt so satisfying. I crashed right after I got back.

The next day, I planned. I checked out the nearby Springs of Hell (地獄温泉) where I could see interestingly themed hot springs. It was pretty disappointing though, cause the mud onsen that I went to hardly spouted even though the sign nearby said it could spurt up to 3-5m, but it was just mere bubbles. I was fine with that though, and went on a hunt for a good onsen.

So near my place there’s this set of onsens called Myoban Onsen (明礬温泉) and they’re pretty old. But they’re established and the quality seemed to be pretty high from reviews, so I went to the village.

At 1pm, there was like no one around. It felt like a ghost village. I wandered around the compound and I saw this Myoban Onsen association, where I found a notice that I could get discounts off my visits! I paid 1500yen for 6 tickets, and they could save you up to 250yen per visit. The first one I went to was a sulfur onsen. It is supposed to keep your skin really smooth, and do the other things an onsen is supposed to, like reinvigorate you and strengthen your skin.

I was so tired after the trip though, so I took a little nap at the resting area for about 1 hour and then went to grab a bite at a café nearby, where I got a pudding that is quite famous around the area, and an egg cooked by the steam of an onsen (温泉卵). I’d describe the taste as a mix of sweet and salty, and while the taste took some getting used to, I actually liked it! Might not jump to conclusions so quickly from now on.

I went back to my accommodation to take a nap, and then went to a final onsen, which was a pretty normal one near the house before going to sleep.

So you can see, really my trip to Beppu could be summed down to three things: eat, onsen and sleep. But that really got me ready and charged for my trip to Aso, so I was grateful for the break.

About my host: she made me onigiri and miso soup for breakfast, which was so good I swear that’s going to be the way my breakfasts roll from now on. She also works at a construction company that builds onsens. How sick is that? She has a really fat 7kg cat. And my room had a kotatsu. It was glorious.

熊本 Kumamoto Part 2

I had to try some of Kumamoto’s famous foods, so I went to try the two main famous dishes, horse sashimi and ramen.

Ramen

First up was this ramen place called Komurasaki. A 61 year old ramen shop, passed down for 3 generations, and the 3rd generation maker chatted with me at length about his business and things he was worried about.

The humble ramen maker, who is always thinking, always staying grounded. Loved our conversation!

His shop is really famous around the area, but beyond the shopping district his shop was situated in, his name doesn’t get out too much, and he loses customers to the busier shopping district just about 30 minutes walk away from his place. That’s cause in Japan, there’s a custom for people to go to ramen shops after drinking, but all the drinking places are at the area where Nori runs his bar, so he loses a lot of customers. Currently, he’s wondering about whether he should move to that area too, but there are risks involved, so that’s something he’s worried about.

I asked him whether he ever intended to expand his business beyond Kumamoto, and without hesitation, he said that that wouldn’t be possible. The quality of his ramen would drop without a doubt. You just can’t get the same quality water (as with the sake) to make the broth, and you can’t get the same ingredients  (at the same price) to make the special garlic topping that makes his shop famous. I guess that’s how particular these shop owners are in having a consistency to their brand. They’ve developed a strong identity for themselves, but that also prevents them from getting out of the country. I respect that though, and I know what I’m getting into when going to the shop.

The fantastic cha siew ramen, where the meat just melted in my mouth

Mt. Aso

After Kumamoto, I went to the nearby Mt. Aso. I went there only to find out that the crater was blocked off to visitors cause of the recent eruptions so that was a shame! I decided to stay the night though, and that turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made throughout this trip.

The Cyclist

I met two phenomenal people. One was a cyclist who cycled all the way from Fukuoka to Mt. Aso to pursue two of his biggest interests – shrines and onsens. He has a 2 week plan to circle around the whole of the Mt. Aso area, trying different onsens and going to shrines. I’ve never seen anyone so dedicated to visiting shrines before, so I was really curious.

This guy enjoys shrines not by name value, but just by the different things he sees when going to them. All he does is cycle around, and go to roads that catch his eye. When he sees a shrine that looks kind of intriguing he goes in, savoring the atmosphere and taking pictures of the different parts of the shrine he finds different. He savors the silence too, and takes the time to enjoy it.

It’s a really expensive way to travel, and he has this huge excel sheet where he details every minute detail from the money he needs to replace things to the time he reaches several destinations. The amount of detail and effort is remarkable, despite him calling it his “hobby”. To take a hobby so far, and to have so many stories to tell his amazing.

He details every part of his trip on this twitter account, and I’ve been following it ever since. He told me of this lifesaver for travelers, called the 道の駅, MichiNoEki, which is a shelter for people making long trips around the island. It’s all over Japan, and they can be as small as normal room in a house, to a huge complex with shops, shower facilities, and restaurants. They are heated, and so they are a welcome respite for travelers looking to escape the wintry cold. There was also a time where he slept like a log on a bench out in the open. In a 1 degree celsius night, he almost got woken up by a policeman on patrol, but because he looked so inconspicuous, he was ignored in the end.

But I was touched by his warm and open heart. His eyes were always sparkling with fascination, and he told his stories with such gusto. I could tell he was a guy bursting with life experience, and that he’s seen so much. Without expecting it, he treated everyone to horse sashimi that he bought on the way here, and he went like “eat, eat, I bought it for everyone”. And in a theme that I would find recurring in Japan, it makes him happy to see others enjoy. He also gave me this sake that could only be found in Mt. Aso, and told me to enjoy it with my friends when I went on my to Kagoshima. I haven’t opened it to this day, but I guess I’ll have to drink it soon.

High grade horse sashimi, it melts!

Special sake from Mt. Aso

I also chatted with him about his job, where he’s a web designer and adviser to companies about how to build proper websites. He noticed a flaw about Japanese websites, which is that the templates for the English and Japanese content are completely different and have often very different information. If someone could standardize that, it would help business get more foreign customers. That’s a great idea isn’t it? I wonder why hardly any websites have such a thing yet…

The Engineer

And meanwhile, while we are chatting about all of these things, there was an old man sitting quietly opposite us. He made casual interjections but mainly kept to himself. I was wondering if I should be talking to him more often, but he seemed content just listening, so I let him be. Before he went up to bed, he found out that I was going to Kagoshima, and he offered to send me there. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Like, send me all the way from Mt. Aso to Kagoshima?? Apparently, he was heading to Ibusuki, and so since it was on the way, why not? He would leave at 7.30am in the morning though, so he asked me to meet that timing and went up to bed. I found myself in luck.

Where I stayed at for the night

The next day I woke up, and I took his car. Having hardly talked to him, we talked sporadically at first, but then opened up. He is a 50-60 year old married man, who likes to go on road trips around Kyushu. His wife doesn’t like to go on trips, and his children are all busy, so while he has a break, he goes on these 3-day trips where he makes one round around beautiful spots in Kyushu. He is an engineer by trade, and makes cleaning equipments. We also talked about the nuances of the Japanese language, and how there’s a lot of guessing going on. They never finish their sentences, and there’s a lot of nuances that I have yet to learn. I think this would be an interesting project to work on next semester eh.

I suspect he must have felt a little lonely, but I was also going about my trip alone, so talking to a fellow solo traveler felt quite liberating. From Mt. Aso, we stopped at a water tunnel turned park, went to high scenic spots where we could admire the volcano at Mt. Aso, made a trip around the western coastline, stopping at the cities of Minamata, Akune, and then finally at Satsumasendai. I felt so much gratitude, but with the limited money I had, treated him to a meal of a clam soup set. But I know I owe him so much more.

When he dropped me off at Sendai station, I knew I would never forget this guy. We traded contacts and parted swiftly.

熊本 Kumamoto Part 1

I think my trip to Kumamoto was defined by the people I’ve met. There’s nowhere else that I felt like I was treated like I was home. So this post about Kumamoto will be about the theme of people, and along the way, I’ll introduce the food, the scenery, and such. Also, divided into two posts because it turned out to be too long.

First up has to be my host Nori. I found him through AirBnb, and my journey first started with a trip to Kumamoto station with a fellow hosteler I met at Nagasaki. Turns out we were taking the exact same train so we did! We had a good chat about what we were going to do after Japan, and I feel so much optimism for this guy – going to Biochemical engineering, applying for a PhD program, and always looking forward. That’s the kind of spirit I want to maintain as well.

The bar

Meanwhile, my host runs this bar called Glocal BAR 芋vibes. You can check out the facebook here, and it is and up and coming bar in the main entertainment district of Kumamoto – about 10 minutes away from the castle. I was supposed to go to his place first and put down my stuff, but I got off one stop earlier at Kami Kumamoto so I ended up going to his bar first.

It was raining and I thought I’d lost my umbrella (where it was actually in my bag), so I got a little wet and had to dry myself off. Nori was warm, friendly and accommodating. So he knew I could speak a little Japanese, but I kind of sensed his bar was a more international bar, so I tried to speak English all the way.

All his customers speak really good English! And they genuinely showed me great hospitality, never making me feel out of place, and chatting with me about simply everything and anything. I met a Singaporean friend of his at the bar too, and we reminisced about times back in Singapore and his opinions about his time as a JET teacher in Kumamoto. Being 5 months away from Singapore, and hearing a Singaporean speak, made me think about my friends back in Singapore too.

Origins

But back to Nori, and so apparently he has been learning about shochu since he was a university student. He’s been accumulating that knowledge and in the end, he decided to open his bar really recently in September this year. He has a whole range of shochu and sake, and he takes the time to introduce each type of shochu and sake to me. I was able to try black sugar, sweet potato, rice, and barley. But of course, it’s not without a platter of sushi to go with it. Nori struck up a relationship with the sushi owner next door, and so he is able to serve the chef’s sushi in his bar. Boy it is good. The ingredients are all super fresh, and the rice is really of the right temperature. The meats all melted in my mouth, and I was so tempted to eat all of them in one gulp, but with the Japanese way, restraint and enjoying them one by one, with some Japanese alcohol.

The surprise, is that I was able to meet the maker of a shochu brand called the 繊月 (sengetsu). If there’s one thing I learnt, is that the salespeople, when they go to different bars to market their products, they are so graceful and really place an emphasis on having people enjoy the products they sell. As I spoke to the maker, he went on at length about how they leveraged on the specialness of Kumamoto’s water (which comes from Mt. Aso) to make a shochu unique to Kumamoto. The uniqueness lies in its fragrance. Right after Nori opened the cap, the fragrance burst out and it smelt really inviting. Taking a sip, it didn’t taste much but it went down my throat so easily.

The ways of the shochu

So the thing about shochu is that you can drink it three ways. On the rocks (or straight), cold, or with hot water (お湯わり）The way people in Kumamoto do it is usually with hot water, and when served, it’s always a little overflowing. You have to stand up over the counter, and sip it straight from the cup without moving it first, and then bring the cup to you. It was quite an experience.

But ultimately, in Japan, alcohol is the bridge between people. Many people are familiar with the term ノミニケーション or communication through drinking, and that day was no exception. Nori brought east and west together by introducing this thing called the Samurai shot. So the basic idea is that he imagines the samurai days where people would go to war, and before they go to war, they take a drink. But because they may never see each other again, Nori devises this move to bring people close together. A kanpai! (乾杯), then crossing arms to drink, and finally a hug at the end. Of course no one is going to war, and no one is going to die after that (touch wood), but it was imaginative, and I really applaud him for doing it. I probably think it’s cause it’s Nori that it works hahaha. He gets the atmosphere up, and brings people together.

On the second day, I went to his bar again. It so happened that he and his friends were having a private party, and he welcomed me ever so warmly. It was Christmas Eve, and in a gesture of good friendship, he invited his friends who would’ve been celebrating it alone had it not been for him, and spent the eve together despite having a girlfriend. There was a really moving friendship between him and his good buddy, and even through broken English, I could really tell the strong bond they had together. It felt like such a pure friendship, one of mutual respect and help. Again, as we had our party, another sake maker came to the bar!

Pride in work

He made rice sake, and as I chatted with him, he was this gracefully aged man who spoke passionately about his sake, and how he would never be able to make the same sake outside of Kumamoto. (This is a theme that rang throughout my time in Kumamoto, people who have learnt to make full use of the special features of Kumamoto’s natural resources, and made it in the industry). We did the samurai shot, exchanged contacts, and he invited me to come back to Kumamoto and visit his factory in March when they roll out their first batch of sake. This is how Japanese businessmen do it. They really made me feel at ease and enjoy the sake/shochu for what it was, and told a story. Their story felt so warm and natural, that I was touched. This is what it means to be an artisan (職人) maybe, and that’s an attitude I would love to have when I start my job as well – to have pride in my work.